BGG | The Hotness

In the 2400s, mankind begins to terraform the planet Mars. Giant corporations, sponsored by the World Government on Earth, initiate huge projects to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage until the environment is habitable. In Terraforming Mars, you play one of those corporations and work together in the terraforming process, but compete for getting victory points that are awarded not only for your contribution to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other commendable things. The players acquire unique project cards (from over two hundred different ones) by buying them to their hand. The projects (cards) can represent anything from introducing plant life or animals, hurling asteroids at the surface, building cities, to mining the moons of Jupiter and establishing greenhouse gas industries to heat up the atmosphere. The cards can give you immediate bonuses, as well as increasing your production of different resources. Many cards also have requirements and they become playable when the temperature, oxygen, or ocean coverage increases enough. Buying cards is costly, so there is a balance between buying cards (3 megacredits per card) and actually playing them (which can cost anything between 0 to 41 megacredits, depending on the project). Standard Projects are always available to complement your cards. Your basic income, as well as your basic score, is based on your Terraform Rating (starting at 20), which increases every time you raise one of the three global parameters. However, your income is complemented with your production, and you also get VPs from many other sources. Each player keeps track of their production and resources on their player boards, and the game uses six types of resources: MegaCredits, Steel, Titanium, Plants, Energy, and Heat. On the game board, you compete for the best places for your city tiles, ocean tiles, and greenery tiles. You also compete for different Milestones and Awards worth many VPs. Each round is called a generation (guess why) and consists of the following phases: 1) Player order shifts clockwise.2) Research phase: All players buy cards from four privately drawn.3) Action phase: Players take turns doing 1-2 actions from these options: Playing a card, claiming a Milestone, funding an Award, using a Standard project, converting plant into greenery tiles (and raising oxygen), converting heat into a temperature raise, and using the action of a card in play. The turn continues around the table (sometimes several laps) until all players have passed.4) Production phase: Players get resources according to their terraform rating and production parameters. When the three global parameters (temperature, oxygen, ocean) have all reached their goal, the terraforming is complete, and the game ends after that generation. Count your Terraform Rating and other VPs to determine the winning corporation!

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  Based on simple and intuitive hand management, Heat: Pedal to the Metal puts players in the driver's seat of intense car races, jockeying for position to cross the finish line first, while managing their car's speed if they don't want to overheat. Selecting the right upgrades for their car will help them hug the curves and keep their engine cool enough to maintain top speeds. Ultimately, their driving skills will be the key to victory!Drivers can compete in a single race or use the "Championship System" to play a whole season in one game night, customizing their car before each race to claim the top spot of the podium. They have to be careful as the weather, road conditions, and events will change every race to spice up their championship. Players can also enjoy a solo mode with the Legends Module or add automated drivers as additional opponents in multiplayer games.

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In Harmonies, you will create beautiful landscapes by placing colored tiles. These tiles will create territories for animals and will bring them in to settle in your tiny world! Tactically combine your landscapes and animals to earn the most victory points and win the game. Harmonies captivates with its innovative mechanics: 3D landscape creation, tile placement, and pattern development. Each decision impacts the ecosystem you create, offering a deep and satisfying gaming experience. The game includes a solo mode and an "expert" mode, adding the spirits of nature to the game's animal cards.  STRATEGIC YET POETIC GAMEPLAY: Engage in a unique gaming experience where you create your own dreamlike world, combining landscapes and animals to earn victory points. EASY TO LEARN WITH DEEP TACTICAL PLAY: Harmonies offers straightforward rules that open the door to profound tactical decisions, making each game a new challenge. INCLUDES SOLO VERSION: Whether you're looking to enjoy a thoughtful solo game or engage in competitive play with friends, Harmonies caters to all your gaming needs. STUNNING ART DIRECTION: Benefit from Libellud's signature artistry, with 42 beautifully illustrated cards that bring your oneiric landscapes to life. PREMIUM COMPONENTS: Immerse yourself in a tactile gaming experience with 120 wooden tokens and high-quality cards, ensuring durability and a visually appealing setup.

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In SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a eurogame for 1-4 players, you lead a scientific institution tasked with searching for traces of life beyond planet Earth. The game draws inspiration from current or emerging technologies and efforts in space exploration. Players will explore nearby planets and their moons by launching probes from Earth while taking advantage of ever-shifting planetary positions. Decide whether to land on their surface to collect valuable samples, or stay in orbit for a broader survey. Additionally, by directing your telescopes to gaze into distant star systems, you may detect traces of alien signals or undiscovered exoplanets, and collect promising data to examine and study back home. Back on Earth, you can invest in upgrading your equipment so you can analyze incoming data more efficiently, boost your telescope signal capacity, or increase your supply of resources—all to expand the scope of your search that could lead to a discovery of extraterrestrial life forms. You will also make use of over 200 cards to aid your efforts or focus your research in a particular direction for additional bonuses and rewards. Each card has unique effects and illustrations and depicts real-life technologies, projects, and discoveries (like the ISS, Large Hadron Collider, Perseverance rover, Voyager probe, and many more). Finding traces of extraterrestrial life is only a matter of time—utilize the resources you have at your disposal strategically and you may well end up being the one to make the biggest scientific contribution towards advancing our understanding of alien life within our galaxy.

