Coloma

Introduction

Welcome to the town of Coloma! Players play the role of gold miners that have arrived in Coloma, in 1848 upon hearing of the chance discovery of gold in the surrounding area. As one of the first prospectors to arrive you have a head start on the swarm of fortune seekers heading west and great opportunity to become some of the biggest Gold Mining Tycoons in America!

Hire workers, provide them with tools and bid against your competitors to claim to lucrative mining sites. Pan the rivers, dig gold from the mountains and build assets in the town to help your mining empire expand. Your opponents will try to jump your claim and your mines could collapse if you take too many risks.

Using the construction tokens, players can acquire town asset cards that grant special abilities. For example building a warehouse will allow you to store construction tokens; houses and cabins will let you keep some miner tokens and many more.

Alternative Names: Western Gold The Age of Gold Gold Claim Gold Country Mines of Coloma 1848

Alternativly, re-theme the entire game. The Gold Rush period was actually a very bad time for native americans and the destroyed much of the natural environment. Also there's a ton of gold rush games.

Other possible themes that could fit the mechanisms:

Space Exploration

Questing

Scavenging/Survival

Thieves/Assassins

Private Investigators

Inventors/Scientists

Chefs

Scavenging/Survival - this would be a good fit for the tile flipping and searching. Looking for survivors to help you, looking for resources to build things. Each player controls a different gang and each have their own ideology so they don't really play well together. There are the dwellers, the wasters etc.

Every player has a common enemy and must be cautious to avoid them while scavenging. When the game tokens are first spilled into the middle, the face-up enemy tokens are put onto the enemy track. If a player accidentally places an enemy token on one of their structures, they face all of the enemies on the track. So the more enemies that are known about, the easier they are to avoid but the more you'll face if you confront one.

Private Investigators - Searching for evidence to solve crimes whilst trying to avoid suspects that will thwart your cases and destroy evidence. Tiles could include Witnesses, Physical Evidence, Photographs, Motives...

Quick prototype using Carcasonne tiles. Drop the tiles randomly. Players use action points to build their own lands.

...Stick to gold mining but disaccosiate with Coloma and real history. Create fictional land.