Eight-Minute Empire: Legends

Build a small empire in a land of legends!

Eight-Minute Empire: Legends is a standalone sequel to the area control game Eight-Minute Empire and does not require the original game to play. Just like the original game, players take turns selecting a card from six on display. The card has an action that the player takes immediately, and actions help players take over the map – but what’s new and different in this version?

• Instead of goods, cards now have special abilities, which give players unique advantages and ways to break the rules throughout the game
• Each card has a unique, beautiful illustration of a fantasy creature or location
• A modular board for increased variety
• New variants

Is Eight-Minute Empire: Legends still playable in eight minutes? Yes, but only if you hurry!

Eight-Minute Empire: Legends is a quick game that implements the Civilization/Explorationtheme using card-driven area control (by placing armies and cities in a small map) and set collection (by getting abilities from the cards). Players spread through the map in order to collect points at the end of the game by having majorities in regions and continents. All actions (such as land or sea movement, army production, or the founding of cities) are driven by cards that are face-up (six at a time) and available by increasing prices. Cards also belong to sets, which also give points when the game ends if properly collected.

Smash Up

The “shufflebuilding” game Smash Up starts with a simple premise: Take the twenty-card decks of two factions, shuffle them into a forty-card deck, then compete to smash more Bases than your opponents! Each faction brings a different game mechanism into play – pirates move cards, zombies bring cards back from the discard pile, dinosaurs have huge power – and every combination of factions brings a different play experience.

During play, Base cards (each with their own difficulties and abilities) are in play. You attempt to have the most power on the Base from your minions when the Base is smashed. Sounds easy? How easy is it when an opponent’s Alien-Ninja decides to Beam Up your minions to other Bases – flat out Assassinate them? What about when the Pirate-Dinosaur player Full Sails in and releases King Rex to stomp your minions into the ground, or when the Wizard-Zombies use their Mystic Power to create an Outbreak, suddenly flooding minions onto the Base from the discard pile? Or what if you faced a Zombie-Dinosaur player instead and he created an Outbreak of massive beasts all at once?!?

When a Base is smashed, each player in first, second and third place scores points. Fourth place? Sorry, bro – try harder next time.

With eight different factions, Smash Up includes dozens of combinations to try. Pirate-Aliens play different than Ninja-Aliens, for instance. Which will you use to smash up your opponents?

And did we mention the dinosaurs have laser beams?

Integrates with:

• Smash Up: Munchkin
• Smash Up: Pretty Pretty Smash Up
• Smash Up: The Big Geeky Box
• Smash Up: Science Fiction Double Feature
• Smash Up: Monster Smash
• Smash Up: The Obligatory Cthulhu Set
• Smash Up: Awesome Level 9000

Origin

Starting from the heart of Africa, players in Origin will determine the course of mankind’s expansion on our planet, with the tribes gradually growing more diversified over time while still maintaining links to their ancestors and to all inhabitants of Earth.

The game tokens in Origin come in three colors, three heights, and three thicknesses, and at the start of the game one of the smallest, skinniest pieces is placed in the center of Africa. In addition, you place three technology tiles at random on the tan, orange and violet sections of the tech chart and six random tiles on the brown section; the tech tiles show 1-5 arrows. You also shuffle tan, orange and violet decks of cards and place them in the appropriate places. Tan cards provide an one-shot effect, orange cards give you a permanent power, and violet cards present you with an objective you must meet; if you do so, you can play the objective card on your turn, and immediately draw another. You can play at most one card of each color each turn.

On a turn, a player takes one of three actions:

• Place a new piece on a region of the game board, with this piece sharing two of the three characteristics of a piece in a neighboring region; the new piece cannot be shorter than the original piece. Mark this piece with a token of your player color.
• Move one of your pieces on the board to an empty region, with short pieces moving only one space, medium height pieces moving up to two spaces, and tall pieces up to three.
• Take over a region controlled by an opponent by moving one of your pieces into this region and relocating the opponent’s piece to the region your piece left. You can do this only if the attacking piece is thicker than the opponent’s piece.

When you place a new piece on the board or move an existing piece, you’re rewarded based on the color of the space you occupy. If you place in or move into a tan, orange or violet region, either you take a tile and the top card of this color or you draw three cards of this color and keep one of them. For a brown region, you either draw two tiles from the brown section of the tech board or draw one tile from anywhere. The technology tiles must be acquired from low to high – so you can’t acquire a 4 unless you have a 3 – but you can have multiple tech stacks. You must meet a certain technology threshold in order to play the orange cards and acquire their special power.

In addition, you can score points during the game by occupying a grassland on a continent or the two regions on opposite sides of a waterway strait.

Players take turns until either all of the pieces are on the game board or all the tiles have been acquired or all the cards of one color have been drawn. Once this happens, players tally their points for objectives, grasslands, straits, tech tiles, and cards still in hand to see who wins!

Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a tile-placement game in which the players draw and place a tile with a piece of southern French landscape on it. The tile might feature a city, a road, a cloister, grassland or some combination thereof, and it must be placed adjacent to tiles that have already been played, in such a way that cities are connected to cities, roads to roads, etcetera. Having placed a tile, the player can then decide to place one of his meeples on one of the areas on it: on the city as a knight, on the road as a robber, on a cloister as a monk, or on the grass as a farmer. When that area is complete, that meeple scores points for its owner.

During a game of Carcassonne, players are faced with decisions like: “Is it really worth putting my last meeple there?” or “Should I use this tile to expand my city, or should I place it near my opponent instead, giving him a hard time to complete his project and score points?” Since players place only one tile and have the option to place one meeple on it, turns proceed quickly even if it is a game full of options and possibilities.

This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us

This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us is a micro-sized strategy game that plays with … well, 2 to 4 players. From the publisher and designers that brought you the hit strategy game Belfort, you can now get your strategy game fix in 10-15 minutes with this new micro game from TMG (Tasty Minstrel Games).

In the game, players play cowboys as they place tiles and create areas within the town. Unfortunately each tile could have your cowboys on them, or other players’ cowboys – or cowboys from all players! Once an area is fully surrounded by fences you score that area. Look out for silver bars as they allow players to re-arrange one tile that has yet to be locked down!

