Roller Coaster Rush

• Designer: Scott Almes
• Publisher: Pandasaurus Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 15-30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In short: “Welcome to Roller Coaster Rush, a coaster-building game with oodles of kinetic fun! Your goal is to design and construct the best roller coaster for your investors’ theme park! At the start of each game, you design a model coaster using the blueprints you have available. During the game, you’ll attempt to actually construct your model by winning auctions for the track pieces you used in your design. If you lose an auction on one of your own blueprints, you’ll have to take that track out of your coaster – but if you win someone else’s blueprints you’ll get to add a new track to make your coaster bigger and better. Along the way, you can demo your model coaster for investors to see how well it works and earn some extra money for auctions. At the end of the game you get to unveil your fully constructed roller coaster and run it for the public. You earn victory points based on how far your marble makes it down the track. The player with the most points wins!“

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Jiangnan

• Designer: DuGuWei
• Publisher: Moaideas Game Design
• Players: 1-4
• Age 15+
• Time: 90-120 minutes
• Played with copy provided by publisher

It is the height of the Ming Dynasty. Literati artists hike and sail across the land searching for inspiration to compose the greatest works of the age. Those seeking the greatest fame present their work at the capital city of Nankin. However, aristocracy is fickle. Will you follow the latest trends, or start them?

Jiangnan: Life of Gentry is a worker placement and action tile bag building game for 1 to 4 players. Jiangnan can be played as a single scenario or through multiple campaigns. Players are literati and artisans of the elite gentry class living in Jiangnan, the prosperous region to the south of the Qinhuai River, and are highly skilled in literature, calligraphy, brush painting, and the musical and performing arts.

But you’ll need the skills of bureaucracy to drive and guide aristocracy to evolve your work from today’s latest trend to an everlasting classic to be sung and studied for thousands of years.  

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Rolling Heights

• Designer: John D Clair
• Publisher: AEG
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Says AEG: “Roll Your Meeples, Build the City.”

It’s the 1920’s and your career as a general contractor is about to take off. You have just started your business in a rapidly expanding city.  In Rolling Heights, players roll workers in the form of meeples. Standing meeples work hard that day and provide special actions and building materials, while face-down meeples provide nothing. You can always push your luck for better rolls, but you might lose valuable materials you need to construct new buildings. Completing buildings gains you prestige, as well as new workers to help you construct even larger buildings, including skyscrapers.  Will you construct the next famous landmark?

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Bonsai

• Designers: Rosaria Battiato, Massimo Borzi, Martino Chiacchiera
• Publisher: dv Games
• Players:1-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30-45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

To paraphrase the publisher:  The Japanese term “bonsai” means “planted in a pot”. A bonsai is a living work of art, a perfect miniature plant, identical in all respects to its full-size simile, but several times smaller. A bonsai is a microcosm that contains within itself the mystery of the universe, unchanged in all but dimensions.  In the game Bonsai, players take on the role of expert bonsai masters intent on growing their own bonsai. Whoever grows the best plant will be appointed to show their Bonsai at the Imperial gardens.

To set up, each player gets a Pot in their color as well as a starting Seishi tile; additionally, players get some starting Bonsai tiles based on their position in player order.  The main board is placed on the table, and 4 cards from the Zen deck are placed on the spaces.  Finally, goal tiles from three of the five possible colors are set out.

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