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In Crash Octopus, players race to collect cargo that's floating in the ocean, while surrounded by a horrifically giant octopus. The first player who collects all five types of cargo on their ship wins.


The game is played by using the table as the landscape, with a string perimeter around the playing area. To set up, place the octopus head at the center of the playing area, surrounded by the tentacles spread out at an equal distance, then the player ships and anchors outside of the tentacles near the perimeter. Finally, you drop all the cargo onto the playing area by bouncing it off the octopus' head.

On a turn, a player uses their flag to either navigate — by flicking the anchor next to their ship, then moving their ship to touch the anchor — or flick cargo. Cargo comes in five types — goblet, chest, gem, gold, and captain (yes, really!) — and you can flick any type of cargo that's not on your ship toward your ship. The only exception is that you can't flick the single cargo item closest to your ship. If the flicked cargo misses your ship, your turn ends; if it hits your ship, you load that cargo, then advance the cargo tracker, which is a string of beads on the perimeter.


If you advance a black bead on the cargo tracker, the octopus attacks! Each player takes a turn dropping a die and bouncing it off the octopus' head, possibly moving the head or a tentacle to get in the way of others picking up cargo and possibly knocking cargo off a ship. What a setback!

The world is about to end, but nobody is quite sure exactly how it's going to happen. In Dangerous, your goal is to save as many innocent lives from certain doom as possible. To do so, you must outsmart your rival investigators and correctly deduce which apocalyptic predictions are true and which are false. The player who saves the most lives wins.


In each round, shuffle the twelve prophecy tiles, then lay out three rows of four tiles: the top row (face down) are true prophecies, which players must deduce; the middle row (face up) are false prophecies; and the bottom row (face down) are hoax prophecies. Below each hoax prophecy, lay out a column of four cards face up. The cards come in five prophecy suits, with values 1-3. Among the tiles are two of each prophecy and two 2x.

The lead investigator for that round places one of their two personal tokens by a hoax prophecy tile, looks at that tile, then chooses a card from that column and places it face up in front of themselves. Each other player then chooses a card from this column. If a hoax prophecy tile has two player tokens next to it, don't refill it; otherwise, do refill it. The next player becomes the lead investigator, and this process continues until each player has chosen eight cards, which they now take in hand.


Now you evaluate how well you predicted which disasters will take place. The lead investigator reveals one of the true prophecy tiles, then all players simultaneously reveal two cards from their hand. For each card that matches that revealed prophecy, you score positive points equal to the value of the card; otherwise, you lose points. If the prophecy tile instead shows 2x, you score positive points if you lay out two cards of matching value, but different suits; any other combination loses you points.

Record your scores for the round, and after a total of four rounds (with four players), whoever has scored the most points wins. (With two and three players, you make adjustments to the number of cards and prophecy tiles used and rounds played.

Sakura Arms is a two-player dueling game in which players first choose two of seven megami (Japanese goddesses), each of which has a different keyword that empowers some of their cards. Players then see what the opponent chose before assembling a deck of ten out of 22 cards, with the players choosing cards both to take advantage of their own megami powers and to exploit their opponent's weaknesses. Players then duel to see who will be victorious.


The game uses a single kind of token to represent life, distance, aura (defense), and flare (special energy) based on the zone these tokens occupy. By moving tokens between zones, you attempt to gain the ideal position and set up as many attacks as possible — or be prepared to avoid attacks.

Six empires have risen from the ashes of the Galactic Realm. Still cemented by the alliance that enabled their unprecedented conquest of the galaxy, the six independent kingdoms now seek to consolidate their power, each hoping to carve out the strongest dominion in the cosmos. Conflicts among the young realms are inevitable, but will the galaxy return to a state of civil war?


Core Worlds: Empires is a worker placement game for 1-5 players. Each world in the galaxy occupies a board space that ambassadors (workers) can visit during the game. The worlds that appear during each game are variable. Each player starts with a certain number of worlds under their control, and more worlds enter the game as play proceeds.

At the start of the game, each player controls one unique worker that represents their faction leader (Chancellor Augustus, Baron Viktor, Prince Aaron, Empress Elona, Simon the Fox, or Lord Banner), as well as two generic ambassadors. All players periodically receive new generic ambassadors, but each player always possesses the same number of "workers". Players may upgrade their generic ambassadors into unique heroes in order to increase the quality of their individual workers.

"Back in 2009 at the World Boardgaming Championships," said Parks, "I sat down for a beer with Stephen Buonocore, the founder of Stronghold Games, while the two of us dreamed of bringing the Core Worlds universe to life. Stephen has been a marvelous shepherd for Core Worlds over the years, bestowing Stronghold's dedication to quality components and artwork to what has become a critically-acclaimed, award-winning series of games. I am so grateful to him and to the entire Stronghold team for all their hard work over the past decade."

"I would also like to thank Travis Worthington, the CEO of Indie Game Studios, for working with us so closely to make this a smooth transition for the fans of Core Worlds," continued Parks. "Thanks to Travis and Stephen, we will be able to draw upon the beautiful illustrations and graphic design that have given Core Worlds such a unique sci-fi look over the years."

"Core Worlds was one of the most significant releases in the early Stronghold Games catalog," said Stephen Buonocore, retired President of Stronghold Games, "and remains one of the most innovative deck-building games on the market. I am very excited for the future of this IP under Quixotic Games, and I will be backer #1 for Core Worlds: Empires!"

Whenever I told people about my strategy board gaming hobby, I would almost inevitably get a question about when I would make my own game. It's not that simple of course. There are so many strategy board games these days. There seemed like a ton when I started down this rabbit hole in the late 1990s, but now the volume is truly mind-boggling. And yet, the idea for First Monday in October just would not let me be.

The concept took root many, many years ago. After moving to Washington, DC in 2009 for work, I joined a new game group, which happened to be hosted at Jason Matthews' house. I was already a fan of his work, but I had no inkling at the time of wanting to design a game inspired by Twilight Struggle. Then one fateful evening a couple years later, Jason made an off-hand remark about never having figured out how to make a historical card-driven game about the Supreme Court. We were in the midst of playtesting 1989: Dawn of Freedom and discussing the various historical themes that could be interesting to explore. Jason mentioned his concern with who or what the players would reasonably represent in an overarching Supreme Court game, and I made a joke about loving the bizarreness of the parrot fish and shrimp in Reef Encounter. I promptly moved on with my life, but my subconscious had other plans.

Over the course of two hours, First Monday in October re-creates the history of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1789 to the present day, through three distinct eras: Era I represents the founding of the Court in 1789 until the Civil War in 1865; Era II represents 1866 until the seminal decision of Brown v. Board in 1954; and Era III represents 1955 until the present day.

The game revolves around the following four judicial philosophy tracks, with each player representing a think tank that's trying to influence opinion on them:

—Commerce Clause: This track represents the scope of Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which grants Congress the power to "regulate commerce" among the several states.
—Equality & Liberty: This track broadly represents the scope of individual equality and liberty, including but not limited to the 14th Amendment (i.e., equal protection, due process, and privacy rights).
—Free Speech: This track represents the obligation in the 1st Amendment that Congress make no law abridging a person's freedom of speech, and the scope of permissible restrictions on that freedom.
—Executive Power: This track broadly represents the scope of Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which enumerates the powers of the executive branch, including the Office of the President and law enforcement.

Shifting each philosophy one way generally represents a more expansive centralized Federalist interpretation of these constitutional provisions (consistent with a Hamilton-Madison perspective), whereas shifting each philosophy the other direction represents a more narrow decentralized Anti-Federalist application of these provisions (consistent with a Jefferson-Monroe perspective).