Special Guest panelist Rob Kalajian from A Pawn’s Perspective.

Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age

Designed by: Matt Leacock

Published By: Eagle-Gryphon Games (2008)

Players: 1 – 4

Ages: 8 +

Time: 30 – 45 min

Unearthed by: Joe

Your die rolls get you coins, labor, or food to help you build and prosper. You have multiple viable strategies: building monuments scores you points, while building cities gets you more dice to roll. Focusing on science gets you chances to re-roll, make your die rolls more productive, or maybe avoid disasters.

The game ends when someone has five developments — or when all the wonders get built. Whoever has the most points wins.

 

Beneath Nexus

Designed by: Tom Panico, Chris Visco

Published By: Silverclutch Games (2016)

Players: 3 – 6

Ages: 12 +

Time: 60 – 90 min

Unearthed by: Mike

In Beneath Nexus, the players are heroes squaring off against the powerful Blight Lord. . . except for the one player controlling it!  Each hero has a passive ability, a default action, and a unique deck of spells, actions, and reactions. The Blight Lord player chooses from several boss villains, with a unique deck of cards and abilities.

The Heroes must battle their way through two scenarios, randomly chosen. Finally they face the Blight Lord in a final battle! Each scenario starts with the Blight Lord summoning one monster per hero.

Each round, the Blight Lord gets one action per hero to apply the cards or abilities of the monsters. Then, each of the Heroes takes one action each turn, in the order of their turns.

If a hero dies, they return at the beginning of the next scenario with 6 health. The hero players lose if all heroes die in the same scenario. To win, they must destroy the Blight Lord!

 

The Last Spike

Designed by: Tom Dalgliesh

Published By: Columbia Games (2015)

Players: 2 – 6

Ages: 10 +

Time: 45 min

Unearthed by: Ed

Players cooperate to build a continuous railway from St. Louis to Sacramento, while racing to accumulate as much money as they can in the resulting frenzy of land speculation. But when the “last spike” is laid . . . the boom is over!

Each player has a hand of four track tiles, each showing a particular location. Players each place a track tile each turn, paying the cost. After a player places a tile, they may purchase one deed for a city bordering that part of the track. If the player is the first to place adjacent to a city, they gain a deed to that city for free.

Whenever two cities are connected, every deed for those two cities gets paid from the bank.

When a player places a tile that creates a contiguous track from St. Louis to Sacramento, that player receives a $20,000 bonus, and the game ends. Whoever has the most cash wins!