booyakajuice

Arkwright: The Card Game

2021-11-30T11:40:41-05:00

Vendor: Eagle-Gryphon Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 58.49

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	Eagle-Gryphon Games
Players	1-4
Playing Time	60-100 mins
Suggested Age	12 and up
Additional Info	300664/arkwright-card-game http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/300664/arkwright-card-game/forums/63

In the late 18th century, the Industrial Revolution starts. The first factories were founded by businessmen like Richard Arkwright, who ran the first factory for spinning wool with machines like the "Spinning Jenny" and the water frame.

In "Arkwright: The Card Game", you run a business and will employ workers in your different factories to produce and sell goods. The more workers, the more goods that can be sold — but be prepared for crises and some stiff competition.

The game is played over three decades (1770/1780/1790), split up into four rounds per decade. On your turn, you play new cards from your hand to open factories and upgrade existing ones, select improvements, improve factory quality, build machines, and employ new workers. You can also pay money to improve your shareholdings, and take out loans if you require more money for production costs. After the actions phase, you can improve your abilities by advancing your development markers on your player board, or take one of the available development cards.

Then, the production phase starts, where every player who owns a factory of the current good produces those goods. The market fluctuates with the general demand, so the demand may be lower than the value of your current good, lowering your profit. Workers must be paid, and machines need regular maintenance, so you can possibly lose money instead of turning a profit. Selling enough of one good improves your share value, and there are bonuses for having the highest appeal. Lastly, if you can’t sell your goods to the home market, you can ship them overseas or store them for future rounds.

After the final round of the last decade, the game ends. Players then sell all goods left in their storehouses, reduce the number of shares they hold by the number of loans they took, and reduce their share value based on their personal shipping track. Each player then multiplies the number of their shares by their share value to determine their end score. The player with the highest end score wins the game.

—description from the publisher

Mountain Goats, Sequoia and GPS Expansion Packs

2021-04-20T02:18:18-04:00

Vendor: BoardGameTables.com
Type: Board Games
Price: 23.95

Designers	Chad DeShon Hartmut Kommerell Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	BoardGameTables.com
Players	2-7
Playing Time	10-20 mins
Expansion For	Mountain Goats Sequoia GPS
Additional Info	326972/10-minute-games-expansions http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/326972/10-minute-games-expansions/forums/63

Up the fun on the three small games by adding the expansion pack which increases player counts and adds special variables.

The Mountain Goat expansion pack adds more components for a fifth player and "The Big Mountain" expansion.

The Sequoia expansion pack adds more components for a sixth player and the "Negative Point Values" expansion.

The GPS expansion pack adds three specialty satellites for each player and components for a sixth and seventh player.

Mountain Goats

2021-04-20T02:09:29-04:00

Vendor: BoardGameTables.com
Type: Board Games
Price: 26.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	BoardGameTables.com
Players	2-4
Playing Time	10 mins
Suggested Age	6 and up
Expansions	Mountain Goats, Sequoia and GPS Expansion Packs Mountain Goats: Expansion Pack
Additional Info	305985/mountain-goats http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/305985/mountain-goats/forums/63

In Mountain Goats you work to move your goats to the top of 6 different mountains where they can score points as long as they stay there. You can share spaces with other goats on the way up, but there is only room for one goat at the top of each mountain. If someone else's goat moves to the mountain top, they will kick you off and you'll have to start your trek over.

It's a game about timing. You need to not just get to the top of the mountain, but get there when no one else is in position to knock you off.

It's a game about keeping your eye on your opponents. Maximizing your score, but also making sure you don't let anyone else score too much.

There is the fun chance to knock each other off the mountain. But it doesn't feel too mean because you can only knock back goats that are in a scoring position, and it isn't a huge setback. It is just a normal part of the cycle of the game.

—description from the publisher

Novgorod (Import)

2020-11-02T21:27:03-05:00

Vendor: OSTIA Spiele
Type: Board Games
Price: 29.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	OSTIA Spiele
Players	2-4
Playing Time	40-50 mins
Suggested Age	10 and up
Additional Info	298442/novgorod http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/298442/novgorod/forums/63

Note: This game includes English and German.

