Six Sojourns

• Designer: Ryan Laukat
• Publisher: Red Raven Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30-60 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3RgKO59
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Six Sojourns is a reimagining of Eight-Minute Empire. It’s a short area control game full of tough choices, creative strategy and tactics, and high player interaction.

Your goal in Six Sojourns is to grow your family and broaden their influence. Players take turns selecting a card from five on display. Each card has actions that let players build houses, gain ships, move, and gain new family members. The cards also have special abilities and sets of icons that represent your family’s expertise in various trades: cooking, carpentry, sewing, shoe-making, art, blacksmithing, and jewelry. Each game, you only select nine cards, and you’ll be faced with meaty choices each turn as you focus on trades, abilities, or the map.

When all players have 9 cards, the game ends. Players count victory points and the player with the most points wins.  Each sojourn adds new cards and rules to the game. You can customize your experience by playing the six journeys as a campaign or play through each sojourn in order!

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Leylines

• Designers: Daryl Andrews and Wolfgang Kramer 
• Publisher: Arcane Wonders
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 10+
• Time: 60-90 mins
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4eRebnW
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Your ancestors have lived in the forest for generations, surviving by following the Leylines – tangled wisps of magic that weave between the pines and lead to the forest’s most coveted bounties. But you can’t sustain yourself on only moss and berries for long. Every solstice, the fae-markets roll into the forest with their caravans bursting with food and supplies. Gather what you can from the woodland floor and seek out the markets before they move on.

Leylines is a re-imagining/update of the classic game Auf Achse by Wolfgang Kramer set in a brand new world with new rules by Daryl Andrews, featuring beautiful acrylic standees and a circular board filled with magical leylines and mystical markets!

To win, players must collect resources in the forest and bring them back along the leylines to the markets to sell them. Be aware though the magical merchants pay different amounts depending on what they are interested in!

Each round players will take turns waking up and preparing for the day by placing their dice to program their actions and then adventuring through the forest using their placed dice. They will pick up resources along the way and deliver them to the markets for either Gold or Magical items to help them in their journey.

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Le Chocolat

• Designer: Mashiu
• Publisher: Allplay
• Players: 2
• Age: 7+
• Time: 10 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4fBewv6
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Le Chocolat, you’ll split the chocolate bar and claim the flavors that taste best!  Mix up the 36 chocolate tiles and arrange them into a grid. On your turn, split the chocolate into two chunks along a straight line. If there is ever a chunk of three or fewer tiles left at the end of a player’s turn, they’ll claim that chunk. Continue playing until all chocolate has been claimed. Then, score based on the rules of the scoring card (that changes every play). Did you get the best pieces, while avoiding negative ingredients? Most points wins!

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 Movie Night

• Designer: Peter C. Hayward
• Publisher: allplay
• Players: 1-10+
• Age: 7+
• Time: 5 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link:  https://amzn.to/44zVb7i
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Movie Night is a cooperative game where you and your friends try to think of the perfect movie to watch together. Tap into your collective movie knowledge and come up a movie everyone can agree on — before time runs out!

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Estate: Raise the Realm

• Designer:  Devon Grodkiewicz, Kathryn Hahn 
• Publisher: Grod Games
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 14+
• Time: 20-100 mins
• Purchase link: https://grod-games.myshopify.com/ 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Estate, players take on the role of a Noble Leader of a Great House who is bequeathed an Estate post war. Each Leader begins the game with resources, a special ability, a unique build of construction(s) and/or citizen(s) cards within their Estate, a Family Secret objective, and workers prepared to rebuild.

A worker placement reconstruction challenge, players must use their workers wisely to optimize their Estate’s growth over the five Eras of game play. Workers can be used to take one of four main actions each turn: play citizen/construction Estate Cards, gather resources from the center game board, produce on Production Cards within their growing Estate, and draw new citizen/construction Estate Cards to join the cause. As the Eras progress and your Estate grows, worker actions become more powerful.

Don’t forget the Era Events! Revealed at the start of each Era, Era Events impact game play (either positively or negatively) for that Era while also introducing a public Era Objective players can compete for.

Time is limited and not on your side, and careful consideration must be made when determining the best actions for your rise to power. Optimizing your leader’s special ability and family secret objective will also provide valuable victory points at game end.

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Tag Team: Arthur’s Legacy

• Designers: Gricha German, Corentin Lebrat, Florian Sirieix, Benoit Turpin
• Publisher: Scorpion Masque
• Players: 2
• Age: 10+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Inspired by classic arcade-fighting games, Tag Team is an auto battler combined with a deck-building game. Make your team of two fighters from the twelve available — each with their own techniques and special moves — and build an unbeatable synergy by combining their two unique decks!

In more detail, you start with a deck of only two cards, and the fight unfolds automatically: Flip your cards one at a time and apply their effects. At the end of each round, you get to turn up the heat on the opposing team by strategically adding new cards to program your deck — but without reordering the cards already present. Determine what makes your tag team tick, play devastating combos, and dominate your opponent by deftly blocking their attacks. Timing is everything if you want to emerge victorious and knock out your foe!

Tag Team is back with 6 new Fighters inspired by the legends of King Arthur!  Arthurian legends come to life in the Tag Team arena! Play as Morgan, Merlin, The Dragon, Perceval, The Green Knight… and even Excalibur! In Tag Team, we don’t sit around telling stories, though, we FIGHT!  Who will dominate the arena as these legendary characters engage in epic battles?

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