Bullfrogs

“Just as water retains no constant shape, in warfare there are no constant conditions.” –Sun Tzu

Weapons clash, water splashes and the booming battle cries of armored bullfrogs ring out across the moonlit swamp. Amphibian armies leap from lily pad to lily pad in their desperate struggle to win control of the pond.

Suddenly, a shout of triumph rises up. Enough warriors have finally entered battle on a lily pad to dominate the fight and assure victory for their side. Overloaded, the lily pad sinks into the swamp.

Frogs scatter from the sinking lily pad to the surrounding ones, coming to aid their allies or sabotage their foes, their weight causing the lily pads to drift away across the cold, glittering water. The winning commander must understand the ripple effects of every move, and avoid acting to win a single battle at the cost of losing the war.

•••

In Bullfrogs, 2-4 players ages 8+ take control of warring factions of frogs and fight over lily pads in a pond over the course of 20-40 minutes.

Smallworld

In Small World, players vie for conquest and control of a world that is simply too small to accommodate them all.

Designed by Philippe Keyaerts as a fantasy follow-up to his award-winning Vinci, Small World is inhabited by a zany cast of characters such as dwarves, wizards, amazons, giants, orcs, and even humans, who use their troops to occupy territory and conquer adjacent lands in order to push the other races off the face of the earth.

Picking the right combination from the 14 different fantasy races and 20 unique special powers, players rush to expand their empires – often at the expense of weaker neighbors. Yet they must also know when to push their own over-extended civilization into decline and ride a new one to victory!

On each turn, you either use the multiple tiles of your chosen race (type of creatures) to occupy adjacent (normally) territories – possibly defeating weaker enemy races along the way, or you give up on your race letting it go “into decline”. A race in decline is designated by flipping the tiles over to their black-and-white side.

At the end of your turn, you score one point (coin) for each territory your races occupy. You may have one active race and one race in decline on the board at the same time. Your occupation total can vary depend on the special abilities of your race and the territories they occupy. After the final round, the player with the most coins wins.

Armadöra

In Nuggets (2003), players try to surround the “gold mines” (numbered cylinders) on an 8×5 grid board. On a turn, a player either places a numbered tile face down or places two fence sections on the board; these fences determine the borders of each claim, and each claim must be at least four spaces large. At the end of the game, all tiles are revealed, and each gold mine is awarded to the player whose tiles in that claim have the largest sum, with ties resulting in an equal division of points. Whoever collects the most mine points wins.

Armadöra (2013) uses the same gameplay as Nuggets for the base game, albeit with the players themed as orcs, elves, mages and goblins on the hunt for dwarven gold. Armodöra also adds advanced rules to the game, with each player receiving one reinforcement token and 1-2 special power tokens. Instead of placing a warrior or erecting palisades (fences), a player can place a reinforcement token on one of his warriors in a territory that’s already filled, boosting the strength of that warrior by one. A player can use his special power before taking one of the three normal actions, with the elf shooting an opposing warrior in an unfilled territory (lowering his strength by one), the orc placing an additional palisade that turn, the goblin placing a second warrior (with this one being face-up), and the mage looking at the value of an already placed opponent’s warrior.

Portal: The Uncooperative Cake

With a grinding of gears and some uneasy rumbling, Aperture Laboratories has resumed testing! Your team of test subjects has entered the Lab and is ready to perform all sorts of important, dignified, and dangerous testing procedures…all in the pursuit of cake! It’s a fun and funny fast-paced fight to the finish — and by finish, we mean your team probably died.

The Lab is an ever-changing conveyor belt of death and dismemberment. But SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS must be at the forefront of the mind of every good test subject. In Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game, a game of constantly shifting area control and cardplay by the creators of the Portal and Portal 2video games, players move and Portal their test subjects to various chambers in the lab. At the end of each player’s turn, one of the chambers on the end of the lab gives way, plunging all test subjects on it into oblivion. But should your test subjects have numbered greater than all others in the falling chamber, they earn you some wonderful parting gifts, which can include cake.

Yet these moist slices of industrial-grade cake must be stored in the lab where they are at risk of falling into said oblivion. Not to mention that your jealous opponents can pick up your cake and move it closer to that precipice. He who has acquired the most cake when a team has lost its last test subject wins. Do you risk gathering cake early for a quick win? Or do you bide your time and wait until you can protect it better? Win the game and prove the cake was no lie.

For Sale

For Sale is a quick, fun game nominally about buying and selling real estate. During the game’s two distinct phases, players first bid for several buildings then, after all buildings have been bought, sell the buildings for the greatest profit possible.

Chez Dork

Inspired by the success of Chez Geek, Steve Jackson presents another John Kovalic inspiration. This game is about buying the latest geeky gadgets and gamer items. Each player takes on the personality of one of the stars of Kovalic’s comic “Dork Tower” in an attempt to purchase and possess the items that satisfy their obsessions. Of course, tastes are prone to change (one week it’s LARPs, the next it’s Computer Games), so players are constantly trying to purchase/trade/auction items so as to reach a certain number of points (items in your obsession count double towards victory). A light-hearted game with loads of gamer/otaku/LARP humor makes this a nice filler game that anyone can play.

NOTE: Some form of currency/money is needed to play this game.

Boss Monster

Inspired by a love of classic video games, Boss Monster: The Dungeon Building Card Game pits 2-4 players in a competition to build the ultimate side-scrolling dungeon. Players compete to lure and destroy hapless adventurers, racing to outbid one another to see who can build the most enticing, treasure-filled dungeon. The goal of Boss Monster is to be the first Boss to amass ten Souls, which are gained when a Hero is lured and defeated — but a player can lose if his Boss takes five Wounds from Heroes who survive his dungeon.

Playing Boss Monster requires you to juggle two competing priorities: the need to lure Heroes at a faster rate than your opponents, and the need to kill those Heroes before they reach your Boss. Players can build one room per turn, each with its own damage and treasure value. More attractive rooms tend to deal less damage, so a Boss who is too greedy can become inundated with deadly Heroes.

