What is Endeavor

By Jessica King

When Carl de Visser and Jarratt Gray started to create Endeavor, the board game, they might have set their sights on world domination. They certainly succeeded with it being a top-selling game and storming up the charts worldwide. Not bad for a pair from Wellington, New Zealand

Endeavor is set at the beginning of the Age of Empire and it's up to you to go forth and cover the globe for the glory of your home state. Deploy people and resources around the world to discover new countries, subdue peoples, open up trade routes and perform all the tasks of politics and conquest. With entire continents on the line, there's plenty of wealth and glory to go around. Will you create an empire? Will you be able to hold it?

Your Empire is glorious (and full of evil imperialists), and your endeavor is to create shipping lanes through the seas and make the most of the resources you find at the other end. In order to gain these resources you'll have to negotiate, to fight, to connive your way forward and contend with other powers as they try to wrest the new lands from you. Strategy is of the uptmost importance as you keep spending and earning in check, and balance your aggressiveness with your political suavity. Endeavor is a game of many strategies, and each route to victory is carefully balanced against the others.

Endeavor is a board game for explorers and brings out the evil imperialist in all of us! Your colonising efforts are rewarded with increased wealth, while the use of force drains away your young men and the money to fund them. Politics, Industry, Culture and Finance are the four legs that prop up your rapidly spinning globe; and without one, you're entire game plan will fail. Game play begins with setting hte shipping lanes and, when they are full, you place buildings which represent your resources. You also have people to deploy throughout your growing empire and they do special actions which include buying and selling resources, fights and negotiating. If you sufficiently increase your political skills, you are able to perform more complicated (and high value) plays later in the game.

It must be time to play! Let's find out why Endeavor has been so popular since its 2009 release ... and we'll see what prizes it wins in 2010. - 621

About the Author:

Looking to find the best deal on Endeavor in NZ, then visit Seriously Board to find the best deals on board games in New Zealand.

Colosseum, The Board Game

By Jessica King

The board game Colosseum allows you to compete with others as Roman empresarios to attempt to create the biggest spectacle in ancient Rome. You must use the gain from your early events to hire better actors, buy more props and run more and more spectacular shows. Improve your theatre and lure nobles and the Emperor to your event in order to build something even more spectacular ... and to bring in the profits.

With the exception of the final round, each part of the game has five phases (the last round only has four). In each round, players must take control of their own arena, and they may need to upgrade the size in order to perform some of the more ostentatious plays. The first rounds allows people to choose between two different events, but soon you need to buy the rights to bigger shows and to buy, sell and exchange asset cards, which represent actors, animals and equipment that are used in the show.

In phase one, you need to invest in one of the following ways. Firstly, you could make your arena larger, so that bigger shows can be performed; Secondly, you might construct the Emperor's Loge, giving you two rolls of the dice in the next round; Thirdly, you could buy a season ticket, equating to five visitors per round; and fourthly, you can buy a new event card through an acution with other players. There are five markets from which to buy, laid out in the middle of the Colosseum board, and each market contains 3 assets.

In the next phase, roll dice and move nobles around the board. The main goal is to bring nobles to your event, as each noble is worth a certain amount of gold coins. Players with the Emperor's Loge allows you to roll twice, and you can combine or split the number on the dice. If you land on an Emperor's Medal square, you receive the medal which can be used in later phases. The goal of Colosseum is to finish with the most gold coins for ONE performance. The scoring is not cumulative.

Finally, each player throws away one of the asset tokens used in their event. The leading player at the end of each round wins the podium, which equals three extra spectators in that round. The losing player gets a better chance at the next round, as they can ask for one asset token from the winner player. - 621

About the Author:

Learn more about Colosseum. Stop by Jessica King's site where you can find out all about board games and where to buy them in New Zealand

Upgrades in Ticket to Ride Europe

By Jessica King

Train lover? Travel through the capital cities of 1800's Europe in Ticket to Ride Europe -- the board game. Complete missions, lay tracks and make use of ferries and underground tunnels to traverse the continent. In this, the second game in the franchise, there are Train Stations, Ferries, Tunnels and freshly designed and drawn cards and boards.

Ticket to Ride Europe includes several changes and new markers:

Pieces: Plastic train stations, which sit over the carriages; A lovingly designed map of Europe at the turn of the 19th century; Easy-to-shuffle train and mission cards.

Missions: Mission -- or destination -- cards are distributed at the start of the game. The longest ones are now marked separately so that you can build strategy around this from the start.

Ferries: If you want to cross the water, you need to pay the ferryman! Every time you go to pass one of Europe's channels or harbours, you'll have to pay one or more locomotive cards, as marked on the board.

Tunnels: Short-cut through a tunnel beneath the mountains ... but you have to pay the toll. Each time you play through a tunnel, turn up the top three cards from the deck. You must then match each card of your set colour to pass through ... make sure you have some spare!

Train Stations: Train stations are a new element in Ticket to Ride Europe. You have up to three train stations which allow you to make use of an opponents tracks. This means you can still complete missions, even if you get cut off. It does cost highly though: each unused Station gives you 4 extra points at the end of the game.

Ticket to Ride Europe is an exciting addition to the franchise and an award-winning game perfect for family or friendly play. - 621

About the Author:

Want to find out more about Ticket to Ride Europe, then visit Seriously Board to buy or read more about all the Ticket to Ride board games.