D&D: Dragon Heist

WELCOME TO WATERDEEP!

A fantastic treasure trove is yours for the taking in this adventure for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

Famed explorer Volothamp Geddarm needs you to complete a simple quest. Thus begins a mad romp through the wards of Waterdeep as you uncover a villainous plot involving some of the city’s most influential figures.

A grand urban caper awaits you. Pit your skill and bravado against villains the likes of which you’ve never faced before, and let the dragon hunt begin!

Before There Were Stars

Since ancient times, the twinkling of the heavens inspired people across the globe to create stories that answered the most important of questions: “Who are we… and how did it all begin?”

Open this box, and join the storytellers of old. Before There Were Stars… is a storytelling game in which each player tells the mythic creation story of “their people”. Inspired by constellation cards, players craft tales about the creation of the world, the origins of civilization, the rise of a great hero, and the end of days.

This “feel-good” game lets you appreciate the boundless imagination in all of us and awards points for the best story moments — allowing everyone to shine regardless of their skill as a storyteller. Playing this game is a breath of fresh air that never repeats itself, except in the fun and warmth of emotion it brings to your table.

Tower of Madness

Investigate unspeakable horrors without losing your marbles — literally!

The veil between worlds in thinning, an ancient horror is awakening, and the very existence of the world hangs in the balance. You must investigate a series of horrific locations and discover the unknowable truth before the world ends — or go mad in the attempt to save it. Find the paranormal gates that have opened onto our world, and be stout of heart and strong of mind for only then will you discover how to seal the gates and save humanity.

In Tower of Madness, a three-dimensional clock tower, standing a foot tall and filled with marbles of four distinct colors, stands before you. Thirty unworldly tentacles push through the tower walls in every direction in this high-tension, push-your-luck dice game of Lovecraft-inspired horror. Fail your investigation dice rolls and you will be forced to draw a tentacle from the tower. Any marbles that fall as a result affect your character immediately, whether adding to your discovery total, gaining you spells and knowledge that man was not meant to have, or gaining madness; drop one of the three DOOM marbles, however, and you summon Cthulhu and end the game.

Investigate every horrific location in the deck, each with its own unique dice challenge, in order to save the world before your luck runs out. The player with the most discovery points is declared the hero and wins the game. Otherwise, the insane players collectively enjoy a brief moment of victory as Cthulhu rises, destroys the world, and eats them last…as their reward.

Carson City: Big Box

The year is 1858 in Carson City, Nevada. You have rounded up a team of courageous cowboys, and your plan is to buy up the best parcels of land in this new town, then build them up with the most prosperous ranches, mines, saloons, etc.

Carson City: Big Box is a collection of the Carson City base game, the Gold & Guns expansion, and the upcoming Horses & Heroes expansion. The game board has been redesigned and updated to support a sixth player and the Horses & Heroes expansion. The game is played in four rounds, and in each one of them, the players choose one of the characters, which give certain advantages. When several players claim the same action, a duel is fought, and the player with the most firepower wins the action. In the end, the most prominent citizen in Carson City — as measured by victory points that can be won both during and after the game — wins.

Carson City: Gold & Guns, the first expansion, contains updated buildings and houses, new buildings, new double-sided characters, the “Indian” character (previously a promotional item at Spiel 2010), and a separate expansion called “The Outlaws”.

Carson City: Horses & Heroes, the second expansion, lets players visit the rodeo to claim additional victory points and use horses to unlock special actions. Three new characters are also added to the game.

Carson City: The Card Game

In Carson City: The Card Game, each player is in charge of developing a city. You and your opponents try to choose the most lucrative parcels of land and buildings, then place these parcels and buildings wisely so as to make your city as prosperous as possible. You can also win the support and gain the help of the most influential people in the city. Do not ignore your opponents as they will try to make the best moves in your stead, with a blind bidding mechanism determining who goes first in each round.

Graphic Novel Adventures: Captive

Why would someone attack a policeman? It’s one of many questions you’ve been obsessing about since you received this ransom demand following your daughter’s kidnapping.

