Board Games | Historical Games

Beer & Bread is a multi-use card game for two players. Its clever structure of alternating rounds puts a fascinating twist on player interaction, card drafting, and resource management.Founded on the fruitful lands of an erstwhile monastery, two villages have held up the dual tradition of brewing beer and baking bread. While sharing fields and resources, they still find pride in their friendly rivalry of besting each other’s produce.Each of you represents one of these villages. Over the course of six years - which alternate between fruitful and dry - you must harmonize your duties of harvesting and storing resources, producing beer and bread, selling them for coins and upgrading your facilities.However, in order to win, you must maintain the balance between your baked and liquid goods. Because, after the sixth year, you only score the coins collected from the type of good - beer or bread - for which you earned less. The village with the higher score wins.2 playersAges 10+30-45 minute play time

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As the proud owner of one of the tea gardens in the the Chinese Yunnan region, your mission in Tea Garden is to cultivate and expand your empire by establishing new tea gardens along the serene river valley. Tea leaves are your most prized asset, with six grades of tea quality and each region producing a different quality of tea. Transform your fresh, vibrant green tea leaves through fermentation, elevating them to rich, aromatic brown leaves that grow in quality — and value! — as they mature. Harness the power of your deck of cards to orchestrate up to four main actions each game round. The strength of these cards is important for performing the chosen action; the higher the strength, the better the effects you will achieve. With your cards, you will build new tea gardens, acquire new cards, trade your tea with eager caravans, ferment your tea leaves, and harvest more tea. Couple your main actions with the power of secondary actions to navigate the river, produce tea cups, or practice tea studies at the university.

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Tzolkin: The Mayan Calendar presents a new game mechanism: dynamic worker placement. Players representing different Mayan tribes place their workers on giant connected gears, and as the gears rotate they take the workers to different action spots. During a turn, players can either (a) place one or more workers on the lowest visible spot of the gears or (b) pick up one or more workers. When placing workers, they must pay corn, which is used as a currency in the game. When they pick up a worker, they perform certain actions depending on the position of the worker. Actions located "later" on the gears are more valuable, so it's wise to let the time work for you but players cannot skip their turn; if they have all their workers on the gears, they have to pick some up.  The game ends after one full revolution of the central Tzolkin gear. There are many paths to victory. Pleasing the gods by placing crystal skulls in deep caves or building many temples are just two of those many paths...

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With a group of pioneers, you have left civilization behind to settle along the shores of Boonlake, a long-forgotten region inhabited by humans long ago. This unexplored area beckons you! Become part of a new community and commit yourself to the common good. Explore the landscapes, build houses and settlements, raise cattle, produce raw materials, and develop an infrastructure. Do your best to automate these processes. Seize the opportunity to make the best of your new life in Boonlake. Boonlake is an expert game in which you are finding yourself improving your life — and your group's life — in this new territory...but how you accomplish this is completely up to you! Due to a novel action mechanism, each game progresses differently. Each action needs to be considered carefully since the other players also benefit from the action you choose. Besides this, the action determines how far you may move your ship — the further and faster, the better!

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According to Legend, the Incans of Machu Pichu cultivated many different crops on their terraces by a nearby river. Your family has successfully specialized in one crop but now wants to expand the business, hire Specialists, and occupy more land with new kinds of crops. Sacred Valley is a tile laying game. Players earn most of VP by building a larger area of same crops. However, every time you place is actually helping other players as well. It is a game about being more efficient than other players and making the right decision at the right time. Hiring different Specialists allows you to break the limitation and lead in the game.

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