Quintessence

Quintessence is an 2-5 player abstract game probably best known as one of the early entries in the "Games 100." It was apparently self-published by a New York company in the late 70s and is long since out of print.

The board is pentagonally shaped, with pentagonally shaped spaces. There are five "power spaces" in the center of the board which the players are trying to occupy. The remainder are either card spaces (of three different colors), go-again spaces (you get a second move if you land there) or free spaces.

Each player has a set of markers, and a single pawn which they can move around the board. This is done by rolling a die and moving it that number of contiguous spaces. When you land on a colored space, you collect a card of that color. A set of three different colored cards are required to place markers on the power spaces. Card sets are also used to attack other player's markers and capture them.

The winner is the one to occupy the five "power spaces" or to eliminate the other players in the game.