As you begin walking toward the front door of a manor house deep in the woods in Captive, your hand cramping above your weapon, your spirit satiated with fear, you anticipate that things will turn out badly. Your intuition will not betray you — even if you were far from imagining what was actually in reserve for you on the most horrifying evening of your entire existence.

Captive is a comic combined with a game, one title in a series subtitled “The comic in which you are the hero”. You embody a character in a immersive story in which your choices guide your progress. You have a character sheet akin to those used in role-playing games that tracks your possessions, your special abilities, your coins, and your victory points. In general, gameplay consists in following the comic’s panels — which contain clues, riddles and traps — and making choices about where to go and what to do, while using your visual perception to collect clues and be smart enough to resolve the riddles. As in any game, you can lose — sometimes really badly!

Graphic Novel Adventures: Tears of a Goddess

Volume #2 in the new Graphic Novel Adventures gamebook line from Van Ryder Games. In Tears of a Goddess, you play the role of a Chinese bounty hunter looking to make some cash buy finding the stolen “tears of Nuwa” for the town leader. Choose to be a thief, a master of disguise, or to be skilled with thrown weapons and set out to find the thieves in this intriguing adventure.

Graphic Novel Adventures: Loup Garou

Volume #3 in the new Graphic Novel Adventures gamebook line from Van Ryder Games. In Loup Garou, you play the role of a new werewolf trying to figure out how to control your transformations while uncovering the cause of some strange occurrences in the local town. Featuring a unique combat system and the ability to level up and gain new skills, this book is sure to keep you busy for hours on end!

Graphic Novel Adventures: Your Town

Volume #4 in the new Graphic Novel Adventures gamebook line from Van Ryder Games. In Your Town, you play the role of the new mayor of a small western town. Will you perish at the hands of outlaws? Or will you lead the town to prosperity? Find out in this unique experience with its unique game play and town building mechanisms.

Graphic Novel Adventures: Sherlock Holmes

Volume #5 in the new Graphic Novel Adventures gamebook line from Van Ryder Games. In Sherlock, you play the role of Dr. Watson or Sherlock Holmes himself with the task of solving 4 different, yet somehow connected, investigations. This game book features a unique interrogation system and an innovative way to check your guess without revealing the solutions, so you can play over and over until you solve the cases correctly!

War Chest

War Chest is an all-new bag-building war game! At the start of the game, raise your banner call (drafting) several various units into your army, which you then use to capture key points on the board. To succeed in War Chest, you must successfully manage not only your armies on the battlefield, but those that are waiting to be deployed.

Each round you draw three unit coins from your bag, then take turns using them to perform actions. Each coin shows a military unit on one side and can be used for one of several actions. The game ends when one player — or one team in the case of a four-player game — has placed all of their control markers. That player or team wins!

 

Nyctophobia: The Hunted

Welcome to the experiential table top game that is going to redefine what it means to play a game. Nyctophobia, which means “fear of the dark”, is a cooperative game of survival in which up to four players must work together to escape a maniacal predator chasing them in a pitch-black forest. But there’s a wrinkle: Would-be survivors play the game with blackout glasses. Players cannot see the board and have to rely on touch to navigate their way to safety. So, are you afraid of the dark?

In more detail, Nyctophobia is a cooperative tactile maze game for 3 to 5 players. All but one of the players play the game completely unable to see the board. The blinded players make up the Hunted team. They are tasked with finding the car space on the board and surviving until the police arrive to rescue them. The sighted player is the Hunter, who is tasked with chasing down the Hunted and reducing one of the Hunted to zero health before the police arrive.

Nyctophobia includes two versions of the Hunter that you can use: the axe murderer and the mage. The axe murderer is stalking you and your friends in the forest, plodding forward without care or thought, chopping down the trees that separate you to get to you all the quicker; this is the most basic and carnal of all of the experiences you can encounter in Nyctophobia. The mage, by contrast, is a trickster. It’s not enough for the mage to hunt her victims. Messing with their mind, manipulating the forest around them, and leaving the blind opponents more lost than when she found them is her aim. The mage can rotate the map, move trees around the forest, and generally confuse the players.

