Worker Placement

Game description from the publisher:

The Empire of the Moon faces many threats. The Rift has reopened, providing passage for the creatures that have lurked in Shadow for millennia. But the danger also comes from within as the Emperor, son of the Moon, is getting old, and his formerly loyal lords are now trying to seize power. In order to do this, they make their appeal to the warriors known as ninjas, adepts of the way of Shinobi. The clans are finally prepared for war!

As a lord with a thirst for power, in Shinobi WAT-AAH! you plan to place your honorable posterior on the imperial throne. In order to do this, you will appeal to the large clans of ninjas, who will enable you to impose your military strength upon your enemies. To put it simply, your goal is to put a big WAT-AAH! in your enemies' faces!

Shinobi WAT-AAH! includes two game modes:

Grasshopper Mode lets you get started right away in the art of Shinobi with short games.
Grand Master Mode trains you over the course of three rounds, leading up to a most surprising final confrontation!

Smash Up: Monster Smash consists of four new factions for Smash Up: vampires, mad scientists, werewolves and giant ants. Tremble before the power of the ants!

Vampires gain power as they destroy your opponents' minions
Mad Scientists have released death in the form of powerful creations and can empower various minions
Werewolves have explosive power to beat down opponents
Giant Ants work as a great hive mind, spreading their power around as necessary to ensure their atomic-age victory

Smash Up: Monster Smash can be played on its own as a two-player game or combined with other Smash Up titles to allow for up to four players to compete at the same time.

Integrates with:

Smash Up

Game description from the publisher:

In the Martian mining colony of ARES-6, crime pays. Three factions vie for control of this corrupt new world and everything within it. You are a mercenary known as a "freelancer", here to profit off the conflict, to make a name for yourself – but ambition alone isn't enough. A network of seedy contacts will assist you in undertaking the dangerous missions necessary to bolster your rep. Whether it's hiring henchmen to carry out your dirty work or plotting with secret schemes, you'll let nothing stand between you and your squalid goals.

In Infamy, players find that nearly anything can be bought for the right price. Players attempt to win the game by being the first to reach 15 Infamy points or by reaching the highest reputation level in any one of three factions: the Harada Cartel, the Trust Megacorp, or the PKD Militia. The core of this auction and influence game is the "Pay to Play" mechanism in which players must sacrifice bidding power in order to place any bids at all. Spend too much time bidding against an opponent, and your currency will dwindle – but if you refuse to bid, you'll be forced to watch your opponent acquire all those things that only the criminal underworld can deliver.

Here at the end of the world, where everyone and everything has its price, there is but a single ambition that endures: Infamy.

Monolith is a fast-paced, confrontational, and exciting worker placement game that will reward players who make use of thoughtful and creative gameplay strategies. No two games will play the same as changing Fate and Rune cards are introduced to create a variable game board offering phenomenal replayability. Players will be executing exciting combinations and managing valuable resources, all while cautiously engaging other players.

To begin the game, the game board is seeded with five Starting Rune cards, six Rune cards at random, and one randomly-drawn Fate card. Once the first player is determined, they gain the powerful Primus Token and randomly determine the placement of the starting "Round 1" card, while all other players receive one Skill card or one gem.

Players then take turns placing or socketing one die at a time onto a Rune card of their choice, yielding Skill and Power cards, gems or victory points, and they can even attack other players. After all dice have been placed, the cards on the board are resolved in sequential order. As each die is removed, the effect of that placement is resolved. This sequence makes for exciting combinations and rewards strategic play.

All resources of the game are finite, so players need to play carefully in order to avoid wasting placements. The game ends after five rounds or immediately if any player reaches Victory on the Score Track.

"Kanban" — the Japanese word for billboard — is a term for the visual cues that might be used in a lean, efficient assembly line in order to expedite and smooth workflow. These signals get the workers what they need, where they need it, when they need it to create a just-in-time (JIT) production system.

The setting for the game Kanban: Automotive Revolution is an assembly line. The players are ambitious managers who are trying to impress the board of directors in order to achieve as high a position as possible in the company and secure their careers. With promotions come advantages at the factory, such as more space to store precious materials and greater prestige to accelerate your ascent. Through solid management, you must strive to shine next to your peers. You need to manage suppliers and supplies, improve automobile parts, innovate — anything to stay on the cutting edge, or getting your hands greasy on the assembly line in order to boost production. You must exercise wisdom in choosing which projects you should start, selecting only those that will give you the upper hand and shunning those that will bog you down or cause the unthinkable — failure — which would diminish you in the eyes of the board.

Over the course of the game, you persuade the board and the factory tender to help you develop and improve automobile parts. You make shrewd use of the outside suppliers and the limited factory supplies in order to appropriate needed part when the suppliers come up short. Because the factory must run at optimum efficiency, production doesn't wait for you or for mistakes.

Like the process itself, Kanban: Automotive Revolution proves to be both innovative and rewarding. Game mechanisms tightly tied to the automobile manufacturing theme include:

The factory manager is a game-driven non-player character with two modes of play ("nice" or "mean") to offer a friendly or more competitive gameplay environment.
Two independent player-influenced game timers — the factory production cycle and work week clock — provide timing tension to the game, trigger intermediate scoring phases, and factor into the game end conditions.
A simulation of the factory assembly line with spatial point-to-point movement adds an element to the game that requires optimal timing.
A design and innovation department, leveraged to manipulate the value of the various car models and component upgrades produced within the factory, drives the economy of the game.
Departmental training and certification tracks provide players a means to operate more efficiently.

If you want a seat on the board someday, you need to show that you can keep a complex machine running smoothly, efficiently, with everything happening just at the right time. Kanban: Automotive Revolution is a pure Eurogame focused on economics and resource management that puts you in the driver's seat of an entire production facility, racing for the highest level of promotion.