Medieval

Excalibur

Leave your nobility at the door in this lighthearted game of hilarious backstabbery! Use any tool to find Excalibur and keep it safe in your “virtuous” hands.

Excalibur is a party game filled with bluffing and subterfuge. Draw tiles from Avalon to find Excalibur, then use the powers of Arthurian legends to keep it safe from the other would-be kings 'round the table!

During each round, players simultaneously draw chips from the 3 regions of Avalon on the table and then reveal them one by one, resolving their effects and discarding them. The game ends when a region of Avalon has no more chips. A player must hold the Excalibur chip to win, otherwise everyone loses.

The First Tsar: Ivan the Terrible

The First Tsar: Ivan the Terrible is a thematic sequel to the popular board game Rurik: Dawn of Kiev.

In this board game you will lead the boyar families competing for power and honor in the 16th-century Tsardom of Russia. Over four decades, you’ll collect income from estates and equip troops, trade with foreigners and fortify cities, seek privileges and carry out royal assignments. Use your influence on the tsar, bribe his minions, and perhaps it is your family that will succeed in taking the Russian throne in the next century.

The game is played over four rounds, each one representing approximately a decade of Ivan the Terrible’s reign. At the beginning of each round the players send their boyars to the Kremlin chambers, choosing their actions for the current decade.

Then the players perform the chosen actions:
receive income from cities;
place boyars and warriors on the map and move them;
gain and complete construction, trade and military projects;
exchange goods;
acquire new titles and estates.
At the end of the round, the players with the most influence in the four regions receive additional rewards.

An important element of the game is the Tsar’s favor,
which is used to resolve all ties.

At the end of the game, the player with the most victory points wins.

Castle Nightingale

Castle Nightingale looms out of the night, both intimidating and full of promise. Three ninjas have slipped inside, searching for the fabled treasure hidden within...yet a vigilant samurai patrols the halls, watching and listening for intruders.

Two players face off in Castle Nightingale, with the ninja player trying to steal five relics before the samurai player can capture the three ninja thieves. The castle is comprised of an inaccessible garden surrounded by four double-sided floor boards, each showing two secret passage spaces and areas in five colors.

Each turn, the ninja and samurai each choose one of three action cards in hand, with the samurai also choosing a nightingale tile not used on the previous turn. The ninja player resolves their action, then moves across the floor, marking each space of their movement with a footstep token. If they step on a colored space matching the samurai's hidden nightingale tile, the ninja stands revealed; otherwise, next turn the ninja can treat any of their footsteps as their starting space.

If the ninja picks up a vase, the samurai can still recover it on their turn by either closing the final secret passage or landing on the ninja's space...as long as the ninja has been revealed that turn. While the ninja moves space to space, the samurai treats each colored area as a single space, allowing them to move quickly within the castle.

Each player has specialized one-shot equipment they can use at any time, starting with one item and gaining more as they play certain cards. Each player has ten cards that they'll cycle through until either the samurai has captured all three ninja or the ninja have stolen five of the six relics hidden in the eight vases.

The White Castle Duel

Following the arrival of the Portuguese in Japan, daimyos competed for control of foreign trade and technology. Himeji Castle, a symbol of feudal power, became a strategic center for clans seeking to gain influence.

In The White Castle Duel, two clans compete to exert their influence in the White Heron's court, managing resources and building engines. On each turn, you will use their lamp tokens to obtain resources and activate actions. Among the actions available, you can buy and upgrade influence cards, place clan seals on gardens and training grounds, move your courtier between circles of influence, or trade with the Portuguese. These actions will allow you to accumulate a series of icons — flags, katanas, kabutos, and origami figures — that will reward you with points, and whoever ends up with the most points wins.

Propolis

Propolis is a worker-placement, engine-building, area-control, and tableau-building game. Players take on the role of competing medieval bee colonies and take turns deploying worker bees to collect pollen, fortify their positions, and construct their hives to appease their queen and become the most glorious in the land!

As bees compete over the realm's floral landscapes, they will be collecting pollen to create the propolis they need to build their hives. Attaining dominance in different realms provides additional glory and building materials. As hives expand, new structures provide additional resources, new scoring opportunities, and the prerequisites to construct a glorious palace for the queen. The player who dominates the realm and builds the most prestigious home wins.