In Novgorod, players build kontors (trading offices) in Hanseatic cities to ship goods and manufacture luxury products. These are necessary to fulfill missions that give you victory points and allow you to step forward on your career card.

Balancing between building enough (but not too many) kontors, improving your ship, and figuring out the ideal ratio between earning money and collecting victory points is crucial.

—description from the publisher

Gentes: Deluxified Edition

2020-01-03T11:11:07-05:00

Vendor: Tasty Minstrel Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 114.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	Tasty Minstrel Games
Players	1-4
Playtime	75-120 mins
Suggested Age	14 and up
Additional Info	249703/gentes-deluxified-edition http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/249703/gentes-deluxified-edition/forums/63

TMG Deluxified version of Gentes - Kickstarter only

Gentes is an interesting civilization game with an innovative timing mechanism.

"Gentes" is the Latin plural word for greater groups of human beings (e.g., tribes, nations, people; singular: "gens"). In this game, players take the role of an ancient people who are attempting to develop by building monuments and colonizing or founding new cities in the Mediterranean sea.

The game is played in six rounds, each consisting of two phases: action phase, and tidying up. There are three eras — rounds 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 — with new monument cards entering the game at the beginning of rounds 1, 3 and 5. Each player has a personal player mat with a time track for action markers and sand timer markers. In the action phase of a round, the players take their turns in clockwise order, conducting one action per turn. Each action requires an action marker from the main board that is placed on the time track. Depending on the information on the action marker, you have to also pay some money or take sand timers that are placed on the time track. When you have no free spaces on your time track, you must pass for the remainder of the round. Therefore, the number of actions per player in a single round may vary significantly if, for example, you choose double sand timers instead of two single ones or take action markers that require more money but fewer sand timers. Single sand timers are dropped in the tidying up phase, while double sand timers are flipped to become single sand timer markers and stay for another round. The actions are:

Buy new cards from the common display
Build monuments (playing cards from your hand to your personal display for victory points and new options)
Train/Educate your people
Build/found cities
Take money
To play a card, you must meet the requirements printed on that card, such as having specific persons on your personal board (e.g., two priests and four soldiers). These requirements are why training — i.e., getting specific people — is important, but that is not that easy because there are six different types of people — three on the left and three on the right side of your personal player board — and you have only six spaces in total for the two types in the same line. If you have three merchants, for example, you move your marker for counting merchants three spaces toward the side of the soldiers and thus you have only three spaces left for soldiers. By educating a fourth soldier and moving your soldier marker forward to its fourth space, you automatically lose one merchant because that marker is pushed back to its second space.

It is crucial to generate additional actions by using the specific functions of monuments in your display and cities you have built. Cities are expensive, but they create benefits at the end of each round or provide new options for taking an action without acquiring an action marker, gaining only a sand timer marker instead.

Try to have a steady income to avoid wasting actions to take money. Pay attention to the display of common cards, which is new in every single game, because the monument cards are shuffled randomly within the decks of eras I, II and III. Collect identical achievement symbols on the cards to benefit from the increasing victory points for a series of symbols. Build cities to enlarge your options!

The differences between the Deluxified and regular edition:

Includes "New Cities" Expansion
A foil stamped box
6 oversized meeples
24 normal sized meeples
89 metal coins
28 wood action tokens
21 wood lock tokens
60 wood hourglass tokens
4 dual layered player boards
4 custom shaped score tokens
folded space custom insert
1 drawstring bag
1 upgraded round token

Tee oder Kaffee (Import)

2019-09-18T12:15:23-04:00

Vendor: OSTIA Spiele
Type: Board Games
Price: 17.95

Designer	Heike Risthaus Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	OSTIA Spiele
Players	2-4
Playtime	15-20 mins
Suggested Age	8 and up
Additional Info	283353/tee-oder-kaffee http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/283353/tee-oder-kaffee/forums/63

Note: This game is in English

Which do you prefer? Tea or coffee?