Players interact with each other by building rooms and playing Spells. Because different Heroes seek different treasure types, and rooms are built simultaneously (played face down, then revealed), this means that every “build phase” is a bidding war. Spells are instant-speed effects that can give players advantages or disrupt opponents.

As a standalone card game with 155 cards, Boss Monster contains everything that 2-4 players need to play.

The Princess Bride: A Battle of Wits

A Battle of Wits (a Princess Bride game) is an exciting game of bluff and double bluff for between two and ten players. A row of goblets sit in the middle of the table, ready to be filled with either wine or poison. Players each take the role of one character but it is only at the very end of a game that they will drink, one from each goblet. During the game, they must play their cards, one each turn, either into the top of a goblet (adding poison or wine to a goblet) or to the bottom of a goblet (bidding on the goblet). Who will fall prey to their enemies and who will eliminate themselves? Only the most intelligent will survive!

Sentinels of the Multiverse

A mad scientist holds the world hostage with his terrifying inventions. An alien warlord from a far away galaxy brings his limitless army of bizarre minions to conquer the planet. A giant rampaging robot cuts a swath of destruction across the coast, destroying major population centers. And who will stand in their way? A team of heroes, all with impressive powers and abilities stand between the world and the forces of evil. Will you help them? Answer the call to protect the multiverse!

Sentinels of the Multiverse is a cooperative, fixed-deck card game with a comic book flavor. Each player plays as one of ten heroes, against one of four villains, and the battle takes place in one of four different dynamic environments.

Each player, after selecting one of the heroes, plays a deck of 40 cards against the villain and environment decks, which “play themselves”, requiring the players to put the top card of the appropriate deck into play on the villain and environment turns. On each player’s turn, they may play a card from their hand, use a power printed on one of their cards in play, and draw a card from their deck. Each round starts with the villain turn, continues clockwise around the table, then concludes with the environment turn. Each villain has various advantages, such as starting with certain cards in play, as specified by the villain character card. Play continues until the heroes reduce the villain to 0 or fewer HP, or until the villain defeats the heroes, either via a win condition or by reducing all the heroes to 0 or fewer HP.

Castle Panic

The forest is filled with all sorts of monsters. They watched and waited as you built your castle and trained your soldiers, but now they’ve gathered their army and are marching out of the woods. Can you work with your friends to defend your castle against the horde, or will the monsters tear down your walls and destroy the precious castle towers? You will all win or lose together, but in the end only one player will be declared the Master Slayer!

Castle Panic is a cooperative, light strategy game for 1 to 6 players ages 10 and up. Players must work together to defend their castle, in the center of the board, from monsters that attack out of the forest at the edges of the board. Players trade cards, hit and slay monsters, and plan strategies together to keep their castle towers intact. The players either win or lose together, but only the player with the most victory points is declared the Master Slayer. Players must balance the survival of the group with their own desire to win.

Munchkin Panic

Munchkin Panic is a semi-cooperative board game that blends the all-for-one gameplay ofCastle Panic and the all-for-me gameplay of Munchkin.

In this hybrid game, the Munchkin monsters have found the Castle Panic towers and are on the rampage! Players need to combine cards to hit and slay the monsters before they destroy the castle. The card combos available in Munchkin Panic are created from a unique mixing of the decks of the two source games. Each defeated monster becomes a trophy and gives up its treasure to the victor. If players work together to defeat the monsters, the player with the highest point count becomes Master Munchkin — but players must balance their self-interest with the cooperation necessary to survive. If players get too greedy, the monsters will stomp the castle flat while the players are too busy fighting amongst themselves!

Forbidden Island

Forbidden Island is a visually stunning ‘cooperative’ board game. Instead of winning by competing with other players like most games, everyone must work together to win the game. Players take turns moving their pawns around the ‘island’, which is built by arranging the many beautifully screen-printed tiles before play begins. As the game progresses, more and more island tiles sink, becoming unavailable, and the pace increases. Players use strategies to keep the island from sinking, while trying to collect treasures and items. As the water level rises, it gets more difficult- sacrifices must be made.

What causes this game to truly stand out among co-op and competitive games alike is the extreme detail that has been paid to the physical components of the game. It comes in a sturdy and organized tin of good shelf storage size. The plastic treasure pieces and wooden pawns are well crafted and they fit just right into the box. The cards are durable, well printed, and easy to understand. The island tiles are the real gem: they are screen-printed with vibrant colors, each with a unique and pleasing image.

With multiple levels of difficulty, different characters to choose from (each with a special ability of their own), many optional island formats and game variations available, Forbidden Island has huge replay value. The game can be played by as few as two players and up to four (though it can accommodate five). More players translates into a faster and more difficult game, though the extra help can make all the difference. This is a fun game, tricky for players of almost any age. Selling for under twenty dollars, oddly, Forbidden Island is a rare game of both quality and affordable price.

For those who enjoy Forbidden Island, a follow-up project by Gamewright titled Forbidden Desert was released in 2013.

Betrayal at House on the Hill

Betrayal at House on the Hill quickly builds suspense and excitement as players explore a haunted mansion of their own design, encountering spirits and frightening omens that foretell their fate. With an estimated one hour playing time, Betrayal at House on the Hill is ideal for parties, family gatherings or casual fun with friends.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a tile game that allows players to build their own haunted house room by room, tile by tile, creating a new thrilling game board every time. The game is designed for three to six people, each of whom plays one of six possible characters.

Secretly, one of the characters betrays the rest of the party, and the innocent members of the party must defeat the traitor in their midst before it’s too late! Betrayal at House on the Hill will appeal to any game player who enjoys a fun, suspenseful, and strategic game.

Betrayal at House on the Hill includes detailed game pieces, including character cards, pre-painted plastic figures, and special tokens, all of which help create a spooky atmosphere and streamline game play.

Elder Sign

It is 1926, and the museum’s extensive collection of exotic curios and occult artifacts poses a threat to the barriers between our world and the elder evils lurking between dimensions. Gates to the beyond begin to leak open, and terrifying creatures of increasing strength steal through them. Animals, the mad, and those of more susceptible minds are driven to desperation by the supernatural forces the portals unleash. Only a handful of investigators race against time to locate the eldritch symbols necessary to seal the portals forever. Only they can stop the Ancient One beyond from finding its way to Earth and reducing humanity to cinders.

