Maeshowe

Hand Management: Players will be dealt a hand of five cards at the beginning of the game. On their turn they will play one and discard one. Each card has a unique effect when played and when discarded giving you an intricate puzzle to solve with each hand of five. 

After playing, players will draw cards from the card deck until they have five cards again after which they will have to check the suit of all cards in hand. If all have the same suit, the player goes mad which has severe consequences. This increases the importance of choosing the right cards to play and discard.  
 

Resources Management: Your three basic resources are your Health, your food and your draw deck. Running out of health or cards in your deck will make you lose the game while food, while not necessary to win, will allow you to heal and manage your deck in useful ways. 

Cards will affect these resources differently depending on how they are played. For example a card might make you lose life when discarded and food when played, forcing you to make hard decisions on what is more important in the short and long term. 

Survival: In Maeshowe: An Orkney Saga mere survival won’t be enough but to actually win, players will have to dig their way out of the tomb. 

This is done by playing four Excavate Passage cards in a row. Each time a player does this Passage tokens are removed from the board, of which there will be different amounts depending on the difficulty setting. 

These cards do not offer any other benefits though, so having enough resources to handle the many negative effects that occur through discarding cards, will be essential before starting a new row of Excavate Passage cards.