In the small card game Tee oder Kaffee, players decide in turn whether they:

Play a set of cards for breakfast or tea time like "coffee + cake" or "tea + bagel + sausage + egg" to gain victory points; when empty-handed, the player receives a 3-point bonus.
Draw an additional card
Trade 1-3 cards with the pile
Use extra actions of cards like drawing from the pile and distributing cards to the other players, or choosing a card from the discard pile.

The game ends when one player has at least 40 points and one player gets rid of their hand cards after this happens (with this latter player receives a 10-point bonus). Each player may play a last set out of their hand. Whoever then has the most victory points wins.

The nice little twist between "play low-point combinations to get the bonus for 0 cards in hand" versus "collect more and more cards to have a maximum 10-point combination of four matching cards" combined with a short playing time makes the game interesting again and again.

—description from publisher

Arkwright: Noblesse Oblige (German Import)

2018-02-08T00:43:22-05:00

Vendor: Spielworxx
Type: Board Games
Price: 7.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	Spielworxx
Players	2-4
Playtime	120-240 mins
Suggested Age	12 and up
Expansion For	Arkwright
Additional Info	213288/arkwright-noblesse-oblige http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/213288/arkwright-noblesse-oblige/forums/63

Note: This game is in both English/German.

Contained in Brettspiel Adventskalender 2016 for Day 13.

Includes 1 luxury goods market mat and 4 purveyor development tiles (1 per type of good)

Additional Rules:
At the beginning of the a round, one good cube is placed on each space in the luxury goods market of the current and all previous technology levels (no luxury good of food in stage 1)

In the production and sale phase, just before the domestic selling step, players will have the opportunity to sell in the luxury goods market for the active goods.

Player with the highest reputation goes first. The sale is voluntary. Those who do not sell when it is their turn must pass for the remainder of this step completely and places the machine token from their price track back into the supply

Riga: Die Vitalienbrüder

2017-11-03T23:46:19-04:00

Vendor: OSTIA Spiele
Type: Board Games
Price: 9.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	OSTIA Spiele
Players	2-4
Playtime	30-50 mins
Suggested Age	10 and up
Expansion For	Riga
Additional Info	230794/riga-die-vitalienbruder http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/230794/riga-die-vitalienbruder/forums/63

Victual Brotherhood is threatening the Baltic Sea!

Nine pirate ships enter the game of Riga in the Die Vitalienbrüder expansion and make it more expensive to build some of the building cards. You have to pay more every time you take a building with a pirate ship, but you gain additional victory points in the game end scoring for each ship you defeat. The problem is that pirates eliminate figures (knight, merchant) on your cards, too!

Riga: Die Vitalienbrüder can used in games with up to six players.

Riga: Die Bürgermeister

2017-11-03T23:46:10-04:00

Vendor: OSTIA Spiele
Type: Board Games
Price: 9.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	OSTIA Spiele
Players	2-4
Playtime	30-50 mins
Suggested Age	10 and up
Expansion For	Riga
Additional Info	230793/riga-die-burgermeister http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/230793/riga-die-burgermeister/forums/63

Riga: Die Bürgermeister includes four small boards and 16 tokens, four per player color. The players try to become most popular in the neighboring towns to gain additional victory points. For each building, you move your token on the board for the according town forward 1 space and additionally 1 space for each ducat you pay more than necessary. Every five spaces on the board of a town brings you 1 victory point, and the player having moved forward the most spaces becomes the mayor (Bürgermeister) and gains 2 more points.

The Die Bürgermeister expansion for Riga allows for games with up to six players.

Riga (Import)

2017-11-03T23:45:57-04:00

Vendor: OSTIA Spiele
Type: Board Games
Price: 27.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	OSTIA Spiele
Players	2-4
Playtime	30-50 mins
Suggested Age	10 and up
Expansions	Riga: Die Bürgermeister Riga: Die Vitalienbrüder
Additional Info	220861/riga http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/220861/riga/forums/63

Note: This game includes English and German.