Elder Sign is a fast-paced, cooperative dice game of supernatural intrigue for one to eight players by Richard Launius and Kevin Wilson, the designers of Arkham Horror. Players take the roles of investigators racing against time to stave off the imminent return of the Ancient One. Armed with tools, allies, and occult knowledge, investigators must put their sanity and stamina to the test as they adventure to locate Elder Signs, the eldritch symbols used to seal away the Ancient Ones and win the game.

To locate Elder Signs, investigators must successfully endure Adventures within the museum and its environs. A countdown mechanism makes an Ancient One appear if the investigators are not quick enough. The investigators must then battle the Ancient One. A clever and thematic dice mechanism pits their exploration against monsters and the sheer difficulty of staying sane and healthy, all within the standard game duration of one to two hours.

Escape the Nightmare

A challenging fifty four card cooperative real time trading game (With optional singing).

You play as a group of friends inhabiting a shared nightmare. Your hand consists of nightmarish aspects and you goal is to trade these with your friends. If someone can get a collection of similar aspects then they can master that part of the nightmare and contribute to your eventual escape – however each card that you receive in trade can force you to undertake certain actions, restrict who you trade with or limit how you can communicate. To make matters worse something is chasing you through the nightmare and you have to trade its card every ten seconds or be devoured. It’s coming. Run.

During set-up players choose a collection of nightmare types based on the number of players. This choice allows a group to include or exclude certain mechanics – so whether your nightmare will be an all singing all dancing nightmare is down to the exuberance of the players rather than luck of the draw.

Escape the Nightmare is a challenging experience, with the average group losing a fair few games before their first victory. However the play time is quick and resetting for another go takes seconds. There are six difficulty levels to make the game accessible for groups of any level of skill and selecting different types of nightmare allows players to set the tone of their game to suit their preferences.

7 Wonders

You are the leader of one of the 7 great cities of the Ancient World. Gather resources, develop commercial routes, and affirm your military supremacy. Build your city and erect an architectural wonder which will transcend future times.

7 Wonders lasts three ages. In each age, players receive seven cards from a particular deck, choose one of those cards, then pass the remainder to an adjacent player. Players reveal their cards simultaneously, paying resources if needed or collecting resources or interacting with other players in various ways. (Players have individual boards with special powers on which to organize their cards, and the boards are double-sided). Each player then chooses another card from the deck they were passed, and the process repeats until players have six cards in play from that age. After three ages, the game ends.

In essence, 7 Wonders is a card development game. Some cards have immediate effects, while others provide bonuses or upgrades later in the game. Some cards provide discounts on future purchases. Some provide military strength to overpower your neighbors and others give nothing but victory points. Each card is played immediately after being drafted, so you’ll know which cards your neighbor is receiving and how his choices might affect what you’ve already built up. Cards are passed left-right-left over the three ages, so you need to keep an eye on the neighbors in both directions.

Though the box of earlier editions is listed as being for 3–7 players, there is an official 2-player variant included in the instructions.

Our copy includes the Cities expansion, allowing for up to 8 players.

Dominion

“You are a monarch, like your parents before you, a ruler of a small pleasant kingdom of rivers and evergreens. Unlike your parents, however, you have hopes and dreams! You want a bigger and more pleasant kingdom, with more rivers and a wider variety of trees. You want a Dominion! In all directions lie fiefs, freeholds, and feodums. All are small bits of land, controlled by petty lords and verging on anarchy. You will bring civilization to these people, uniting them under your banner.

But wait! It must be something in the air; several other monarchs have had the exact same idea. You must race to get as much of the unclaimed land as possible, fending them off along the way. To do this you will hire minions, construct buildings, spruce up your castle, and fill the coffers of your treasury. Your parents wouldn’t be proud, but your grandparents, on your mother’s side, would be delighted.”

In Dominion, each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards. In the center of the table is a selection of other cards the players can “buy” as they can afford them. Through their selection of cards to buy, and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck on the fly, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by game end.

Dominion is not a CCG, but the play of the game is similar to the construction and play of a CCG deck. The game comes with 500 cards. You select 10 of the 25 Kingdom card types to include in any given play—leading to immense variety.

Inclusion of the Intrigue expansion allows for up to 8 players.

Epic

Epic is a fantasy card game by White Wizard Games which aims to recreate the TCG-style experience from a single box, with no additional purchases required.

Epic is a card game designed to start quickly but also to reward deep, strategic plays. In Epic, you take on the role of an elder god, in conflict with other elder gods. The cards in your deck are your champions, who fight for you, and events, which represent your will imposed on the mortal realm. In Epic, the turn sequence is easy but there are many options to choose from. You begin the game with a hand of five cards – each card costs either one gold or is free. You get one gold each turn — you don’t need to draw special resource cards or energy cards just to play with your other cards. Instead of figuring out which cards you might be allowed to play, you choose which card you want to play.

Epic is non-collectable, so every box contains the same 120 unique event and champion cards, with 8 double-sided cards to represent temporary “token” champions. One box supports preconstructed, sealed and draft formats for 2-4 players, two boxes up to 8 players, and three if you want to create a full constructed deck or a “cube” environment for drafting.

Munchkin Series

Munchkin is a satirical card game based on the clichés and oddities of Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games. Each player starts at level 1 and the winner is the first player to reach level 10. Players can acquire familiar D&D style character classes during the game which determine to some extent the cards they can play.

There are two types of cards – treasure and encounters. Each turn the current players ‘kicks down the door’ – drawing an encounter card from the deck. Usually this will involve battling a monster. Monsters have their own levels and players must try and overcome it using the levels, weapons and powers they have acquired during the game or run away. Other players can chose to help the player or hinder by adding extra monsters to the encounter. Defeating a monster will usually result in drawing treasure cards and acquiring levels. Being defeated by a monster results in “bad stuff” which usually involves losing levels and treasure.