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Powerful Spirits have existed on this isolated island for time immemorial. They are both part of the natural world and - at the same time - something beyond nature. Native Islanders, known as the Dahan, have learned how to co-exist with the spirits, but with a healthy dose of fear and reverence. However, now, the island has been "discovered" by invaders from a far-off land. These would-be colonists are taking over the land and upsetting the natural balance, destroying the presence of Spirits as they go. As Spirits, you must grow in power and work together to drive the invaders from your island... before it’s too late!

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Cities on the moon! This will be humanity's crowning achievement. At last, no longer bound to the Earth — the moon, a stepping stone to the stars. The rockets are loaded with supplies and colonists; the robots are programmed and ready. Everything has been planned down to the tiniest detail, and there is no chance whatsoever of failure. To the moon! Moon Colony Bloodbath is an engine-building, engine-losing tableau game, with a shared deck the players build that makes things happen, many of them bad things that kill people in your moon colony, but some positive, and some that let you build up. More specifically, each turn one card is revealed from the shared deck, which starts with four work cards, two trouble cards, and two twists. For work, each player takes an action of their choice simultaneously: mining for money, farming for food, research for cards, build a new building, or restock boxes on buildings. Twists vary from one game to the next. Trouble adds a new event card to the deck: hunger, paperwork, glitches, accidents, leaks, power failure — whatever can go wrong will go wrong, then whenever the deck is shuffled, you can prepare for all those events once again. Players can add cards to the shared deck, too, whether perks that are only for you or developments that affect all players. The game lasts until one player's moon colony has no people remaining, or until the players reach the bottom of the event deck. At that point, the player with the most survivors wins.

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In Ark Nova, you will plan and design a modern, scientifically managed zoo. With the ultimate goal of owning the most successful zoological establishment, you will build enclosures, accommodate animals, and support conservation projects all over the world. Specialists and unique buildings will help you in achieving this goal. Each player has a set of five action cards to manage their gameplay, and the power of an action is determined by the slot the card currently occupies. The cards in question are: CARDS: Allows you to gain new zoo cards (animals, sponsors, and conservation project cards). BUILD: Allows you to build standard or special enclosures, kiosks, and pavilions. ANIMALS: Allows you to accommodate animals in your zoo. ASSOCIATION: Allows your association workers to carry out different tasks. SPONSORS: Allows you to play a sponsor card in your zoo or to raise money. 255 cards featuring animals, specialists, special enclosures, and conservation projects, each with a special ability, are at the heart of Ark Nova. Use them to increase the appeal and scientific reputation of your zoo and collect conservation points.

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This item is a pre-order item with an expected release date of Q4 2026 Orders containing a pre-order items WILL NOT SHIP until the final pre-order item is able to be shipped. Dates and product details are subject to change as new information from the manufacturer is updated. Listen up, I'm absolutely fizzing about this one. The Old King's Crown is a phenomenal board game that absolutely deserves your attention. This is the type of rare box that is able to induce that kind of bounding enthusiasm the excitement that gets you day dreaming about when you're able to get it to the table, that promise that shivers through you as each rule rattles with possibility. And not just the rules, but the presentation too!" - Shut Up and Sit Down The Old King’s Crown is a game of card-driven conquest, where you play as heirs to a vacant throne, vying for control of an ancient, overgrown kingdom. Wield unique abilities and leverage your followers’ traits to best outwit your opponents across a map that stretches from the teetering heights of the castle to the dappled light of the necropolis. As leader of your faction you will be staking claims with Heralds openly as well as positioning your forces in secret, hoping to claim the locations that fit your designs. However, keep an eye on your rivals, as they too have agents and agendas, poised to undo your best laid plans. Royalty, rebels or ruses. What crown will you wear? In The Old King's Crown, players move their Herald to locations, hoping to claim them. Then simultaneously players play cards from their hand, facedown to regions of the board. These are then revealed and resolved. Winning these clashes will result in different rewards that further their position and grant them the game's primary goal, influence. The player with the most influence by the end of a set number of rounds will be declared the winner. What We're Saying We're big fans of Root's asymmetry, Inis' art styling, and the bluffing mechanics of Dune; Old King's Crown somehow combines all three into a package that is fairly accessible given just how big it is. That doesn't mean the gameplay is easy or by any means simple, but it does mean it's intuitive and won't send people used to more medium weight games running for the door when you bring this box out.  We're really excited for Old King's Crown and we're expecting to see this on the Hotness list more and more as the initial Kickstarter run is supported by a mass-market printing hitting in Spring. This game will be hitting your table often, and if the secondary market is any indicator it's going to be highly sought after for years to come. 

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This item is a pre-order item with an expected release date of 2026 Orders containing a pre-order items WILL NOT SHIP until the final pre-order item is able to be shipped. Dates and product details are subject to change as new information from the manufacturer is updated. Nippon: Zaibatsu is a new edition of Nippon, a fast-paced, area-majority economic game. Players control "zaibatsu": massive conglomerates of interconnected companies driving Japan's economy in the Industrial Revolution era. During the game, players invest in new industries, build factories and railroads, and produce goods to saturate local markets and fulfill contracts — all to grow their influence and power and to become rulers of the new modernized country. Players are free to choose their playstyle and winning strategy: They choose what they score victory points for, control the game's pace with income turns, and race each other to get the most beneficial factories, markets, and bonuses. All the core mechanisms of the original Nippon are present, but the components, art, and design are upgraded, and many gameplay features are reworked to get the game in line with modern trends. Nippon: Zaibatsu features new resource types, ships are heavily revised with new Iwakura mission rules, factories are much more variable, consolidation turns provide players with new rewards, and much more. Also, the game now has an automa-driven solo mode.

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