Political Games

All elections are turning points, but the presidential election of 1960 holds a special place in American history. The 1950s had been a period of unparalleled economic growth and US global power. Richard Nixon served as President Eisenhower's Vice President through most of the period. Nixon's humble origins gave him a common touch that appealed to the small town, idyllic America encompassed by the spirit of the 1950s. John F. Kennedy, was Nixon's mirror image: charming, Harvard educated and the scion of an American political dynasty. Kennedy challenged Americans to confront the uncertainties and tumult that were already emerging in 1960. He set his vision not in the past, but on new frontiers.

In 1960: The Making of the President, you take on the role of one of these great protagonists vying to lead America through an era of turbulent change. The candidates must contend with all the great issues of the day, from the Cold War to civil rights to voters' pocket books. This is an election that will turn on positioning and momentum. The contest is fought on an electoral map of the United States as it stood in 1960. Using a card-driven game system, all the major events which shaped the campaign are represented: Nixon's lazy shave, President Eisenhower's late endorsement, and the 'Catholic question' are all specific event cards. The famous televised debates are also an important component of gameplay.

Alexander moves with army back and forth across Asia Minor, conquering the land as he passes. To bring peace to these newly conquered lands and to reward his generals, he gives them control of the new lands. The generals establish administration over the lands and levy taxes on the people living there. Naturally, each general tries to acquire the most productive lands for himself. With more productive lands, the general can levy higher taxes, show his worth to Alexander, and win the game!

In Granada, one of the most impressive building projects of the Middle Ages has begun: the construction of Alhambra. A palace, fortress, and a small city -- all-in-one -- Alhambra is made up of the world's most beautiful gardens, pavilions, chambers and towers.

The most prominent builders in all of Europe and Arabia want to demonstrate their skills. Employ the most talented teams of builders to construct your Alhambra. Hire stonemasons from the north and gardeners from the south, who all want a fair wage and insist on being paid with their native currency. With their help, towers can be constructed, gardens designed, pavilions and mezzanines erected, and manors and royal chambers built. Compete against your opponents to build the greatest and most impressive Alhambra.

Alhambra: Calif's Treasure Chamber, the fourth Expansion to "Alhambra"

Together with the three other extensions, you now have a choice of 16 different modules. The new modules are:

This expansion contains four different modules, which can be combined individually or all together with the basic game. Diamonds adds diamond cards to the game, which can be used to buy anything -- but can't be combined with any other currency. Characters has character cards which are auctioned off when revealed and which have a variety of powers. Camps adds camps which are placed outside the city walls and which score points for the adjacent line of buildings inside the city. City Gates contains city gates which can be placed in your city to allow a path to go through an internal wall to make certain illegal placements legal.

The city walls of the Alhambra have been built – now the gardens are starting to bloom.

The players lay gardens against the picturesque background of palaces, chambers and arcades.

Place your trees skilfully so that you surround the most valuable buildings and win the most points.

But take care! With every turn, you are planting your opponent´s trees as well as your own.

The THIEVES allow players to take cash cards of a certain currency from the display when it is not their turn. Afterwards, however, the thief is discarded.

The FLYING TRADER awakens the palace of Alhambra to life and draws new inhabitants into the palace building. These inhabitants bring additional points when scoring, but not each inhabitant is willing to enter every palace.

The WALLS enable the players to extend the building of their city walls or close holes in already built walls. In addition, players may use wood for speedy wall building, when they choose.

MAKING CHANGE brings small coins in the game. When a player overpays for building, he player gets change back in the smaller coins, which he may use when paying for purchases later in the game.

This expansion contains four different modules, which can be combined individually or all together with the basic game. The Favor of the Vizier allows players to take a turn out of order. The Exchange Office contains cards which allow buildings to be purchased using 2 different currencies. The Bonus Cards include secret tiles which can be revealed to count as an additional building of the type shown. The Building Huts has extra tiles which can be built as an additional action choice (in addition to buying and placing buildings, rearranging one's Alhambra, and taking money) and which count as 0-3 of a given building type, depending on adjacent tiles.

The whole of Egypt is in uproar – Akhnaton, who has just acceded to the throne, wants to ban the old deity Amon from the temples of the land. Aton is to be worshipped as the new God.