Take and trade commodities in the Baltic Sea to acquire more power than your opponents in the main cities of the 13th century!

At the beginning of each round in Riga, commodity cards are randomly grouped into packages with a minimum base value. Their values vary from 2 to 5. Buildings (cards) are placed on the table, too.

Each player takes two turns per round, the first in clockwise order, the second one counterclockwise. Your turn starts with choosing a group of commodity cards OR one building from the display in the middle of the table. Then you may build up to three buildings from your hand. To build, you must pay the costs by discarding your commodities. Depending on where you build (with the color of the building indicating the city), your commodities have a different value. Usually the commodity has a base value, but in every city, one commodity is not wanted at all and another one is more expensive. In Gdansk, for example, you cannot pay with grain, but glass has a value +2. The buildings show victory points and persons. They also have different features to help you get more commodities, create more victory points, or build more easily by giving money per merchant on your cards.

Riga continues the series of small games from Ostia in the Baltic Sea following Visby and Tallinn.

Gentes (Standard Edition)

2017-08-15T01:16:02-04:00

Vendor: Tasty Minstrel Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 56.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	Tasty Minstrel Games
Players	2-4
Playtime	90 mins
Suggested Age	12 and up
Additional Info	217780/gentes http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/217780/gentes/forums/63

Gentes is an interesting civilization game with an innovative timing mechanism.

"Gentes" is the Latin plural word for greater groups of human beings (e.g., tribes, nations, people; singular: "gens"). In this game, players take the role of an ancient people who are attempting to develop by building monuments and colonizing or founding new cities in the Mediterranean sea.

The game is played in six rounds, each consisting of two phases: action phase, and tidying up. There are three eras — rounds 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 — with new monument cards entering the game at the beginning of rounds 1, 3 and 5. Each player has a personal player mat with a time track for action markers and sand timer markers. In the action phase of a round, the players take their turns in clockwise order, conducting one action per turn. Each action requires an action marker from the main board that is placed on the time track. Depending on the information on the action marker, you have to also pay some money or take sand timers that are placed on the time track. When you have no free spaces on your time track, you must pass for the remainder of the round. Therefore, the number of actions per player in a single round may vary significantly if, for example, you choose double sand timers instead of two single ones or take action markers that require more money but fewer sand timers. Single sand timers are dropped in the tidying up phase, while double sand timers are flipped to become single sand timer markers and stay for another round. The actions are:

Buy new cards from the common display
Build monuments (playing cards from your hand to your personal display for victory points and new options)
Train/Educate your people
Build/found cities
Take money

To play a card, you must meet the requirements printed on that card, such as having specific persons on your personal board (e.g., two priests and four soldiers). These requirements are why training — i.e., getting specific people — is important, but that is not that easy because there are six different types of people — three on the left and three on the right side of your personal player board — and you have only six spaces in total for the two types in the same line. If you have three merchants, for example, you move your marker for counting merchants three spaces toward the side of the soldiers and thus you have only three spaces left for soldiers. By educating a fourth soldier and moving your soldier marker forward to its fourth space, you automatically lose one merchant because that marker is pushed back to its second space.

It is crucial to generate additional actions by using the specific functions of monuments in your display and cities you have built. Cities are expensive, but they create benefits at the end of each round or provide new options for taking an action without acquiring an action marker, gaining only a sand timer marker instead.

Try to have a steady income to avoid wasting actions to take money. Pay attention to the display of common cards, which is new in every single game, because the monument cards are shuffled randomly within the decks of eras I, II and III. Collect identical achievement symbols on the cards to benefit from the increasing victory points for a series of symbols. Build cities to enlarge your options!

Santo Domingo

2017-04-24T00:41:23-04:00

Vendor: Pegasus Spiele
Type: Board Games
Price: 19.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	Pegasus Spiele
Players	2-6
Playtime	20-30 mins
Suggested Age	8 and up
Additional Info	218995/santo-domingo http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/218995/santo-domingo/forums/63

Description from the publisher:

In Santo Domingo, all players have the same set of eight action cards. Each round, they choose one or two (depending on the number of players), reveal them at the same time, then execute the actions in a fixed order. This allows the players to collect goods, exchange them for victory points, or even receive victory points directly. However, with a limited supply of goods and points in each round, the strength of a card depends on which cards the others have played.

