New Game Round-up: Lewis & Clark Leads to Discoveries, Building The Front Nine & Before Greenland, Neaderthals

The Lewis and Clark Expedition, which was commissioned in 1803 and ended in 1806, was the first party of men that went through the North American continent, then returned. During these three years, the leaders Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, along with Sergeant Gass and Sergeant Ordway, wrote page after page about their trip, describing the new plants and animals species they discovered and drawing the maps of unknown areas.

In Discoveries, you play one of the Expedition members: Lewis, Clark, Gass or Ordway. Your goal is to compile as much knowledge as possible in your journal, and in this way advance science thanks to your discoveries.

The Tribe/Discoveries cards you gain during the game score discovery points at the end. To get these cards, you have to perform exploration actions, and to do this you use dice. On your turn, you either:

Play the dice in your action area or on the game board; by doing this, you prepare or perform the exploration, change your dice, or get new possible actions.
Get dice back from the game board or from your opponents' action areas.

It's 43,000 BC in Ice Age Europe, the dawn of modern man. In Neanderthal, you are one of three human species: Archaic, Neanderthal, or Cro-Magnon. Assign your males to hunt Pleistocene megafauna, but try to avoid being eaten by predators. Assign your women either for gathering or for teaching your children vocabulary, leading to cognitive fluidity in the next generation. Specialize your elders for fire, inventions, or animal domestications. Choose between three mating strategies: promiscuous, harems, or pair bonding. Victory depends on which strategy you choose, and may include your hunters, elders, women, vocabulary, trophies, inventions, or domesticated animals.

At this point, the players have developed to the point where the companion game Greenland begins, so you can flow one game into another seamlessly.

The Royal Golf Association are running their annual competition to judge the best new nine hole course of the year. Will you finish all nine holes before the judges carry out their inspection? If not will stunning scenery and design excellence be enough to beat off the opposition?

The Front Nine is a card game in which players compete to build the best nine hole golf course with a balance of challenging par, scenery and facilities. The course cards depict each hole (pars 3, 4 and 5)and after paying the land and resource cost for trees, water and sand, they are laid on the table to depict the actual layout of the course. Each player develops a course from club house to 1st tee and from green to following tee etc. Each hole has a differing topography which constrains tee access and green exits which results in each player's course snaking across the table. Players must manage their finances carefully to enable their course to generate an income to ensure they can afford the ever increasing land costs and resources required to design and build each hole. The winner is the player whose course design best links back to the club house, has the best design, bunkers, woodland and water hazards and optimizes the use of the natural environment.

The Front Nine has direct player interaction and competition and an economic engine with an interesting spatial aspect where careful thought is needed for card purchase and placement.