Ticket to Ride

With elegantly simple gameplay, Ticket to Ride can be learned in under 15 minutes, while providing players with intense strategic and tactical decisions every turn. Players collect cards of various types of train cars they then use to claim railway routes in North America. The longer the routes, the more points they earn. Additional points come to those who fulfill Destination Tickets – goal cards that connect distant cities; and to the player who builds the longest continuous route.

“The rules are simple enough to write on a train ticket – each turn you either draw more cards, claim a route, or get additional Destination Tickets,” says Ticket to Ride author, Alan R. Moon. “The tension comes from being forced to balance greed – adding more cards to your hand, and fear – losing a critical route to a competitor.”

Ticket to Ride continues in the tradition of Days of Wonder‘s big format board games featuring high-quality illustrations and components including: an oversize board map of North America, 225 custom-molded train cars, 144 illustrated cards, and wooden scoring markers.

Since its introduction and numerous subsequent awards, Ticket to Ride has become the BoardGameGeek epitome of a “gateway game” — simple enough to be taught in a few minutes, and with enough action and tension to keep new players involved and in the game for the duration.

Cypher

Faced with constant hacker attacks, the corporations created an artificial intelligence that could learn from the hackers themselves. The AI, codenamed Cypher, evolved faster than its creators could have imagined. It gained sentience, went rogue, and became the ultimate hacker. Now Cypher is fighting the corporations themselves for control of the nexus.

In Cypher, players take on the role of factions that are gathering characters from all spheres of influence — from corporate overseers to street level hackers — in order to dominate Cypher and seize control of the nexus. The player with the most influence at the end of the game wins!

Machi Koro

Welcome to the city of Machi Koro. You’ve just been elected Mayor. Congrats! Unfortunately the citizens have some pretty big demands: jobs, a theme park, a couple of cheese factories and maybe even a radio tower. A tough proposition since the city currently consists of a wheat field, a bakery and a single die.

Armed only with your trusty die and a dream, you must grow Machi Koro into the largest city in the region. You will need to collect income from developments, build public works, and steal from your neighbors’ coffers. Just make sure they aren’t doing the same to you!

Machi Koro is a fast-paced game for 2-4 players. Each player wants to develop the city on his own terms in order to complete all of the landmarks under construction faster than his rivals. On his turn, each player rolls one or two dice. If the sum of the dice rolled matches the number of a building that a player owns, he gets the effect of that building; in some cases opponents will also benefit from your die (just as you can benefit from theirs). Then, with money in hand a player can build a landmark or a new building, ideally adding to the wealth of his city on future turns. The first player to construct all of his landmarks wins!

Sushi Go!

In the super-fast sushi card game Sushi Go!, you are eating at a sushi restaurant and trying to grab the best combination of sushi dishes as they whiz by. Score points for collecting the most sushi rolls or making a full set of sashimi. Dip your favorite nigiri in wasabi to triple its value! And once you’ve eaten it all, finish your meal with all the pudding you’ve got! But be careful which sushi you allow your friends to take; it might be just what they need to beat you!

Sushi Go! takes the card-drafting mechanism of Fairy Tale and 7 Wonders and distills it into a twenty-minute game that anyone can play. The dynamics of “draft and pass” are brought to the fore, while keeping the rules to a minimum. As you see the first few hands of cards, you must quickly assess the make-up of the round and decide which type of sushi you’ll go for. Then, each turn you’ll need to weigh which cards to keep and which to pass on. The different scoring combinations allow for some clever plays and nasty blocks. Round to round, you must also keep your eye on the goal of having the most pudding cards at the end of the game!

Ascension: Return of the Fallen

Ascension: Return of the Fallen is the newest set for the popular deck-building game Ascension: Deckbuilding Game. The 65-card Ascension: Return of the Fallen is playable as a 2 player stand-alone game, or can be combined with Ascension: Deckbuilding Game for an expanded game with up to six players. With its 65 all-new cards for the Center Deck, the Return of the Fallen provides players with the ability to face the God Samael in a final battle to determine the fate of Vigil. It also includes a new Fate mechanic that can change the game with a single flip of a card.

Ascension: Deckbuilding Game revolves around a Center Deck containing Heroes, Constructs, and Monsters. Players take turns recruiting Heroes or Constructs for their decks or defeating Monsters to earn honor and ultimate victory. Ascension: Deckbuilding Gamejoins other deck-building games including Dominion, Thunderstone and Resident Evil and Fantasy Flights Living Card Games (Call of Cthuhlu, Warhammer Invasion and Game of Thrones) as a new category of games that continue to increase in popularity. These games combine complexity of combat-focused card game experience with the benefit of not having to chase powerful randomly distributed, blindly-packaged cards.

(We are combining with Ascension: Apprentice Edition to allow for up to 4 players, or multiple other sets for up to 6)

Coloretto

Game play in Coloretto is simple: Either draw a card to play to a row, or take a row of cards to add them to your collection. A row can have at most three cards, so at some point everyone is forced to take a row. Once all the rows have been claimed, players start a new round, drawing or taking once again.

What are you trying to do with these cards? Collect huge sets – but only in three colors as every color beyond the third will cost you points. Jokers are highly-prized as they always match what you want, and +2 cards provide sure points, giving you a back-up plan if everything goes south in terms of the colors you’re collecting.

Once only a few cards remain in the deck, the round ends and everyone tallies their score, choosing three colors of cards to score positively while any other colors count against you. Each color is scored using a triangular number system: the first card in a color is ±1 point, the second card is ±2 points, and so on. The player with the high score wins!

A two-player variant is included with some versions of Coloretto, with the only change being that rows can have only 1-3 cards placed in them, depending on the icons on the row cards.

Good Cop Bad Cop

Good Cop Bad Cop is a 52 card hidden identity, deduction game where each player takes on the role of a law enforcement officer in a corrupt district. Players must investigate others to figure out who is on their side, grab one of the 2-3 guns on the table, and shoot the opposing leader to win the game.

Munchkin Loot Letter

Loot Letter is a Munchkin themed edition of the popular game Love Letter that has players competing to get the most loot from their Munchkin dungeon dive.