Tallinn (Import)

2016-09-17T15:33:15-04:00

Vendor: OSTIA Spiele
Type: Board Games
Price: 27.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	OSTIA Spiele
Players	2-4
Playtime	10-20 mins
Suggested Age	10 and up
Additional Info	194505/tallinn http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/194505/tallinn/forums/63

Note: This game includes English and German.

Tallinn (Reval, Castrum Danorum) in late 14th century: You try to make the three most powerful forces in the city your allies, namely the Teutonic Knights, the church/monasteries, and the merchants.

Each player starts Tallinn with an identical set of ten cards. These cards have two halves, each with icons representing the influence in one or two of the groups. Every round each player selects one card secretly, touching the side of the card they want to be valid, then all players reveal/place their card simultaneously. The players add their played card to their display, overlapping the cards, so that only the half that they touched when revealing the card is seen. The other half is taken out of play for this game.

Some cards show icons that allow you to collect victory points immediately. When doing so, you compare your total of power of the specific group with each of the other players, scoring some points for each player you beat and less in case of a tie.

In game end scoring, you compare all symbols with all of your competitors and gain additional points when having more symbols of a kind, and fewer points in case of a tie. Finally, you score more points for each face-to-face victory when comparing the symbols on cards you have taken out during the game as part of the city wall.

Scoring during the game weakens your display because the scoring symbol is only on card halves with a single icon of influence, while other card halves show up to three icons.

Tallinn is the second game in the cycle of little tiny card games of Medieval Theme in the Baltic Sea by OSTIA-Spiele, following VISBY.

Monuments: Wonders of Antiquity (German Import)

2015-10-05T21:24:00-04:00

Vendor: Mayfair Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 39.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	Mayfair Games
Players	2-4
Playtime	45-60 mins
Suggested Age	10 and up
Additional Info	30641/monuments-wonders-antiquity http://boardgamegeek.com/forum/14260/monuments-wonders-antiquity/reviews

Note: This game is in German. The game itself is language independent. English rules can be found here.

A game of building monuments and historical sources, reporting on these monuments.

In order to win the game, you not only have to build the monuments, you have to make sure that history will know them - and your fellow gamers will co-decide about it! And there are copyists, who will dispute the glory you've earned for your monuments...

The game shows monument cards with 12 types of ancient monuments like the Pyramids or the Colosseum (9 per type). The game is played in turns and usually you take a "monument turn," consisting of 3 actions allowing you to collect cards, to build monuments, and to expand your existing monuments. For example, it takes you one action per card to draw it either from the draw pile or the 3 faceup cards near it.

If you have some cards showing the same monument, you can use another action to erect this monument in your display. In case you are the first one to build this type of monument, you only need two cards - the second player building this same type of monument must have at least 3 cards. And no third player is allowed to build the same monument! Thus, playing your cards early makes it easier for you to erect the monument. But it saves you actions to collect some cards before displaying it, because regardless of the number of cards used, erecting one monument only counts as one single action.

Your monuments will receive their eternal fame only, if they are part of history. Each player has 2 (in a 3 player game: 3) historian tokens. In a historian turn, you have no monument action, but only write a history about all of your OPPONENTS' monuments (not your own ones!). Monuments get famous, and the owners receive victory points at the end of the game - the more often your monuments are in such histories, the more points you get. However, only interesting monuments of at least two cards are considered for a history, and by writing a history, the historian takes one card away (removes it from the game)! Thus the monument could be cut down to only one card during the game and will be not interesting to later historians any more. Why should I write a history and make the monuments of my opponents more worthy? If you do not use all of your historian tokens, you will be punished with 12 negative points at the end of the game! And you get additional victory points in the case that you write histories with a lot of monuments mentioned in it.