But the priests of the land are not willing to give up their temples without resistance so the 4 largest temples are fiercely disputed.

The players are adversaries and fight out this battle of the Gods between them. Both have the same starting position, but who will be able to make better use of his abilities and help his God to victory?

In the 16th century Jakob Fugger built an impressive trading empire centered in Augsburg. He earned so much money, that he was able to loan large amounts to royals in need of cash. As the royals were often unable to repay the loans, Jakob was more than willing to accept the special privileges the could offer instead - privileges that allowed him to become even richer and more powerful!

Players take on the role of Jakob and compete to earn the most prestige by loaning money for privilege.

1289. To strengthen the borders of the Kingdom of France, King Philip the Fair decided to have a new castle built. For the time being, Caylus is but a humble village, but soon, workers and craftsmen will be flocking by the cartload, attracted by the great prospects. Around the building site, a city is slowly rising up…

The players embody master builders. By building the King’s castle and developing the city around it, they earn prestige points and gain the King’s favor. When the castle is finished, the player who has earned the most prestige wins the game.

This is the German Language version of the game, rules are supplied in English.

As the streets and blocks of a medieval city are built up with the various guilds? buildings, players will want to speculate on the more successful guilds, and also invest in their buildings themselves.

The game is set in late pre-history, a time of transition - when our distant ancestors, who had struggled and barely survived for ages in very small nomadic groups, began to feel their lives would be more secure and less arduous if they formed larger groups. This led to the formation of the first villages. The players compete to be involved in the most and most valuable villages.

Confucius is set in imperial China during the Ming dynasty, which lasted from the mid 14th to the mid 17th century. It was a period of restoration and reconstruction after the peasant rebellions that had overthrown the previous Mongol rulers of China. The government was re-established by the Emperor Hongwu under a new legal code stressing family relations and based on Confucian ideas. Using a vast standing army, areas of China under Mongol control and many adjoining territories were brought into the Empire through military conquest. The Empire also expanded its knowledge of the world through Zheng He’s great oceanic voyages that may have reached as far as the Americas.

In Confucius each player represents a Chinese family trying to extend its power in the government, the army and the navy through the subtle application of political and social influence, rather than through direct conflict. Money, the manipulation of government officials and the strategic giving of gifts so that rivals are obliged to help your family; these will be your weapons.

Cuba prior to the revolution: Under turbulent circumstances, the villages of the island strive for independent wealth and influence.Who can buy and sell his products and goods on the domestic market profitably or take in the most on the trading ships?Who can send the right delegate to parliament in order to influence the government legislative process, or erect distilleries, hotels and banks at the right moment to the benefit of his village?Whoever has accumulated the most victory points at the end of the game, wins. Players earn victory points by shipping merchandise from the harbor, but also by erecting and using buildings, and by abiding by the law.

The initiates have waited for this day for centuries, and now that the grail appeared, they are well prepared. Following an ancient plan, the grail shall be brought to its designated place. But do the other initiates have the same goal as you? Whom can you trust?

Assassins, Templars, Rosicrucians and Illuminates start the hunt for the grail. The pawns on the gameboard belong to nobody, each player may move each of them. Throughout the game, however, each player may try to gain control over the pawns by secretly exerting influence on them. The winner of the game is not the one who brings home the grail, but the one who controls the bearer of the grail; in other words: The one who proves to have the highest influence ...

Clockwise, the players move one of the pawns on the gameboard, or invest hidden influence points. Displeasing moves by other players may be rejected if you reveal to have a higher influence on that pawn than the player who made the move. Furthermore, displeasing pawns can be removed from the game by uncovering them. But in order to do so, you have to control the pawn which blows the other pawn's cover, and the amount of influence you can spend during the game is limited.

Die Macher is a game about 7 sequential regional elections. As a player, you are the leader of a major political party with certain policies that make up your political platform but you will have to decide which regions to focus on as you can't win them all. Changing your platform may help to gain votes in one region but likely cause you to lose votes in another. As each election date approaches, more information is revealed from the polls which show how your party is doing in each region and you must react accordingly. The most important tool for all this is money, but cash is very limited and an election campaign is very expensive. Be careful not to spend all your money on one election as you will not have enough to outbid your opponents on the results of a public opinion poll that could be devastating to your campaign!

