Tabletopia News

In Gùgōng, players take on the role of powerful Chinese families trying to gain influence and power by exchanging gifts with Officials. The gift cards you offer as a player have to be of a higher value than the one you receive, forcing you to make strategic choices regarding which actions you want to take each turn. You will travel around China, sail down the Grand Canal, purchase precious jade, help construct the Great Wall, secure advantages through decrees, influence the game through intrigue, and ultimately, receive an audience with the emperor.



Gùgōng: Pànjūn is an expansion for the critically acclaimed Gùgōng. The 4 different modules can be combined however players wish to, guaranteeing a lot of variety and replayability. The 4 modules are:

• The Summer Palace: Players travel to the Summer Palace of the Emperor, where they can obtain extra servants, Jade, and even the services of the mysterious Court Ladies… Players will have to score majorities in order to obtain these bonuses, but will also be able to manipulate the results by exchanging specific Gifts with the officials, as word has it the Emperor is collecting a very particular type of Gift.
  
• The Peasants Revolt: During the Ming Dynasty, peasants revolts were common. Although the Ming Dynasty itself came to power through a peasant revolt, this did not mean that the rulers had any more empathy for the peasants than the previous rulers. Players will gain a lot of support from the peasants in this expansion, but if pushed too far, players will have to work together to avoid their wrath.
  

• The Palace Stairs: Moving your Envoy towards the Emperor will not be without consequences with this expansion module. Players will be able to choose a longer or shorter path leading towards the Palace of Heavenly Purity. The shorter path will require some achievements, the long path will earn players rewards at first, but when they get close to the Palace, they will have to pay certain taxes or risk seeing their Envoy take steps back.
  
• Extra Decrees and Gift Cards: Spice up your game with new Decrees and special kinds of Gift Cards, like the lamp and jade knives, which will add even more variety to your game of Gùgōng!
  

Additionally, solo mode has now been added to the base game!

In Ghosts players have a hand of five ghost cards (with values from 1 to 3 in six suits), and on a turn you play a card, then draw a card. Keep a running a tally of the sum of cards played.

If you play a card of the same suit as the topmost played card, you keep the sum the same and reverse the order of play. You cannot bring the sum above 7, and if you cannot play or choose not to play, remove all the played cards, take a ghost marker, then play a card to start a new pile.



When all the cards have been played, the round ends; shuffle the cards and deal a new hand of five cards to each player. If a player collects no ghosts in either the second or third round, they discard three ghost markers from their collection.

Whoever has the fewest ghost markers at the end of three rounds wins.

The middle of the 17th century was a period of great changes; with the advent of the scientific method came what we now call the Scientific Revolution. Many great scientists, with their theories and ideas, changed and shaped our perception of the universe: Galileo Galilei, Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon and, above all, Sir Isaac Newton.

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In Newton, the players take the role of a young scientist who wants to become one of the great geniuses of this era. To reach their ultimate goal, they travel around Europe, visit universities and cities, study to discover new theories, build new tools and work to earn money.

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The game is played over six rounds. Each round, every player plays five cards from their hand, and each played card allows the player to perform one of the many actions of the game. An action can have a variety of effects, which depend on the symbols on the board. At the end of the round, a player can take back all the cards except for one. One card has to remain on the board, which means that you give up one possibility of doing that action, but also that that very action will be carried out with greater strength. Fortunately, you can acquire new cards with additional powers to perform more actions.



After six rounds, you calculate your final score, and the player with the most VP wins.

In Roll Player: Fiends & Familiars, players can add more depth to their hero by adding a familiar to their character. These creatures add more options during character creation and help each player explore the mechanics of the game in new and different ways.

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Fiends distract the players and provide new obstacles along the path of creation.

A brand new set of Monsters give the players variety to the end of the game, while new Minions are added to the Minion deck that provide new and different goals for the players to reach.

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New classes and Market cards provide even more variety to each game of Roll Player.

Again, players earn Reputation Stars by constructing the perfect character, but can explore new strategies and options as they ready their familiar while they sidestep the pesky fiends along the way.

Seas of Havoc is a naval skirmish game for 1-5 players where you captain a ship and engage in battle through the use of a deck of cards that dictate your ship’s movement and cannon fire. Each player begins with a unique deck of movement options defined by the ship they’ve chosen and special abilities dictated by the captain they’ve selected to command it. Players then compete to gain the most Infamy by recovering shipwrecks and battling it out on the high seas.

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Take the role of a ship’s captain, firing upon your opponents as you sail among the Archipelago of Havoc’s isles.

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Ship movement, cannon fire and other abilities are each represented as cards in a deck unique to each player and that will be built up over the course of the game.



Seas of Havoc was originally conceived in 2013 (as Sloops) before garnering recognition at the Cardboard Edison Awards and winning the Canadian Game Design Award in 2016.