New Game Round-up: Revisit Glen More, the Weimar Republic, and the Dawn of Mankind

In Dawn of Mankind, the people of your clan move along paths, gather resources, have children, create art, discover new methods of doing things...and eventually grow old and die. As your clan goes through these ordeals, you need to pay attention to when your food is going to spoil and where other people might want to go because if they choose the same path you've already trodden, they may inadvertently help you along your way.

You earn points for a variety of things, and whoever has the most points in the end wins.

The city of York is being built. Many buildings have already been built, but without a protective outer wall to defend against the Viking raids, the city is bound for failure. The king has called together his best architects to design defensive walls for the city, but only one design will be used. That architect will be hailed as the greatest architect in all the land.

In Walls of York, players must use the plastic wall pieces to construct a defensive barrier around the buildings on their city map. Each turn, a player rolls the building die, which dictates which types of walls are to be used. Players must enclose their city, containing the required buildings from the King's decree — but players must beware for the Vikings will come and lay waste at the end of the first age, forcing players to build anew in the second age. The player with the most coins at the end of the second age wins.

In Cargo Express, players take over the roles of train entrepreneurs that accept orders and transport goods.

Cargo Express is mechanically simple, but planning the best moves is complex. Moreover, each player has to cope with always changing conditions. Each game turn consists of a planning phase and three player turns in which one of three cards is played.

Let your fellow players watch sparks fly from under the wheels of your dashing train!

On the 9th of November, 1918, the cold autumn air in Berlin is full of tension. The workers are planning to strike and since the city is full of troops, they do not know if they will survive that day. Three hours later, the German monarchy does not exist anymore, and the first German democracy is born.

Weimar: The Fight for Democracy is a game about the major actors in the spectrum of the new Republic. The Social Democrats and the Conservatives are trying to defend the democracy. Communists and Nationalists are looking to overthrow the government and install their own regime. Will this infant Republic survive? Or will Germany — as in history — fall to the Nazis and become a lawless state? Or will there be a Union of Socialist German Republics?

Weimar includes two major "battlefields": In public opinion, the parties struggle to influence the important political issues like the economy, the media, or foreign affairs. Winning these issues scores points and allows them to take significant decisions. At the same time, the parties try to control the streets and position their followers in the major cities of Germany for demonstrations, street fights, and actions taken by the paramilitary organizations.

Weimar is a tense and exciting card-driven game (CDG) on a most interesting topic. Cards may be played for the event, for public opinion, or for actions in the street.

In each of the six game turns, the parties play one agenda that defines their strategy for the turn (e.g., modifying their twelve-card play deck, defining issues, getting advantages in the streets). The goals of the parties are asymmetrical and contradictory. While the democratic parties score for stabilizing the state and removing poverty, the non-democratic parties score for coups and unrest.

In Glen More II: Chronicles, each player represents the leader of a Scottish clan from the early medieval ages until the 19th century, a leader looking to expand their territory and wealth. The success of your clan depends on your ability to make the right decision at the right time, be it by creating a new pasture for your livestock, growing barley for whisky production, selling your goods on the various markets, or gaining control of special landmarks such as lochs and castles.

The game lasts four rounds, represented by four stacks of tiles. After each round, a scoring phase takes place in which players compare their number of whisky casks, scotsmen in the home castle, landmark cards, and persons against the player with the fewest items in each category and receives victory points (VPs) based on the relative difference. After four rounds, additional VPs are awarded for gold coins and some landmarks while VP penalties are assessed based on territory size, comparing each player's territory to the smallest one in play.

The core mechanism of Glen More II: Chronicles and Glen More functions the same way: The last player in line takes a tile from a time track, advancing as far as they wish on this track. After paying the cost, they place this tile in their territory, with this tile activating itself and all neighboring tiles, triggering the production of resources, movement points, VPs, etc. Then the player who is last in line takes their turn.

Improvements over the original Glen More include bigger tiles, better materials, new artwork, the ability for each player to control the end of the game, and balancing adjustments to the tiles for a better suspense curve. The game is designed to consist of one-third known systems, one-third new mechanisms, and one-third improvements to Glen More.

Aside from the Chronicles, another major change to the game is the ability to invest in famous Scottish people of the time, who are represented through a new "person" tile type. Persons not only have their own scoring, they also trigger one-time or ongoing effects on the tactical clan board. This adds a new layer of decision making, especially since the ongoing effects allow players to focus on a personal strategy of winning through the use of the clan board.