Victory points are earned by winning regional elections, having control over the media, having a strong party membership and winning the national election. The player with the most victory points wins.

Venice flourished in the late middle ages as a merchant center. The old families competed for political power and influence in this city state. Those that move swiftly and cleverly may attain the highest office in Venice, the office of the Doge.

The king shall return...

But before he does, the realm falls into anarchy and chaos. The lords of the kingdom struggle to improve their place and standing. New borders are drawn, and expanded through strength of arms and subtle maneuver. Each duke seeks to establish a claim over the most valuable parts of the kingdom before the king finally returns... In the dark of the Middle Ages, control of the land was the key to wealth and power. Can you control enough territory to become the most prestigious duke before the king’s return?

Review the rules for this game in the interactive tutorial at Professor Easy

The players are the Grandes in old Spain. Each wants to increase his influence at the court and in the regions. Each turn, the players choose from 5 actions, different on each turn. But first choice goes to the player who plays the highest priority card and you have only 13 for the game. Choose your actions and priorities wisely to become the most powerful Grande and win the game!

This Decennial version also contains the expansions previously known as Intrigue & the King, Grand Inquisitor & the Colonies, and Grandissimo.

In Intrigue & the King, each player has 18 or 28 cards that replace the action cards from the basic game. Before the game begins, each player chooses 13 cards to be his action/priority deck for the game. The players use these cards instead of the action a nd priority cards in determining turn order and special actions. Grand Inquisitor & the Colonies adds four new regions, the Grand Inquisitor, and new action cards to support these additions. The new action cards are in two new stack, giving players seven options on each turn instead of the five from the basic game. By combining the two, you can play The King & the Colonies. In this game, you use the action/priority cards from Intrigue & the King, and the new regions, the Grand Inquisitor, and the new action cards supporting them from Grand Inquisitor & the Colonies.

Grandissimo adds a ship, jail, Portugal, the Grand Inquisitor, the Queen, the Jester, and new action cards in two new stacks to support these additions.

Between the glories of Rome and the rise of national states stood an age in which each land was defined by the virtue and failings of its monarch. Empires of the Middle Ages is a multi-player game of diplomacy in which up to six may act as dynasts and attempt to build their historic kingdoms into vast empires. Empires of the Middle Ages is played on a map of medieval Europe on which the players record the power of their kingdoms. Playing cards resolve the basic actions of the game, while random event cards add period flavor, such as plagues, crusades and heresy. Six scenarios are included, from a solitaire game to a grand scenario covering the entire Middle Ages.

"In the year 1265 A.D., England's most powerful Barons clashed over the precious lands of the manor of Evesham. The outcome of this battle depends on your strategy. Will you make use of the charm of your Milady, attack with the First Knight, pay for Mercnaries? No one knows what moves you will make. But, be careful of the fog and keep away from the plague. Play your shillings and strike the enemy where he least expects it. But if you become the strongest Baron, King Henry III will also join the struggle, and winning will be even harder."

Players play cards to move their units around the board, attempting to fight each other and capture key cities, while avoiding the plague.

Contents: 4 map boards, 80 cards, 62 thick tokens, VP chart.

Flanders in 1302 – the country has just gained its independence with the help of the guilds when these start fighting amongst themselves to gain power in the most important towns of the region.

No matter whether dyers, fullers, weavers or clothcutters, they all want to make their influence felt. Gain supremacy in Ypres, Bruges, Ghent, Leuven, and even in neighbouring Liège and Utrecht with the help of the Church and the neutral guild of the sword-smiths.

"You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun." -Al Capone

Throughout the 1920's and 1930's, rival gangsters compete in a life or death struggle for control of the gleaming city on the shores of Lake Michigan. Each district is hotly contested, because in the end there can be only one "King of Chicago!"

You play a mob boss. You compete with your fellow bosses. Through careful placement of your "boys," you control important locations throughout the city. But time is limited! Only three days remain for you to exert influence in the neighborhoods. Use these days wisely, because the gangster with the most influence at the end is proclaimed the boss of bosses!

Beware! Your opponents seek the same raw glory. Take care, because if a gangster is invited down to the river for breakfast, he might not be around for supper!

Gather up your boys, hop in the sedan, and see if you have the skill, the cunning, and the ruthlessness to become Chicago's top Gangster!