Love Letter is a game of risk, deduction, and luck for 2–4 players. Your goal is to get your love letter into Princess Annette’s hands while deflecting the letters from competing suitors. From a deck with only sixteen cards, each player starts with only one card in hand; one card is removed from play. On a turn, you draw one card, and play one card, trying to expose others and knock them from the game. Powerful cards lead to early gains, but make you a target. Rely on weaker cards for too long, however, and your letter may be tossed in the fire!

The Resistance

The Empire must fall. Our mission must succeed. By destroying their key bases, we will shatter Imperial strength and liberate our people. Yet spies have infiltrated our ranks, ready for sabotage. We must unmask them. In five nights we reshape destiny or die trying. We are the Resistance!

The Resistance is a party game of social deduction. It is designed for five to ten players, lasts about 30 minutes, and has no player elimination. The Resistance is inspired by Mafia/Werewolf, yet it is unique in its core mechanics, which increase the resources for informed decisions, intensify player interaction, and eliminate player elimination.

Players are either Resistance Operatives or Imperial Spies. For three to five rounds, they must depend on each other to carry out missions against the Empire. At the same time, they must try to deduce the other players’ identities and gain their trust. Each round begins with discussion. When ready, the Leader entrusts sets of Plans to a certain number of players (possibly including himself/herself). Everyone votes on whether or not to approve the assignment. Once an assignment passes, the chosen players secretly decide to Support or Sabotage the mission. Based on the results, the mission succeeds (Resistance win) or fails (Empire win). When a team wins three missions, they have won the game.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf

No moderator, no elimination, ten-minute games.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf is a fast game for 3-10 players in which everyone gets a role: One of the dastardly Werewolves, the tricky Troublemaker, the helpful Seer, or one of a dozen different characters, each with a special ability. In the course of a single morning, your village will decide who is a werewolf…because all it takes is lynching one werewolf to win!

Because One Night Ultimate Werewolf is so fast, fun, and engaging, you’ll want to play it again and again, and no two games are ever the same.

This game can be combined with One Night Ultimate Werewolf Daybreak.

Captain Sonar

At the bottom of the ocean, no one will hear you scream!

In Captain Sonar, you and your teammates control a state-of-the-art submarine and are trying to locate an enemy submarine in order to blow it out of the water before they can do the same to you. Every role is important, and the confrontation is merciless. Be organized and communicate because a captain is nothing without his crew: the Chief Mate, the Radio Operator, and the Engineer.

All the members of a team sit on one side of the table, and they each take a particular role on the submarine, with the division of labor for these roles being dependent on the number of players in the game: One player might be the captain, who is responsible for moving the submarine and announcing some details of this movement; another player is manning the sonar in order to listen to the opposing captain’s orders and try to decipher where that sub might be in the water; a third player might be working in the munitions room to prepare torpedoes, mines and other devices that will allow for combat.

Captain Sonar can be played in two modes: turn-by-turn or simultaneous. In the latter set-up, all the members of a team take their actions simultaneously while trying to track what the opponents are doing, too. When a captain is ready to launch an attack, the action pauses for a moment to see whether a hit has been recorded — then play resumes with the target having snuck away while the attacker paused or with bits of metal now scattered across the ocean floor.

Multiple maps are included with varying levels of difficulty.

Mysterium

In the 1920s, Mr. MacDowell, a gifted astrologist, immediately detected a supernatural being upon entering his new house in Scotland. He gathered eminent mediums of his time for an extraordinary séance, and they have seven hours to contact the ghost and investigate any clues that it can provide to unlock an old mystery.

Unable to talk, the amnesic ghost communicates with the mediums through visions, which are represented in the game by illustrated cards. The mediums must decipher the images to help the ghost remember how he was murdered: Who did the crime? Where did it take place? Which weapon caused the death? The more the mediums cooperate and guess well, the easier it is to catch the right culprit.

In Mysterium, a reworking of the game system present in Tajemnicze Domostwo, one player takes the role of ghost while everyone else represents a medium. To solve the crime, the ghost must first recall (with the aid of the mediums) all of the suspects present on the night of the murder. A number of suspect, location and murder weapon cards are placed on the table, and the ghost randomly assigns one of each of these in secret to a medium.

Each hour (i.e., game turn), the ghost hands one or more vision cards face up to each medium, refilling their hand to seven each time they share vision cards. These vision cards present dreamlike images to the mediums, with each medium first needing to deduce which suspect corresponds to the vision cards received. Once the ghost has handed cards to the final medium, they start a two-minute sandtimer. Once a medium has placed their token on a suspect, they may also place clairvoyancy tokens on the guesses made by other mediums to show whether they agree or disagree with those guesses.

After time runs out, the ghost reveals to each medium whether the guesses were correct or not. Mediums who guessed correctly move on to guess the location of the crime (and then the murder weapon), while those who didn’t keep their vision cards and receive new ones next hour corresponding to the same suspect. Once a medium has correctly guessed the suspect, location and weapon, they move their token to the epilogue board and receive one clairvoyancy point for each hour remaining on the clock. They can still use their remaining clairvoyancy tokens to score additional points.

If one or more mediums fail to identify their proper suspect, location and weapon before the end of the seventh hour, then the ghost has failed and dissipates, leaving the mystery unsolved. If, however, they have all succeeded, then the ghost has recovered enough of its memory to identify the culprit.

Mediums then group their suspect, location and weapon cards on the table and place a number by each group. The ghost then selects one group, places the matching culprit number face down on the epilogue board, picks three vision cards — one for the suspect, one for the location, and one for the weapon — then shuffles these cards. Players who have achieved few clairvoyancy points flip over one vision card at random, then secretly vote on which suspect they think is guilty; players with more points then flip over a second vision card and vote; then those with the most points see the final card and vote.

If a majority of the mediums have identified the proper suspect, with ties being broken by the vote of the most clairvoyant medium, then the killer has been identified and the ghost can now rest peacefully. If not, well, perhaps you can try again…

Taboo

Taboo is a party word game. Players take turns describing a word or phrase on a drawn card to their partner without using five common additional words or phrases also on the card. The opposing partners watch a timer and use a buzzer to stop the game, buzz the player describing if one of the five off limits words or phrases is used, or the describing player makes any gestures. The describing team gets a point for each card they guess successfully and the opposing team gets a point for each card they pass on, make gestures on, or lose for saying one of the off limits words or phrases. An excellent party game!