Ultimate Werewolf: Legacy

Ultimate Werewolf is an interactive game of deduction for two teams: villagers and werewolves. The villagers don’t know who the werewolves are, and the werewolves are trying to remain undiscovered while they slowly eliminate the villagers one at a time. A moderator (who isn’t on a team) runs the game. The game takes place over a series of days and nights. Each day, the players discuss who among them is a werewolf and vote out a player. Each night, the werewolves choose a player to eliminate, while the Seer learns if one player is a werewolf or not. The game is over when either all the villagers or all the werewolves are eliminated.

Ultimate Werewolf Legacy uses gameplay similar to Ultimate Werewolf, but you no longer have single standalone games as players and the village itself have attributes that are retained between games, with events that take place in the first games having effects that ripple through remaining games. Make a bad decision early on, and it can haunt the village for years to come! Players can earn titles, which provides them with special abilities in future games, regardless of their role. Players are each given a public family card in addition to their secret role card, and they team up with the other members of their family to work together…unless one or more of their family members is secretly working against them.

As for the village, there are multiple paths that the game may take, and as a result the experience you have playing through the entire game will differ from someone else who is playing with another set of people. This also allows players to play through the campaign multiple times, with a different set of roles, rules, and environments each time.

At the center of Ultimate Werewolf Legacy is an oversized, 80+ page diary, that walks the game moderator through every session. The diary has been designed so that players with no previous Werewolf playing experience can both play and moderate. The diary is structured into five distinct chapters with three game sessions in each chapter, as well as an introductory preface game session. Players can jump in and out for individual sessions, but ideally they’ll play all the sessions in a chapter. Each chapter can be played in a single evening. At the end of the sixteen-game session campaign, the diary will be a record of exactly what happened in your village, and who was ultimately responsible for what it became over time.

Rick and Morty: The Pickle Rick Game

As you might expect, Rick and Morty: The Pickle Rick Game is based on the “Pickle Rick” episode of Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty. One player plays as Pickle Rick as he tries to escape a heavily armed compound, while the other player takes on the roles of both the Russians and Jaguar as they try to stop him. The Pickle Rick player uses weapons cards to dole out damage and Air Vents to get out of jams as they try to get to the rooftop. The game includes both Pickle Rick and Jaguar miniatures that are moved across a dynamic board made up of tiles that are constantly being added, rotated, and flipped.

Adding to the off-the-wall fun is the game’s packaging: It looks like a pickle!

Epic Spell Wars: Panic at the Pleasure Palace

Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Panic at the Pleasure Palace, the fourth game in the Epic Spell Wars series, takes the trademark humor-filled, mature gameplay and artwork to a new level for 2-6 players. Magically transmitted diseases (MTDs) are a powerful addition to the proceedings, leading wizards to suffer Crotch Krakens, Genital Harpies, and Gorgonorrhea, among other enchanted afflictions. MTDs also give players glyphs that lead to spells that are more epic than ever. In addition, players vie for control of the standee, which protects them from the MTDs that might come their way.

Sagrada: 5-6 Expansion

Add to your Sagrada experience with the 5-6 Player Expansion!

You can now enjoy more Sagrada by adding up to 2 extra players! This expansion introduces the Private Dice Pool boards for smooth gameplay through 6 players. Also includes new private objectives, tools, and window pattern cards.

This expansion is not standalone. The Sagrada base game is required to play.

Clank: In Space! (Apocalypse)

The deck-building adventure of Clank! In! Space! continues in Clank! In! Space! Apocalypse! Small pockets of resistance continue to oppose Lord Eradikus, but the evil cyborg now plots to wipe them out with one grand and wicked scheme!

Your challenge? Thwart the efforts of Lord Eradikus! Reap the rewards of noble (and sometimes reluctant) heroism! Save the galaxy…and get rich in the process! Maybe you can avert the Apocalypse! (Or at least escape with the treasure while someone else does!)

This expansion requires Clank! In! Space! to play.

Game Box Contains:

2 Double-sided Game Board Modules
35 Adventure Deck Cards
8 Large Scheme Cards
1 Haldos Boss Marker

Smash Up: Oops, You Did It Again

Smash Up: Oops, You Did It Again is a standalone two-player-only game that can also be used as an expansion for other Smash Up titles. The four factions to be included in this set are Vikings, Cowboys, Samurai, and Egyptians.

