Tabletopia News

Time is broken and shattered. The seasons all exist at once, and day and night have no real cycle — they rotate at the whim of the forest. This enchanted land has been driven into chaos and it's up to you, the cunning mystics of the forest, to tame extraordinary woodland creatures and use your magic to bring back balance.



In Brew, players must choose how to use element dice, either to take back control of as many seasons as possible in an area-control game or to procure goods at the local village in a worker-placement game. Recruiting woodland creatures and brewing potions can help offset chance die-rolls or create an engine to help you tame the lands.



[h2]As part of the Gen Con Spring Showcase, the staff from Pandasaurus Games are running Learn & Play events March 1-7th.[/h2]



To save your seat in an event, join their Discord server and leave a message in the #brew channel. All times in Eastern Time:

Monday, March 1 through Friday, March 5
5p-7p
7p-9p

Saturday, March 6 through Sunday, March 7
1p-3p
3p-5p
5p-7p
7p-9p

Enter the futuristic universe of Red Rising, based on the book series – specifically, the first trilogy – by Pierce Brown featuring a dystopian society divided into 14 castes. You represent a house attempting to rise to power as you piece together an assortment of followers (your hand of cards). Will you break the chains of the Society or embrace the dominance of the Golds?

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Red Rising is a hand-management, combo-building game for 1-6 players (45-60 minute playing time). You start with a hand of 5 cards, and on your turn you will deploy 1 of those cards to a location on the board, activating that card’s deploy benefit. You will then gain the top card from another location (face up) or the deck (face down), gaining that locations benefit and adding the card to your hand as you enhance your end-game point total. If at any point you’re really happy with your hand, you can instead use your turn to reveal a card from the top of the deck and place it on a location to gain that location’s benefit.

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If you enjoy Fantasy Realms (combo-building), Libertalia (hand management), and Gugong (removing and gaining cards), we think you’ll enjoy Red Rising.

[h2]This game is free to play until March 6th, at which time it will become Premium.[/h2]

How do you make an ecosystem flourish with just enough of every life form in the chain to supply you with dinosaurs to dominate the lands? Resources are scarce, animals can go extinct in an area, and everyone must eat to survive — so moves must be cunning. Life hangs in the balance...

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In Gods Love Dinosaurs, a cheeky, wild, and timeless take on the scientific tale as old as life itself, you are a god who has been tasked with designing an ecosystem with a sustainable food chain of predator and prey animals. But you just love dinosaurs, so all you really want to do is to make as many of them as possible!

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Each turn, you'll add one tile to your ecosystem, which will add new animals and give them room to grow. Every so often, your dinosaurs will tromp around your ecosystem eating all the animals. The more they eat, the more eggs they lay — and the more points you score! Just be careful not to overeat, or there won't be enough food to keep your dinosaurs alive the next time.

Just beyond the towering vines lies an ancient pathway into the unknown. Push back the thorn-riddled stocks to discover a clandestine garden, blooming with mysterious vigor. Vivid colors mark the way to intricate tiles zigging and zagging through the green. Within the flowers lies the key to greater meaning. An explanation for all things unknown...

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In Umbra Via, players compete to control and complete the most cunning paths. Reach into your bag to select wooden flowers, then place them on your secret board in the order of the paths you want most. But when players reveal their choices, things get delightfully tricky. Experience the magic of Umbra Via and find out why this award-winning design belongs on any table.

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In more detail, at the start of each round four tiles are revealed from the deck, with each tile showing part of a path, e.g., a straight line, a curve, or a T. Players secretly draw three cubes from their bag and place them on spaces on their personal board corresponding to these tiles. They all reveal their choices, move their cubes to the chosen tiles, then secretly place three more cubes, then move those cubes to the tiles. Whichever tile ends up with the fewest cubes on it is placed in the 4x4 grid first, maintaining the same orientation, by the player who bid the most cubes on that tile. (Some cubes in your bag are worth two cubes during the bidding phase, but are then removed from the tile and returned to your bag prior to placement.) Then the next tile is placed on the grid, and so on.



When you place a tile, if all the "open" ends of that path are cut off — whether by the edge of the board or other tiles — you count how many cubes each player has on the path. The player with the most placed cubes retrieves "double-bidding" cubes from the reserve equal to the number of tiles in the path, adding these cubes and all other cubes to their bag. The player with the secondmost cubes on the path retrieves half this many "double-bidding" cubes, and so on. After removing and returning all the cubes on this path, remove the tiles from the grid, placing them in a discard pile.

As soon as a player has retrieved all of their "double-bidding" cubes from the reserve, they win!

Decades ago, the four influential steam guilds Power & Torsion, Cogwheel Trust, Crystal & Ore and Future Horizon started to exploit the planet Tharos.

Now it is necessary to open up a new region! In doing so, the bustling guilds both have an eye on the other guilds and the dreaded Circumdate Caelo Trust, which also lays claim to this region and does not shy away from using military means.

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Players assume control over a steam guild and explore the newly opened region for natural resources, gaining crystal and ore samples, and building new mines to exploit the land. The government of Tharos awards different medals for the players’ services, which increase the influence of their steam guilds.



Tharos is a “Dice-Bag-Building” game, where dice represent actions and their respective strengths. The dice are used on the player boards and for activation and usage of the player cards.