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Who among you is the biggest name in international thievery?



Gather your crew, stake out your jobs, and get the goods before the authorities catch up with you in this fast-paced card game for 2 to 6 international masterminds.



In Heist: Masterminds, colourful characters meet improbable complications on the way to glory and riches (or serious jail time). On your turn, you'll decide to gather resources, do some legwork on a potential job, or brave the risks and claim one of these rare treasures for yourself! Roll up your sleeves, unfurl those blueprints, and plan the crime of the century on your way to being crowned the one true Mastermind.

Your target options are always shifting due to your rivals' actions and the passage of time in-game, so be ready for anything when your turn comes around. It might just be worth some extra attention from the authorities if it means landing that job right before your window of opportunity closes.





Cultivate your territory and create a self-sufficient economy.



Terra Futura is an engine-building card game, in which you build your land of tomorrow. By placing and activating cards in your territory you get resources and goods. Try to be more effective than your opponents and you win the game.

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There are many ways to build your economy. You may take a quick route resulting in pollution, or you can take it slow and clean. On every turn, you choose a card from the display and place it in your territory in front of you. This will activate all the cards in a column and a row in which you placed the new card. So, think twice about where you put each card.

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Pollution is a vital part of the game. Using international transport and speeding your production may help you get needed resources faster, but it creates pollution, which may block your cards and even stop you from scoring some of your resources. But using it carefully might lead to victory.



The game ends when all players build their territory of 9 cards (3 × 3 grid). At the end, they activate their territory once more based on their secret scoring card. Players get victory points based on resources and goods they acquired during the game and they score bonus points from their secret scoring cards. Before the winner is announced they subtract points for each polluted card.





Work together with your former competitors to defend your city!



Orléans: Invasion, the first large expansion for the award-winning game Orléans, contains six scenarios designed by Reiner Stockhausen and Inka & Markus Brand. It also includes a new set of Place Tiles that can be used with or without any of the scenarios.

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In Orléans, you will recruit followers and put them to work to make use of their abilities. Farmers and Boatmen supply you with money and goods; Knights expand your scope of action and secure your mercantile expeditions; Craftsmen build trading stations and tools to facilitate work; Scholars make progress in science; Traders open up new locations for you to use your followers; and last but not least, it cannot hurt to get active in monasteries since with Monks on your side you are much less likely to fall prey to fate.

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You will always want to take more actions than possible, and there are many paths to victory. The challenge is to combine all elements as best as possible with regard to your strategy.

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The new scenarios are:

Prosperity: An extensive scenario introducing new Events and a Carpenter that all players may use to build Structures for victory points, designed by Inka and Markus Brand.

Invasion: A cooperative scenario in which players have to work together to fend off an invasion while fulfilling personal objectives, designed by Inka and Markus Brand.

The Duel: A two-player scenario in which both players race to be the first to complete a series of objectives, designed by Reiner Stockhausen.



In addition, Invasion contains three single-player challenges by Reiner Stockhausen.





It's nacho average party game!



From the creator of Happy Salmon and other hit party games, Nacho Pile is a fast-paced, high-energy game that will have chips flying back and forth as players compete for full plates and stomachs. In the game, players must push their luck to pile their macho plates high, but also cleverly snatch matching chips from other players. Don't get too risky or you will lose them all! Keep an eye out for special chips that really ramp up the heat with spicy effects.

On your turn, you'll reach into the bag and pull out a chip. Continue doing this until you either bust or stop.

- You bust if you pull out a chip that is identical to another chip you pulled out this turn. Place all chips you drew this turn into the bag and end your turn.
- If you choose to stop, place all chips you drew in front of you. Then take any chips in front of other players that have the same number! Any chips that remain in front of you by the beginning of your next turn are placed onto your plate and are safe from being stolen.

The game ends once there is only 1 chip left in the bag. Reveal that last chip. The player with the most of that value chip wins! If it's a special or wild chip, the player with the highest number of chips wins.





Cascadia Wins Spiel des Jahres 2022



Over the weekend, Cascadia took out the top prize and won the 2022 Spiel des Jahres award.



Cascadia is designed by Randy Flynn (and is one of his first published games!), with art by Beth Sobel (Wingspan, Calico), and is published by Flatout Games, AEG, & KOSMOS.

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Cascadia is a puzzly tile-laying and token-drafting game featuring the habitats and wildlife of the Pacific Northwest. In Cascadia, players take turns building their terrain and populating it with wildlife. Players must create a diverse and harmonious ecosystem - each animal species has a different spatial preference and each habitat must be placed to reduce fragmentation and create wildlife corridors.

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In their nomination statement, the Spiel judges noted that "Cascadia is a real feel-good game. You can always achieve something on your turn, even if the choices on offer aren’t exactly what you wanted. The two-part puzzle is especially successful, requiring players to find a good balance between matching landscape tiles and playing the right animal symbols."



Cascadia took out the win ahead of Scout and Top Ten. You can see the full list of nominations - as well as the winners of the Kennerspiele des Jahres ("connoisseur" games) & Kinderspiel des Jahres (children's games) - at the award announcement page.

[h3]See the full list here![/h3]