Duhr: The Lesser Houses

The monolithic city-state of Dûhr is at once a crucible of emerging and forgotten cultures, a cynosure of commerce, and a titan of military might. Its Great and Lesser Houses rise and fall with the whims of its Family Royal, the Sovereign House Kythidûhr. Amidst the festivals of summer, House Kythidûhr announced its intent to elevate one of Dûhr’s Lesser Houses to Great House status. By autumn’s frosts, the Lesser Houses were deeply embroiled in a fierce battle for the coveted title. Not with soldiers, for that would waste blood and gold, but with the most insidious of political weapons: suspicion and scandal. They attacked each other with aspersions and calumny, well devised and craftily exploited, designed to erode the social standing of their rival Houses and thereby remove them from contention.

Dûhr: The Lesser Houses accommodates 4 to 6 players. Each player is the master of a Lesser House of Dûhr, vying for Great House status. Players take turns using cards in their hand to trigger events, place suspicions and scandalson each other’s House, or activate their own House’s unique ability to affect cards already placed. The accumulation of suspicion and scandal cards on a House card erodes the populace’s favor for that House by raising suggestions of wrongdoing or embroiling it in scandals that incite public outrage.

All Houses begin the game without any suspicions or scandals and favored by the people of Dûhr. When a House accumulates a combined total of 5 suspicion and/or scandal cards, that House falls into disfavor with the populace. If a disfavored House ever has 3 or more revealed scandal cards, the House becomes vilified. The game ends immediately when the number of favored Houses remaining is 1 or none. Whoever has the highest score at that point wins the game. It is possible for a disfavored or vilified House to outscore a favored House and win the game!

Pronunciation note: pronounce “û” in “Dûhr” like the “oo” in “doom.”

Grackles

Grackles are noisy, iridescent birds that love to gather on telephone wires at sunset throughout the southwestern United States. In the lightly-themed abstract strategy game Grackles, you line up your birds on the telephone wire to score as many points as possible. Each turn, players choose between drawing and placing a tile, connecting two spots on the telephone wire with their birds, extending a line of birds, or rotating an empty tile. After the board has been built to five tiles by five tiles and all available pairs of spots on the telephone wire have birds on them, the player with the most birds on the telephone wire wins.

 

Crows

Crows are smart, but they have a weakness for shiny objects. You have a shiny object. The problem is, so do your friends. There are too many shiny objects and too few crows!

Players take turns placing tiles and then positioning their shiny objects to attract the most crows. Crows flock to the shiny objects based on simple rules. It’s going to take some wits if you’re going to attract the most birds!

When all tiles have been placed, the player who has attracted the most crows wins.

This was one of Valley Games’ 2010 Essen releases.

Crows is #7 in the Valley Games Modern Line

Gearworks

Your life in the workshop is a monotonous affair. You were once a renowned machinist, but after the accident twelve years ago it’s been a long road to recovery. Since then, your machines never work very well, or for very long, before they break. The workshop owner has given you one more chance to prove your worth.

Gearworks is a steampunk strategy board game featuring card placement, hand management, and a “twist” on area control. Strategically position your gears to fix a mysterious clockwork machine in the corner of the workshop. Collect parts created by the machine each round by being the last player to fix its various components. As a tinkerer, you can certainly put those parts to good use and create fantastical contraptions!

Will the other tinkerers sabotage your efforts or will you earn the workshop owner’s favor and become the master tinkerer?

Fist of the Dragonstones: Tavern Edition

Fist of Dragonstones: Tavern Edition is a closed-fist, bidding game. Players try to outwit their opponents by using gold and magic coins to buy control of an ever-changing cast of enchanted character cards. The powers from those characters help collect valuable Dragonstones, lend their magical powers, help foil other players, and convert Dragonstones into victory.

For each character card, players choose the number of coins they want to bid by placing them in a closed fist. All players reveal their bets at the same time, and the winner of the auction gains control of the card’s powers. Depending on the card, you may win additional coins or Dragonstones, gain powers, place spells on other players, or score points.