Quarriors

Players take on the roles of Quarriors – mighty mystical warriors who have the power to capture dangerous quarry from the untamed Wilds! They must conjure the mysterious powers of Quiddity, cast powerful spells, and summon their creatures to battle if they hope to overcome rivals and earn their rightful place as the Champion!

Quarriors has the frenetic excitement of a dice battle game, with an added ‘deckbuilding’ twist: players customize their dice pools during the game using resources generated by their rolls.

Quarriors takes the best of deckbuilding games without the tedium of shuffling. Take a typical deckbuilding game, add the speed and fun of dice and in 60 minutes you’re on your second or third game trying unique strategies against your opponents.

In Quarriors, each player plays as a Quarrior competing for Glory in the eyes of Quiana, the Empress of Quaridia. Each player starts with an identical set of 12 dice in their dice bag. At the start of the game, Creature and Spell dice (Quarry) are dealt at random to form “the Wilds” in the center of the table. As play progresses, players roll their dice to attempt to summon Creatures, cast Spells, and harness the magical power of Quiddity (the in-game resource) to capture Quarry from the Wilds to add to their repertoire and into their dice bag. Players draw and roll 6 dice a turn from their bag, making that controlling bag composition is key to victory.

Quarriors is a fast-paced game where players must strategically balance their choices each turn. Do I use my Quiddity to summon Creatures in the hopes of scoring Glory or should I spend it all to capture more powerful Quarry from the Wilds? Players must outmaneuver their opponent’s through strategic Spell use, the acquisition of powerful Quarry, and ultimately, by striking down opponent’s Creature in combat. If your Creatures survive until your next turn, you will score Glory points and move closer to victory!

(Designed for 2-4 players, expandable to 6 with house rules / added components)

Cthulhu Dice

Serving Cthulhu is fun… except for all those other cultists out to get you. So get them first!

Cthulhu Dice lets you drive your rivals mad… Very, very quickly. Players take turns rolling the big, beautiful, custom 12-sided die, embossed with tentacles, Elder Signs, and more. Destroy your opponents’ sanity! Better yet, steal it. But watch out for Cthulhu – when he comes up, he takes sanity from everyone! Eighteen glass Sanity marbles are included. Lose all your marbles and you’re mad. The last sane cultist wins… Unless everyone goes mad together. Then Cthulhu wins!

Cthulhu Dice Enhanced is a home-grown expansion variant that incorporates multiple Cthulhu dice and token types to add additional depth and complexity to this simple game, while retaining its basic feel and mechanics. The Enhanced version includes an improved resource management mechanic and expands available player choice.

King of Tokyo

In King of Tokyo, you play mutant monsters, gigantic robots, and strange aliens—all of whom are destroying Tokyo and whacking each other in order to become the one and only King of Tokyo.

At the start of each turn, you roll six dice, which show the following six symbols: 1, 2, or 3 Victory Points, Energy, Heal, and Attack. Over three successive throws, choose whether to keep or discard each die in order to win victory points, gain energy, restore health, or attack other players into understanding that Tokyo is YOUR territory.

The fiercest player will occupy Tokyo, and earn extra victory points, but that player can’t heal and must face all the other monsters alone!

Top this off with special cards purchased with energy that have a permanent or temporary effect, such as the growing of a second head which grants you an additional die, body armor, nova death ray, and more…. and it’s one of the most explosive games of the year!

In order to win the game, one must either destroy Tokyo by accumulating 20 victory points, or be the only surviving monster once the fighting has ended.

Inn-Fighting

The dice game of champions in the Dungeons & Dragons world.
From the creators of Three-Dragon Ante, the Dungeons & Dragons in-world card game, comes the perfect dice game for D&D players and characters alike. With a roll of the dice, you determine whether to hurl a mug of ale at the warbling bard or smash a chair over the drunken barbarian’s back. Treachery and chaos abound, as every game promises a new and hilarious tavern brawling experience. Inside every Inn Fighting box you’ll find a rules sheet, a set of 6 special six-sided dice, 1 twenty-sided die, and 52 character cards. Choose a character, trade some dice rolls with your friends, and see who’s left standing in the end!
Rob Heinsoo was a Senior Game Designer at Wizards of the Coast, Inc. He co-wrote the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, worked on several sets for the Dungeons & Dragons MiniaturesGame, and designed the popular Three-Dragon Ante card game.

Martian Dice

Your mission, Martians, is to swoop down on the pathetic denizens of the primitive planet Earth and scoop up as many of the inhabitants as you can manage. We are interested in samples of the Chicken, Cow, and Human populations so that we can determine which of them is actually in charge. The Earthlings might manage to put up a feeble defense, but surely nothing that a small taste of your Death Rays can’t handle. Make Mars proud – be the first Martian to fill your abduction quota!

In Martian Dice you will roll 13 custom dice in an effort to set aside (“abduct”) Humans, Chickens, and Cows. With each roll you must first set aside any Tanks, representing the human military coming to fend off your alien invasion. Then you may choose one type of die to set aside as well – one of the earthlings to abduct, or Death Rays to combat the military. At the end of your turn, if you have at least as many Death Rays as Tanks, then you may abduct the earthlings you’ve been setting aside. You can’t pick any type of Earthling twice in one turn, but if you manage to abduct at least one of each you’ll score a bonus!

With each roll you will ask yourself, do you feel lucky?

Zombie Dice

Eat brains. Don’t get shotgunned.

In Zombie Dice, you are a zombie. You want braaains – more brains than any of your zombie buddies. The 13 custom dice are your victims. Push your luck to eat their brains, but stop rolling before the shotgun blasts end your turn! Whoever collects 13 brains first wins. Each game takes 10 to 20 minutes and can be taught in a single round.