You should make your monuments interesting to historians again. During a monument turn, you may use one action (regardless of the number of cards played at the same time) to add cards to a monument that you have already erected.

In MONUMENTS, timing is important, and you have to decide what the best move to do now is: Should I wait for another Petra card, or shall I display the Petra Monument this turn? Is it advisable to make a historian turn now or is it better to choose a monument turn and draw the faceup cards, which I really need - taking the risk that I cannot write a history next turn and wind up getting negative points!

Finally, you have to consider that you are not sure about the victory points for your monuments. The points are related to the monument during the game, and if the Akropolis monument is worth 12 Points for example, you will only get 4 points if another player manages to erect an Akropolis monument that is greater than yours. This damn copyist will not only receive all your bad wishes, but 8 of the 12 Akropolis Victory Points - even in the case that his monument was not part of any history. Somehow you will feel that all the glory should be given to you alone!

Monuments: Wonders of Antiquity

2015-10-05T21:24:00-04:00

Vendor: Mayfair Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 22.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	Mayfair Games
Players	2-4
Playtime	45-60 mins
Suggested Age	10 and up
Additional Info	30641/monuments-wonders-antiquity http://boardgamegeek.com/forum/14260/monuments-wonders-antiquity/reviews

A game of building monuments and historical sources, reporting on these monuments.

Arkwright (Second Edition)

2015-01-18T01:14:00-05:00

Vendor: Capstone Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 72.95

Designer	Stefan Risthaus
Publisher	Capstone Games
Players	2-4
Playtime	240 mins
Suggested Age	14 and up
Honors	2015 Jogo do Ano Nominee 2015 Goblin Magnifico Nominee
Accessories	Meeple Realty - Arkwright's Mill (compatible with ARKWRIGHT™)
Expansion	Arkwright: Noblesse Oblige (German Import)
Additional Info	154825/arkwright http://boardgamegeek.com/forum/1535547/arkwright/reviews

In Arkwright players run up to four factories in England during the late 18th Century. Your goal is to have the most valuable block of own shares. Thus, you must increase your share value and buy shares from the bank.

To run the factories, you need workers. When hiring Workers, demand is automatically created. But of course you want to replace your expensive workers (wage 2-5) by machines (1). To have more output from your factories you may employ new Workers or improve your factory to the next technical level.

You fix the price for your goods during an action round. To enhance your chances of selling goods, you improve your factories to higher levels, increase the quality and make some sales promotion. The higher these factors, the better are your chances of success - the higher the price, the lower.

Each player has an own set of "action tokens" like "build and modernize factories", "employ new workers", "improve quality" etc. On your turn you place one of those tokens on one of the free spaces in your line of the "Administration board" and pay the according administration costs, ranging from 2 to 10 (odd numbers). Some actions depend on how much you paid, i.e. you may buy more machines with one single action, when you pay more (= use a higher space, which is then blocked for the rest of the round). During the game your actions become more and more effective by new tokens, i.e. allow you to buy 3 machines in a single turn instead of 2, increase quality 2 levels instead of only 1...).

After each round of actions one kind of factories is active and you have to pay for all your workers and machines there, then sell the manufactured products. The value of your shares increases for sold products and best quality.

Goods may also be traded to the colonies by ship - provided you have a contract with the monopoly of the East Indian Company.

After four turns each of the factories has produced and the round ends. Players remove the action tokens from the administration board and reveal an event token. After 5 rounds the player with the most valuable block of shares wins. Neither being to be the one with the most shares nor being the one with the highest share value guarantees victory.

Arkwright allows you to act in different ways. Run all four factories with most possible output, set the focus on only two factories and improve them more than the others can; use shipping to colony or focus on the home market. In any way you have to react to the opponents and their strategy. Enter markets with deficit in supply or give up business where the other players start to push you out. Buy shares when they are cheap and increase the value, or first make money and buy shares later.

To get familiar with the market mechanics you may start with a 120 minutes version "Spinning Jenny", but for those who like full strategy in economic themed games, the 240 minute "Waterframe"-Rules come with more options to improve your factory and use ships.