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The Cursed Hoard expansion adds some refreshing flair to Fantasy Realms. There are two parts — Cursed Items and three new suits — that can be added to the base game separately or combined.
When you add Cursed Items, you add a separate new deck of cards to the mix. At the beginning of the game, each player is dealt a Cursed Item card face up. On your turn, you have three options with your face-up Cursed Item: 1) Do nothing, 2) Discard it at the end of your turn and draw a new one face-up in front of you, or 3) Use it.
There are 24 different Cursed Item cards with some that will replace your normal turn and others that you can play anytime during your turn. Each one grants you a unique action that alters the normal rules of play to give you a leg up on your opponents, but using these abilities comes at a price since the majority of them will give you negative points — they are cursed, after all.
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Cursed Item — Shovel
Some Cursed Items let you interact with the other players, such as the Larcenous Gloves that allow you to steal a face-up Cursed Item from another player which you must use immediately, after which they draw a replacement, or the Crystal Ball that lets you name a suit and all other players must reveal all cards they have in their hand of that suit.
After you use your Cursed Item, you flip it face down and grab a new one from the deck to put in front of you face-up, so if you choose to play with the Cursed Item cards, everyone will always have one face-up Cursed Item throughout the game, and some players may have one or more face down that will impact their score at the end of the game.
The Cursed Hoard expansion also adds three new suits to Fantasy Realms: Buildings, Outsiders, and Undead. Since the new suits dilute the main deck and make it harder to draw combos, there are some slight rule changes to maintain balance. You start and play the game with an eight-card hand instead of the usual seven, and the game end is triggered when twelve cards are in the discard area, not ten.
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Examples of the new suits
The new suits function similarly to the base game cards for the most part, but also add some new twists. For example, the Undead score with cards in the discard area, instead of your hand like normal. These cards make the discard area much more appealing throughout the game for those who possess Undead cards. You're no longer scavenging the discard area to pick up measly scraps your opponents leave, but instead you're anxiously hoping to turn those scraps into a high-scoring combo with your Undead cards in hand at the end of the game. Of course, if you're also playing with Cursed Items, you could have more control over what ends up in the discard area to help you strategize.
Fantasy Realms is easy to teach, plays quickly, and is all about creating satisfying card combos. If you enjoy it, it's not unlikely to want to play back-to-back games every time you break it out, and it's also not unlikely to want to break it out often. Depending on how much you've played it, over time it'll eventually feel a bit same-y, even with the variety of cards and suits in the base game, so the added spice and variety The Cursed Hoard expansion brings to the realm is gladly welcomed. Plus, I really appreciate the fact that expansion is modular and therefore gives you more options for your Fantasy Realms games.
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Seeders from Sereis is a sci-fi themed strategy game for 2-4 players featuring a mix of card drafting, area influence, tableau building, and some engine building as players compete to build the highest-scoring ark using cards in their tableaus. Here's the backstory and high-level overview of gameplay as described by the original publisher:
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Seeders from Sereis is a trans-media science-fiction universe that's been created over five years by Serge Macasdar and Charbel Fourel and which contains post-humans, space opera, extensive journeys on space arks, lost empires, exo-biology, genetic evolution, android developments, and more.
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Seeders, Series 1: Exodus is the first game of a serial of ten set in this universe. When an unknown force threatens to render their home uninhabitable, the Seeders must build arks — giant colony ships — to ensure their survival. Players work to create the most promising design to be chosen for production. Each turn players draft cards into their hands as cards are laid out on the board. Players strategically place negotiator chips between the cards they want, using their alignment and position to determine who has the most influence over a desired card. Once all negotiators and tokens are placed, influence is calculated and the winners of each card is determined.
Once obtained, cards can be played for points, adding value to your ark, or discarded for resources. Each card represents a different component of the ark — locations, items, personnel — and players will find unique synergies between cards as well as their player color's unique power. Asymmetry and complex interactions add layers of strategy that lead to a unique experience each time you play.
In more detail, Seeders from Sereis: Exodus is played over four rounds and each round has five phases, with each game taking about two hours to play:Seeders, Series 1: Exodus is the first game of a serial of ten set in this universe. When an unknown force threatens to render their home uninhabitable, the Seeders must build arks — giant colony ships — to ensure their survival. Players work to create the most promising design to be chosen for production. Each turn players draft cards into their hands as cards are laid out on the board. Players strategically place negotiator chips between the cards they want, using their alignment and position to determine who has the most influence over a desired card. Once all negotiators and tokens are placed, influence is calculated and the winners of each card is determined.
Once obtained, cards can be played for points, adding value to your ark, or discarded for resources. Each card represents a different component of the ark — locations, items, personnel — and players will find unique synergies between cards as well as their player color's unique power. Asymmetry and complex interactions add layers of strategy that lead to a unique experience each time you play.
1) In the Preparation phase, you un-tap your once-per-round cards and update turn order.
2) In the Foundation phase, you receive four new Ark cards and draft them, rotating the direction each round. I'll mention that drafting in this phase is considered a variant, but if you're an experienced gamer, you'll more than likely prefer drafting.
3) Next is the Negotiation phase in which the "Wing of Whispers" game board comes into play. You place twelve Ark cards in the appropriate spaces on the game board, then players place their negotiator discs in turn order to bid for Ark cards. Each negotiator will impact the two spaces adjacent to it, so you are bidding on two cards with each disc placed.
