4 Players
30 minutes
Components:
1 Deck of Playing Cards
4 Bags
4 Screens

Import/Export is a team game in which you pass goods to your teammate through an opposing inspector. You claim the value of your goods and the inspector decides whether to pass them through or stop and inspect.

If the shipment is stopped and the claim was a lie, the cards are kept by the inspector. If the inspector was wrong, they must pay a tax and pass the goods on. Most cards are face value but one is valuable contraband and few are bills.


Values:
A: Contraband 15 points
2-10: Face Value 2-10 points
J: Bill -2 points
Q: Bill -4 points
K: Bill -7 points

Setup:
Players receive: 13 suited cards, player screen, and bag.
Players are divided by suit color and sit opposite their teammate.
Players shuffle their cards and place them beside the screen, visible to other players.
Each player draws 4 cards from the top of their deck.

Rounds:
There are 4 rounds in the game broken into phases. All players act in each phase before moving onto the next.

Phases:
Declaration
Inspection
Fulfillment

Declaration:
You may decide to ship any number of goods provided you have at least one not shipped.

Once players have placed goods in their bag, in turn order, they declare the value of their shipment. The value or your shipment need not be a number. If you declare a number equal to or greater than 10 you must take one of the cards remaining in your hand and place it on top of your bag as tax.

The bag is then handed to the opposing player on your left.

Inspection:
You are the inspector for the opposing players you sit between. Starting with the first player, and going around the table each inspector decides whether or not to open the bag they are handed.

If the inspector chooses not to open the bag, the inspector hands it to the player’s teammate taking any tax.

If the inspector decides to open the bag there are 3 possible outcomes:
Number Value: You were telling the truth. The inspector pays you a tax and passes the bag to your teammate.
Number Value: You were lying. The inspector keeps the contents of your bag and the you must pay a tax.
Non-Number Value: You gave a non-number value and the inspector keeps all contents of the bag, including any bills.

Fulfillment:
Numbered cards are placed face-up in front of the player’s screen.
Contraband and bills are placed behind the player’s screen.

Final Scoring:
Scoring is resolved as follows:
Sum of all cards 2-10
Sum of all contraband
Minus any bills
Minus any remaining cards in a player’s own suit.

Winner:
In the event of a tie, the following tie-breakers apply:
The team with the fewest bills
The team with the most contraband

Clarification
- You may not pay taxes with bills.

Area control/"bag-building" game, themed around medieval/renaissance Europe.

Each player gets a few coins and a black bag containing his starting action tokens.

Player starts with a predefined set of tokens, but may use coins to buy additional tokens each turn (different tokens cost different number of coins) and place them in the bag.

At the start of each turn, the player would draw 3 tokens from the bag blindly, use them, then return them to the bag.

The game ends when either a player has collected 10 victory points, or any one player is eliminated (In which case the player with most VPs at that point wins).

The types of tokens (determined by an icon) and what they do:

Decline - Move a decline track one step. Once player's decline reaches 3, he must reset his bag of tokens to the starting set. The decline track is reset to 0, each other player gains 1 victory point.

Culture - Player pays 5 coins and gains one victory point, if he can't pay, he moves his decline track one step forward.

Farming - Player collects income, based on the controlled areas (some areas might be worth more coins than others)

Trade - Player collects coins equal to twice the value of a neutral area. He collects no coins if that area is captured. Trade tokens are area-specific. There's one trade token per each neutral area on the board.

Casus belli - This counter is placed on any adjacent area of the map. As long as you have a Casus belli token on the area, you are allowed to capture it with your armies.

Army - Player pays 3 coins and may capture any one territory he has a cassus belli token placed on, or any neutral area captured by another player, or remove other player's casus belli token from the adjacent area. If the player doesn't have enough coins, he may not use the army token and add a decline token to his bag.

Fleet - Placed on the adjacent sea region, all areas adjacent to that sea region count as adjacent to yours. The fleet token remains on the map until destroyed by another player's fleet token. Using the fleet token costs 3 coins, the same way as an army.

Reform - Player may draw 3 new tokens from the bag, instead of resolving the ones he just drew. Player may only use one reform action per turn.

Technology - Player moves a technology track (Provides tech upgrades, like capturing more areas with armies, more coins per region, more actions per turn etc. )

Espionage - Add a decline token to another player's bag.

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Of course this idea would also work with cards, instead of using a bag of counters, but using the bag saves tons of time that otherwise would be wasted on shuffling and re-shuffling your deck every turn.

