Splendor Duel and the Counterfeiters expansion 

• Designers: Marc Andre, Bruno Cathala 
• Publisher: Space Cowboys
• Players: 2
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4aSuCOg ,  https://amzn.to/4fAEBdF
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Confront your rival guild in a race for victory. Take Gem and Pearl tokens from the common board, then purchase cards, gather bonuses, royal favors, and prestige. Discover new twists and strategic opportunities derived from Splendor, the original best-selling game. Acquire cards with impressive powers, take advantage of special Privileges, and fight over scarce access to Pearls.

Splendor Duel is a two-player only standalone game based on Splendor that retains some of the main gameplay mechanisms of that design, while being a bit more complex, dynamic, interactive, rich, tense, and mean. The game features a main board shared by both opponents, card powers, and three victory conditions.

The Counterfeiters expansion add 8 new Royal cards and a daring new twist: the Counterfeiters — 4 paste gem tokens and 15 cards that bring deeper asymmetry and reshape all strategies. This tiny expansion fits seamlessly into the base game box — because once you’ve played it, there’s no going back. Are you ready to play by your own rules?

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 Panorama

• Designer: Jules Messaud, Melody Leblond
• Publisher: Scorpion Masque
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 20 min
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

What a lovely sunny day. Relax and enjoy the view from your hot air balloon! In this leisurely tile placement game for 2-4 players, each player will try to create the most beautiful Panorama before the sun sets.

Put your panorama together one tile at a time, and choose them wisely: At the end of the game, you’ll score points based on the number of animals and flowers in each type of terrain (yes, even animals love flowers)! But watch out… The further you move to select a tile, the more you leave behind for the hot air balloons of your opponents to pick up!

Games stay fresh and replayable through the common objectives, such as the longest river or the sky with the fewest clouds.

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Shape It

• Designer: Thomas Dagenais-Lesperance
• Publisher: Randolph
• Players: 2-7
• Age: 8+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Shape It is a cooperative game in which players move shapes to try to guess a word. What word is your group trying to illustrate? That’s the game: You don’t know for sure… But it has to be on one of the 5 cards on the table. When it comes time to guess, will you all see the same word in the shapes you’ve placed? Good luck!

If your whole group sees the same Word in the shapes you’ve placed, you win the round and collect a Word card. If you don’t all see the same thing, you lose a Life.

→ If you collect 5 cards, you win!

→ If you lose your 3 Lives… you’ve lost the game.

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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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