The Grand Archives
Explore our collection of 85 board games
Casting Shadow
Explore a dark, enchanting world and battle your opponents in this 2-4 player turn-based competitive strategic board game. Throughout the game, you'll collect resources, learn new spells, summon a companion, and - if you're lucky - unlock your Shadow Form, all in the quest to become the ultimate Shadow Caster. The last player standing after this supernatural showdown wins the game!
CATAN
In CATAN (formerly The Settlers of Catan), players try to be the dominant force on the island of Catan by building settlements, cities and roads. On each turn dice are rolled to determine which resources the island produces. Players build structures by 'spending' resources (sheep, wheat, wood, brick and ore) which are represented by the relevant resource cards; each land type, with the exception of the unproductive desert, produces a specific resource: hills produce brick, forests produce wood, mountains produce ore, fields produce wheat, and pastures produce sheep. Set-up includes randomly placing large hexagonal tiles (each depicting one of the five resource-producing terrain types--or the desert) in a honeycomb shape and surrounding them with water tiles, some of which contain ports of exchange. A number disk, the value of which will correspond to the roll of two 6-sided dice, are placed on each terrain tile. Each player is given two settlements (think: houses) and roads (sticks) which are placed on intersections and borders of the terrain tiles. Players collect a hand of resource cards based on which terrain tiles their last-placed settlement is adjacent to. A robber pawn is placed on the desert tile. A turn consists of rolling the dice, collecting resource cards based on this dice roll and the position of settlements (or upgraded cities—think: hotels), turning in resource cards (if possible and desired) for improvements, trading cards at a port, possibly playing a development card, or trading resource cards with other players. If the dice roll is a 7, the active player moves the robber to a new terrain tile and steals a resource card from another player who has a settlement adjacent to that tile. Points are accumulated by building settlements and cities, having the longest road or the largest army (from some of the development cards), and gathering certain development cards that simply award victory points. When a player has gathered 10 points (some of which may be held in secret), s/he announces this and claims the win.
Catch The Moon
Roll the die – place a ladder – catch the moon! Climb through the clouds and reach for the moon! All it takes is a few cleverly placed ladders, a steady hand, and a bit of imagination. Reach for the moon, but don't stretch yourself too thin, or you may lose the ladders under your feet. With the right mix of suspense and risk-taking, you will ascend to success. In this dexterity/stacking game with a whimsical theme and beautiful design, players take turns rolling a die to determine how they must place their wooden ladder (it must touch one other ladder, two other ladders, or be the highest point. Ladders will shift as more pieces are added, adding an element of suspense and unpredictability. Raindrops are given to players whose ladders cause the structure to collapse; the winner is the player with the least amount of raindrops at the end of the game!
Celestia
In Celestia, a revamped version of Cloud 9, you board an aircraft with a team of adventurers to perform many trips through the cities of Celestia and recover their wonderful treasures. Your journey will not be safe, but you will attempt to be the richest adventurer by collecting the most precious treasures! At the beginning of a journey, all players place their pawns within the aircraft; the players start the game with six cards in hand (or eight depending on the number of players). At the beginning of each round, one player is chosen to be the captain of the trip and he rolls 2-4 dice to discover the challenges that they will face: fog, lightning bolts, killer birds, or pirates. He must then play the appropriate cards — a compass, a lightning arrester, a foghorn, or even cannons — to continue on the journey and reach the next city. But before the captain plays the appropriate cards, each player must decide whether to stay within the aircraft: If you exit, you're guaranteed the victory points that come from exploring the current city. If you stay on board, you hope to make it to the next city in order to catch more precious treasures. If the captain can't overcome the challenge, though, everyone comes crashing down empty-handed and you'll need to begin a new trip with all passengers on board. During the journey, each adventurer can try to pull out of the game with fabulous objects (a jetpack, astronomy glasses, etc.) or by changing the trip (modifying the travel or abandoning an explorer in the city). As soon as a player earns treasure worth at least fifty points, the game ends and this player wins.
Century: Big Box
Century: Spice Road is the first in a series of games that explores the history of each century with spice-trading as the theme for the first installment. In Century: Spice Road, players are caravan leaders who travel the famed silk road to deliver spices to the far reaches of the continent for fame and glory. Each turn, players perform one of four actions: Establish a trade route (by taking a market card) Make a trade or harvest spices (by playing a card from hand) Fulfill a demand (by meeting a victory point card's requirements and claiming it) Rest (by taking back into your hand all of the cards you've played) The last round is triggered once a player has claimed their fifth victory point card, then whoever has the most victory points wins.