Grave Robbers & Body Snatchers

The year is 1751 and universities all around London are in need of cadavers. You have made a decent living selling the corpses of the recently deceased. But now Parliament is about to pass a law that will grant universities the cadavers of executed criminals. So you have started looking for the more well off dead to try and pad your coin-purse a bit before the good times come to an end.

Mechanics

This game mixes some worker placement, hidden information, and set collection.

Setup

Players then take turns placing a tombstone card from their hand onto a grave location and tokens that represent valuables in small coffins with separated compartments. (like a pill box). Five coffins are placed to start with the other five being placed throughout the game. Each player places their player marker at the local tavern. The oldest player goes first and takes the 1st player marker.

Gameplay

The game has two phases. A day phase and a night phase. On the day phase players take turns clockwise around the table. Then the game shifts to the night phase and play commences counterclockwise from the player that went last on the day phase. When the night phase has been completed the 1st player marker shifts one player clockwise, the day marker is moved up on the day track, and a new day phase begins. The game ends when Parliament institutes the Murder Act and that could happen any day now. The game has a set starting number of turns but gameplay will influence the final amount.

Day Phase: During the day players take turns placing their player token on various locations, selling what they have recovered, recruiting assistants, and researching the day’s death notices, looking for clues as to which graves might be the most lucrative.

Night Phase: At night the players place their markers, and any assistants they have recruited, on the plots at the graveyard and dig up the graves. However the graveyard is not as peaceful as you would think. You will need to avoid the gravedigger, police patrols, angry relatives looking to protect their loved ones bodies, and even your fellow resurrectionists.

When a player succeeds digging up a grave they may claim all tokens from inside the coffin and place them in their loot bag. They may sell any valuables at the black market during the following day or they may wait till they have sets of an item and go for the big score.

Bodies that are collected are not placed in a player's loot bag. Players may visit the university at the end of the night to cash them in. Bodies values are based on how long they have been buried.

Buy information, bribe guards, or even hire someone to interfere with your competitors. There are many paths to victory.

For 2 to 5 players, Age 13+ as it has a slightly gruesome theme, and playable in 30 to 45 minutes.

Mice DIY

OVERVIEW
Players represent mice trying to get to the most cheese.

COMPONENTS
5 small boxes
10 point cards for each player in 4 different colors (/2, -2, -1, -1, +1, +1, +2, +2, +3, x2)
30 tunnel cards for each player
30 effect cards
4 mice pawns in different colors
One blank square board
100 pieces of cheese

SETUP
Put 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 pieces of cheese into the boxes. Keep the 3 pieces box separately and shuffle the other 4 then put all of them in the center of the board knowing which the 3 pieces box is. Each player chooses a mice and the same color point cards. He starts with all 10 point cards in his hand. Each players also shuffles his 30 tunnel cards and puts them next to him. The 30 effect cards are shuffled and put next to the board in reach of everyone. Each player starts with 3 of those cards in hand and 4 cheese.

GAMEPLAY
Firstly, at the start of each round players need to eat cheese in order to strengthen up and dig their tunnels to the boxes. To do that each player secretly puts in his hand from 0 to 3 pieces of his cheese and reveal them simultaneously. Players loose the cheese that was eaten.

If 2 or more players eat the same amount of cheese they will draw one random card from the point cards of the other player and the one that drew the highest wins that position.

Then the first player secretly looks inside a box and decides if he wants to bet one of his 10 points cards on that box or another box and puts his card face up under the box (used only once per game). The rest of the players do the same. They can look at the same box if they want but have to bet on different boxes.

Then players look at the numbers the other players put and, starting with the player who put the lowest point card, put another point card under a different box than the one they put their first one. Each box can have up to 2 cards. The cards add up for extra or less cheese for the player who acquires the box. If players put same cards then the stronger goes first.

The strongest player also goes first on the board after each player chooses a side. On each players turn they can do 2 actions:
1. Draw a tunnel card from their pile and play it in front of them (tunnel cards have corridors that go different directions and have to put them next to each other to build a tunnel that leads to the boxes)

2. Play an effect card

3. Draw and play a tunnel card on top of another of their own tunnel cards for 2 actions.

The player who reaches the boxes first picks up a box.
Effect cards can be good or bad like look at the top 3 tunnel cards of your pile and put them back in any order, open a path different than the direction the corridor goes, block a corridor exit on a players tunnel card, shuffle a players tunnel deck, turn/twist a tunnel card.

After all players took a box they score the cheese accordingly.

The winner is the one with the most pieces of cheese at the end of the 4 rounds.