The rules of Fist of Dragonstones: Tavern Edition have been updated from the original Fist of Dragonstones to improve gameplay, including the introduction of the King’s Favor, which speeds up play. The game includes more than 70 special character cards in the game, compared to 25 special characters in the original game. Some of these special characters can be saved for later use in the game. Thematically and artistically, the game has been re-imagined into The Dragon & Flagon universe.

The Legend:
Many, many years ago, an enchanted forest lay hidden between two great mountain ranges. The forest valley was home to several kingdoms whose rival princes battled with each other to unite the entire realm under one flag. To gain advantage, princes vied with each other to collect powerful magic amulets called Dragonstones.

Like many royals, over time the princes began to prefer the comfort and safety of their fortified castles. Rather than risk their own lives by venturing out to search for these amulets, they paid handsome rewards to Adventurers who could bring them the Dragonstones. The allure of the princes’ wealth soon filled the enchanted forest with all manner of wizards, witches, dwarves, goblins, and many other enchanted creatures — all in pursuit of the magic Dragonstones.

This enchanted land is now almost entirely lost to legend, yet at a cozy inn known as The Dragon & Flagon, the memory of Dragonstones is kept alive by the Adventurers that frequent the tavern. Even today, a nod from a knowing traveler may persuade the Adventurers to recount some of the ancient tales. And if they take a particular liking to you, those Adventurers may bring out their own collection of magic coins and challenge you to a simple game of skill and luck, giving you a chance to have your own Fist of Dragonstones.

Catan: Family Edition

Get together with friends or family. Learn to play in about 15 minutes. Then enjoy countless hours of fast-paced fun!

Begin a quest to settle the island of Catan! Guide your brave settlers to victory by using clever trading and shrewd development. Use resources – grain, wool, ore, lumber, and brick – to build roads, settlements, cities and key cultural milestones. Get resources by rolling the dice or by trading with other players.

But beware! You never know when someone will block your way or if the robber will strike and steal your hard-earned goods! Are you the best trader, builder, or settler? Will you master Catan?

Patchwork Express

Patchwork Express features the same basic gameplay as Patchwork, but with a smaller playing area and with larger and less complex pieces.

In the game, each player tries to build the most aesthetic (and high-scoring) patchwork quilt on a personal 7×7 game board. To start play, lay out all of the light-colored patches at random in a circle and place a starting marker in a particular location. Each player takes some buttons — the currency/points in the game — and someone is chosen as the start player.

On a turn, a player either purchases one of the three patches standing clockwise of the starting marker or passes. To purchase a patch, you pay the cost in buttons shown on the patch, move the starting marker to that patch’s location in the circle, add the patch to your game board, then advance your time token on the time track a number of spaces equal to the time shown on the patch. You’re free to place the patch anywhere on your board that doesn’t overlap other patches, but you probably want to fit things together as tightly as possible. If your time token is behind or on top of the other player’s time token, then you take another turn; otherwise the opponent now goes. Instead of purchasing a patch, you can choose to pass; to do this, you move your time token to the space immediately in front of the opponent’s time token, then take one button from the bank for each space you moved.

In addition to a button cost and time cost, each patch also features 0-3 buttons, and when you move your time token past a button on the time track, you earn “button income”: sum the number of buttons depicted on your personal game board, then take this many buttons from the bank.

What’s more, the time track depicts six 1×1 patches on it, and during set-up you place six actual 1×1 patches on these spaces. Whoever first passes a patch on the time track claims this patch and immediately places it on their game board.

At some point during the game, dark-colored patches are added to what’s available for players to take, and these pieces are smaller than the light-colored ones, making it more likely that they’ll fill in holes on a player’s board.

Cosmic Encounter: 42 Anniversary Edition

Who—or what—is out there?

Eons ago, your ancestors searched the black void of space for intelligent life. Their search proved fruitless. They were alone. Desolate, they used their technology to send the seeds of life to inhabitable planets across the galaxies. Over millions of years, the alien species evolved, but before the ancestors could see the fruits of their labor, they disappeared.

To aid their children, your ancestors left behind a legacy of advanced technology and hyperspace gates- gifts to encourage communication and harmony between their children. But without the guide of an elder, you and your distant alien cousins must learn to communicate, negotiate, and coexist.

