Crowdfunding Round-up: Keyflower: The Farmers, City Council, Stak Bots, Dungeon Roll: Winter Promo Pack & Board Games That Tell Stories

Keyflower: The Farmers is an expansion for the game Keyflower. In that game, each player develops his own unique village over four seasons by successfully bidding on a variety of village tiles (specialized buildings and boats), skills, resources, and workers ("keyples").

In Keyflower: The Farmers, players develop the agricultural side of their economy by acquiring new farm buildings, growing wheat, and collecting and breeding farm animals (cows, pigs, and sheep). Animals are kept in the fields created by the layout of the roads, adding a new dimension and considerations to the base game. Points can now be scored through the acquisition and breeding of the animals, by harvesting wheat, and from the layout of the fields.

Players may choose to use all of the tiles from Keyflower: The Farmers and add tiles at random from Keyflower to make up the required number of tiles or simply mix the two sets of tiles.

Stak Bots functions by giving each player a stack of cards as well as a hand. Each turn, players take a new card from the shared draw pile and may add a face-up card to the stack, trash a card from the stack or from their hand. When a card is played, it will have "entry effect" that may operate on the stack ordering of the player or opponent.

Once all playing/trashing is finished for a turn, the player may attack the card on top of an opponent's stack with the top card of their own. The battle itself is quite simple and just a matter of comparing power, although assuming your bot survives its first battle, it can go on to attack the newly revealed card underneath. The real tactical consideration goes into the pre-attack stack manipulation phase.

There is an open turn structure which allows players to carry out actions in any order and any number of times. This means they can react to the often unpredictable results of long entry effect chains, or to cards that their opponents play defensively during your turn.

In City Council, each player takes the role of a council member of a newly founded city. The government will select the members of the city council for the first few years until the city rises and flourishes, by which time the most popular member will receive the position of Mayor.

In order to build the city, you and the other councilmen must maintain a low level of pollution, fight crime, create jobs, and sustain an adequate city budget. If you and the others don't keep up the good work, the city project might not succeed, the government will take over, and all players will lose.

As a member of the council, you must also strive to gain the favor of the different political groups who rule the streets of your city. As the game progresses and the city grows larger, more and more political interest groups will try to impose their will on the city by knocking on your office door and asking you for small "favors" in which you will have to act on their behalf. In return, they'll offer you their support and you'll receive victory points for your personal cause, possibly allowing you to become the city's first Mayor.

Just like Apples to Apples, Picaroon emphasizes chaotic randomness, unpredictability and variable outcomes, yet incorporates the tactical challenge and excitement of a great strategy board game. The pirate theme is sure to bring out the inner most ARRGHHH! from game players of all ages. It is a retro looking board game that is as beautiful as it is fun to play.