Citadels
In Citadels, players take on new roles each round to represent characters they hire in order to help them acquire gold and erect buildings. The game ends at the close of a round in which a player erects their seventh building. Players then tally their points, and the player with the highest score wins. Players start the game with a number of building cards in their hand; buildings come in five colors, with the purple buildings typically having a special ability and the other colored buildings providing a benefit when you play particular characters. At the start of each round, the player who was king the previous round discards one of the eight character cards at random, chooses one, then passes the cards to the next player, etc. until each player has secretly chosen a character. Each character has a special ability, and the usefulness of any character depends upon your situation, and that of your opponents. The characters then carry out their actions in numerical order: the assassin eliminating another character for the round, the thief stealing all gold from another character, the wizard swapping building cards with another player, the warlord optionally destroys a building in play, and so on. On a turn, a player earns two or more gold (or draws two building cards then discards one), then optionally constructs one building (or up to three if playing the architect this round). Buildings cost gold equal to the number of symbols on them, and each building is worth a certain number of points. In addition to points from buildings, at the end of the game a player scores bonus points for having eight buildings or buildings of all five colors.
Color Flush
In Color Flush, try to be the first to get all the cards of the same color in your hand — but watch out as all the cards are double-sided, and you can see only one side. You have to wisely use the different actions you dispose of to flip over, draw, or give out your cards and end up with the right combination.
Concept
In Concept, your goal is to guess words through the association of icons. A team of two players – neighbors at the table – choose a word or phrase that the other players need to guess. Acting together, this team places pieces judiciously on the available icons on the game board. To get others to guess "milk", for example, the team might place the question mark icon (which signifies the main concept) on the liquid icon, then cubes of this color on the icons for "food/drink" and "white". For a more complicated concept, such as "Leonardo DiCaprio", the team can use the main concept and its matching cubes to clue players into the hidden phrase being an actor or director, while then using sub-concept icons and their matching cubes to gives clues to particular movies in which DiCaprio starred, such as Titanic or Inception. The first player to discover the word or phrase receives 2 victory points, the team receives points as well, and the player who ends up with the most points wins.
Cookie Box
You are working in a popular bakery where cookies sell like...well, hotcakes! With orders coming from all sides, you must be quick when making a box of nine cookies as the client ordered. Once you are done, ring the bell! In Cookie Box, you need to rearrange cookie tokens to match the order card, then quickly ring the bell and take the order card. The first player to collect four order cards wins, but you must not make too many mistakes in your packing. If you mess up orders twice, you're eliminated from the game!
Cubeez
It's time for a race! Can you make a face faster than anyone else in Cubeez? Not on your own face, though; no, you need to quickly turn and flip your three cubes to match the silly face on the challenge card. Will your Cubeez be surprised, sad, happy, angry, or a little bit of everything?
Deep Sea Advanture Boost
In Deep Sea Adventure, you and up to five other explorers are searching for riches under the sea, and while you're all rivals, you're also all poor, so you've pooled resources to rent a shared submarine...which means you're sharing the air supply too. If you don't return to the sub before air runs out, you have to drop everything in order to make it to safety. In each of three rounds, players take turns rolling dice and moving their diver along a trail of face-down treasure tokens. The deeper you go, the more valuable the tokens are! At the start of each turn, decide whether to dive deeper or head back toward the sub, lower the air supply, then roll the dice to move. On the space where you land, you can do nothing, pick up treasure (not looking at it and replacing it with an X token), or dropping off treasure in an X space. Why would you drop the object of your dreams? Because you need to make it back to the sub in order to score your treasure collection, and for each object you hold, you subtract 1 from the movement dice. Pick up too much, and you might not move at all. Glub. Deep Sea Adventure Boost features the same gameplay and components as Deep Sea Adventure, but it adds three new dice for a new way to play. These dice feature the digits 0 & 3, 1 & 3, and 1 & 2. When you roll, you now roll these three dice, then choose two of them to determine your movement, although you still subtract points for the treasure you hold. What's more, at the start of your turn, you can decide to "boost" your movement by using the sum of all three dice — but doing so uses an addition unit of air. Will your need for speed leave everyone gasping?
Dice Academy
Get ready to test your knowledge and your mental agility! Be the first player to match each theme to a word which starts with the letters you’re given! Rolls of the dice will come thick and fast as players’ minds run riot and words fire out!