Welcome to the Cosmic Age. The open skies of countless worlds are filled with speeding spaceships, and a panoply of alien species compete to populate the galaxy. Will your people choose to occupy undefended worlds, create peaceful civilizations, or ruthlessly conquer foreign planets? In the quest to colonize the vast cosmos, there are as many paths to victory as there are aliens seeking it. Peace, war, negotiation, betrayal—you never know what will happen in the next encounter!

For more than a generation, Cosmic Encounter has stood the test of time and become an unmitigated classic. Featuring enhanced components, an additional alien species, and several improvements designed to welcome new players, Cosmic Encounter 42nd Anniversary Edition offers you the chance to experience the definitive version of this time-honored game of intergalactic colonization. In every game, you’ll launch your ships through the Hyperspace Gate in bold bids to establish colonies on foreign planets. You’ll forge alliances with other players—and break them just as quickly. And you’ll take advantage of your alien’s unique power. Answer the call of the cosmos and enter the new cosmic age!

 

Dinosaur Island

In Dinosaur Island, players will have to collect DNA, research the DNA sequences of extinct dinosaur species, and then combine the ancient DNA in the correct sequence to bring these prehistoric creatures back to life. Dino cooking! All players will compete to build the most thrilling park each season, and then work to attract (and keep alive!) the most visitors each season that the park opens.

Do you go big and create a pack of Velociraptors? They’ll definitely excite potential visitors, but you’d better make a large enough enclosure for them. And maybe hire some (read: a lot of) security. Or they WILL break out and start eating your visitors, and we all know how that ends. You could play it safe and grow a bunch of herbivores, but then you aren’t going to have the most exciting park in the world (sad face). So maybe buy a roller coaster or two to attract visitors to your park the good old-fashioned way?

Princess Jing

Princess Jing is a game of bluffing for two players or two groups of players.

A palace can quickly become a maze for an escaping princess, where each mirror can either reveal a way out, or conceal a trap! It is up to her to use them at her advantage, before her guardians turn them into spying devices!

Each player moves their princess across the board, hiding her progression, while placing allies and mirrors to uncover your opponent’s princess. Escaping the palace and running off with your sweetheart will require both wits and stealth!

Root

Root is a game of adventure and war in which 2 to 4 (1 to 6 with the ‘Riverfolk’ expansion) players battle for control of a vast wilderness.

The nefarious Marquise de Cat has seized the great woodland, intent on harvesting its riches. Under her rule, the many creatures of the forest have banded together. This Alliance will seek to strengthen its resources and subvert the rule of Cats. In this effort, the Alliance may enlist the help of the wandering Vagabonds who are able to move through the more dangerous woodland paths. Though some may sympathize with the Alliance’s hopes and dreams, these wanderers are old enough to remember the great birds of prey who once controlled the woods.

Meanwhile, at the edge of the region, the proud, squabbling Eyrie have found a new commander who they hope will lead their faction to resume their ancient birthright. The stage is set for a contest that will decide the fate of the great woodland. It is up to the players to decide which group will ultimately take root.

Root represents the next step in our development of asymmetric design. Like Vast: The Crystal Caverns, each player in Root has unique capabilities and a different victory condition. Now, with the aid of gorgeous, multi-use cards, a truly asymmetric design has never been more accessible.

The Cats play a game of engine building and logistics while attempting to police the vast wilderness. By collecting Wood they are able to produce workshops, lumber mills, and barracks. They win by building new buildings and crafts.

The Eyrie musters their hawks to take back the Woods. They must capture as much territory as possible and build roosts before they collapse back into squabbling.

The Alliance hides in the shadows, recruiting forces and hatching conspiracies. They begin slowly and build towards a dramatic late-game presence–but only if they can manage to keep the other players in check.

Meanwhile, the Vagabond plays all sides of the conflict for their own gain, while hiding a mysterious quest. Explore the board, fight other factions, and work towards achieving your hidden goal.

In Root, players drive the narrative, and the differences between each role create an unparalleled level of interaction and replayability. Leder Games invites you and your family to explore the fantastic world of Root!