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Each player has six negotiator discs, each representing a different caste, and the amount of influence cubes you place depends on the negotiator's level of influence and the caste. At the beginning of the game each caste's influence is [1]-[1], meaning you can put one influence cube on each adjacent side when placing the corresponding negotiator disc. Over the course of the game, you can increase the amount of influence of your various negotiator discs, plus you can always add a bonus influence cube(s) whenever the caste of your negotiator disc matches the caste of either card it's placed adjacent to.
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After each player has placed five of their negotiator discs and influence cubes based on the caste, then you resolve each card space. The player with the most influence cubes surrounding the card takes the card into their hand and takes one of their adjacent negotiator discs back. If there's a tie, the card is discarded. After all cards are removed from the game board, negotiator discs still on the board can be leveled up: a [1]-[1] becomes a [2]-[1], a [2]-[1] can become a [3]-[1] or a [2]-[2], etc. This allows you to place more influence cubes in future rounds with that particular negotiator disc. If you place a negotiator disc with [3]-[1], for example, you can place three influence cubes on one side and one influence cube on the other.
4) Next in the Integration phase, players use the ark cards they gained from drafting in phase 2 and from using their influence in phase 3. There are two types of ark cards in Seeders from Sereis: units and crews. Units can host up to two crew cards by default and need to be hosted by at least one crew to score during phase 5. There's a variety of ark cards that have different special abilities; some are immediate effects when played, and some you can use once per round. Some cards will grant you prestige points (victory points) when they're played and others will grant you other special effects.
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Example of a unit card
During the Integration phase, in turn order you can recycle/discard cards to gain resources, spend resources to add new ark cards into your tableau, activate special abilities, and rearrange your ark by moving crews from one unit to another. You can perform one or more of these actions on your turn and in any order that you want. Since you can't do this phase simultaneously, there may be some downtime depending on how long each player takes.
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Example of a crew card
5) Finally in the Prestige phase, you gain prestige points based on the prestige abilities of the cards in your ark/tableau. Pretty much everything you are doing in the phases leading up to this is to maximize the amount of prestige points you'll score. Some cards will score based on the number of cards you have in your ark of a specific type, while others score if you have a majority of a specific type of card.
The game ends at the end of the fourth round, and the player with the most prestige points wins. If you enjoy tableau builders and/or sci-fi themed games, you should definitely check Seeders from Sereis: Exodus out. My favorite part of Seeders was the influence bidding and negotiator disc placement in the Negotiation phase. There are so many interesting decisions that stem from the clever mechanism of placing the negotiator discs and dropping influence cubes. You'll be figuring out ways to get bonuses by matching castes, but also trying to set yourself up to win cards you can combo with others you already have, or trying to defensively deny your opponents from certain cards, then also deciding which negotiators to leave on the board so you can level them up influencewise. WizKids also knocked it out the park with the components here, too; everything from the negotiator discs to the cards to the dual-layered player boards are top notch.
• Did you ever say to yourself, "There aren't enough games with cute little penguins?" Me neither, but after playing Waddle, another early 2021 release from WizKids, I feel like I need more cute penguin games in my life.
Waddle is a light, filler game from designers Raph Koster and Isaac Shalev that plays with 2-4 players in 30 minutes:
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Penguins are curious creatures. Flighty though flightless, they move about quickly towards things that appeal to them.
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In Waddle, ever-curious penguins visit different places, sometimes in different neighborhoods. Each turn, you move the penguins around the city or bring some new ones in from out of town. Get the penguins to move into the patterns matching your cards to score points. The player with the most points at the end of a set number of rounds wins!
In more detail, Waddle is played over a certain number of rounds depending on player count: eight rounds with two players, seven rounds with three players, and six rounds with four players. During set-up, each player starts with four yellow and four red penguins, and an individual deck of 13 scoring cards, which you shuffle and draw four cards from to start the game. Then you lay out a certain number of coaster-looking "places" to create one or two "neighborhoods" depending on player count.In Waddle, ever-curious penguins visit different places, sometimes in different neighborhoods. Each turn, you move the penguins around the city or bring some new ones in from out of town. Get the penguins to move into the patterns matching your cards to score points. The player with the most points at the end of a set number of rounds wins!
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Four-player layout posted by the publisher
On your turn, you play a scoring card from your hand onto your scoring/discard pile. You cannot play the same card that is currently on the top of any opponent's score pile unless you have no other cards in your hand that you can play. Then you perform a standard action or a special action if the scoring card you play has one.
When taking a standard action, you have two choices: Either you add any number and combination of penguins from your supply to one neighborhood, which is considered the active neighborhood for your turn, or you empty a place of all of its penguins and redistribute the penguins as you wish in the other four places in that neighborhood, or in any places in the other neighborhood. Again, the neighborhood where the penguins are placed is the active neighborhood for your turn.
Then you draw a card and end your turn. Players continue taking turns placing, moving, and scoring penguins until the final round is completed, and whoever has the most points wins.
Waddle is one of those games that you can play very casually and not overthink your moves for a mellow game, or you can make it more competitive and get really thinky with it. It's cool that you won't ever play all of the cards in your deck in a single game, too, so you don't always know what you'll have to work with or what your opponents have. Plus, there's also a single deck variant to change things up a bit where you shuffle all cards together, instead of having individual decks, and you have the option of drawing cards from the deck or from three face-up cards.
Waddle is a solid filler to play with gamer and non-gamer friends because it's super easy to learn, each game will vary because of the cards, and... it has adorable wooden penguins!
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