Each turn, you take three dice from the box and roll them. A brain symbol is worth one point at the end of the round, while footsteps allow you to reroll this particular dice. Shotgun blasts on the other hand are rather bad, cause if you collect three shotgun blasts during your turn, it is over for you and you get no points. After rolling three dice, you may decide if you want to score your current brain collection or if you want to push your luck by grabbing new dice so you have three again and roll once more.

LCR

This game consists of three dice and a set of poker chips. Each player starts with three chips and on their turn a player rolls the three dice. For each “L” rolled, they give a chip to the player on their left. For each “R” rolled, they give a chip to the player on their right. For each “C” rolled they put a chip in the middle of the table. For each dot rolled, nothing occurs. The dice are then passed to the next (clockwise) player. If at any point, only one player has all of the chips, that player wins the game.

Sutakku

Steeped in Japanese folklore, SUTAKKU was originally developed to teach the common man the foibles of wishing for more than he had.

In this quick-playing, push-your-luck dice game, you attempt to create the tallest stack of dice in order to gain the highest score per turn. To play, roll three dice and add two of them to an ever-climbing stack of dice. You can choose to stop rolling and score your stacked dice at any time, but pushing your luck will net you more points if you succeed. Continue as long as you dare – but like the stonecutter of legend, who was never satisfied, you may find yourself with naught, right back where you began. The wise will distinguish ambition from reaching beyond one’s means.

SUTAKKU is beautifully crafted with classic Japanese design aesthetics and features hand-inked brush art characters on premium engraved dice. These twelve dice are ¾” on a side, perfect for stacking. The game also includes a cloth dice bag, stacking board, and scorepad.

Dungeon Roll

The Dungeon lies before you; you’ve assembled your party of hearty adventurers and have a few tricks up your sleeve. How far will you go to seek glory and fame? Will you risk losing everything?

In Dungeon Roll the player’s goal is to collect the most experience points by defeating monsters, battling the dragon, and amassing treasure. Each player selects a Hero avatar, such as a Mercenary, Half-Goblin, or Enchantress, which provides them with unique powers. Then players take turns being the Adventurer, who boldly enters the dungeon seeking glory.

The Adventurer assembles their party by rolling seven Party Dice, while another player serves as the Dungeon Lord and rolls a number of Dungeon Dice based on how far the Adventurer has progressed through the dungeon. The Adventurer uses Champion, Fighter, Cleric, Mage, Thief, and Scroll faces on the Party Dice to defeat monsters such as oozes and skeletons, to claim treasure inside chests, and to revive downed companions with potions. The Adventurer claims treasure by taking a token at random from inside the treasure chest-shaped game box.

All this fighting in the dungeon is certain to attract the attention of the boss: The Dragon!

When three or more Dragon faces appear on the Dungeon Dice, the Adventurer must battle the Dragon. Defeating the dragon is a team effort, requiring three different companion types. After three rounds, the players add up their experience points and retire to the inn to celebrate their exploits and to plan their next foray into the next deadly dungeon!

Magic: The Gathering – Arena of the Planeswalkers

In the Magic: The Gathering – Arena of the Planeswalkers, players customize the battlefield by designing the map then placing terrain and powerful glyphs. Then players choose one of five different Planeswalkers and move their figure and unique creature squads around the map in a race to out-maneuver opponents and gain tactical advantages! Cast devastating spells, summon powerful squads, and tap into your unique Planeswalker abilities to defeat your opponents. Be the last Planeswalker standing to win!

The game takes place on the drifting, mana-rich world of Shandalar.

Sentinel Tactics: The Flame of Freedom

Sentinel Tactics: The Flame of Freedom is a tactical combat game that uses a hex grid map to represent terrain. Each player controls one or more heroes or villains, each of which has unique powers. Combat is based on the rolling of six-sided dice. Whereas Sentinels of the Multiverse is a fully cooperative game, Sentinel Tactics is a team-based game. Groups of players will cooperate against either a villain player or against another team of players, so while the game is competitive, cooperation and teamwork are still vital to the gameplay.

Awesome Kingdom: The Tower of Hateskull

Awesome Kingdom: The Tower of Hateskull is a lightweight, fast and funny dungeon-crawling card game in which players compete to be the most awesome hero after three days of adventuring.

Players enter the dungeon as one of eight epic characters, such as the Ragebarian, Prestidigimancer, or Paladude, with each character being bestowed with an appropriately amazing ability. The dungeon is formed out of a circle of dungeon wall tiles, with dungeon cards filling most of those spaces and heroes filling the rest.

A day lasts three turns, and on a turn, you play an action card from your hand, normally moving your hero around the circle of cards (skipping over other heroes) and claiming the card on which you land, which could be treasure, a monster (which wounds you before you defeat it), a trap, or even a magic item. Cards are worth various amounts of awesomeness, and you want to be the most awesome hero at the end of the third day.

Fluxx Series

Fluxx is a card game in which the cards themselves determine the current rules of the game. By playing cards, you change numerous aspects of the game: how to draw cards, how to play cards, and even how to win.

At the start of the game, each player holds three cards and on a turn a player draws one card, then plays one card. By playing cards, you can put new rules into play that change numerous aspects of the game: how many cards to draw or play, how many cards you can hold in hand or keep on the table in front of you, and (most importantly) how to win the game. There are many editions, themed siblings, and promo cards available.

Ghooost!

Ghooost! is a fast, easy-to-learn card game with a Halloween-based theme and lots of twists and turns! Play your cards wisely to get rid of all the ghosts, undead, vampires, zombies and other spooky creatures haunting your mansion. Block your opponents while they’re trying to drive spirits out of their home and into your backyard – but beware as the scariest ghosts will not be driven away so easily…

In game terms, your goal in Ghooost! is to get rid of all of your cards in hand and in your mansion by playing a card (or several matching cards) equal to or higher than the one(s) played previously. To set up, each player has four ghost cards in hand and 4-12 cards in his mansion. Ghost cards come in four suits and have values ranging from 1 to 14, with a few cards having special powers; scary (red) ghosts, for example, can be topped only by fearless ghosts, other scary ghosts, or a ghost quartet, while fearless ghosts can be played no matter what’s on top of the Cemetery (discard pile).

A game consists of two stages. In the first stage, players draw or play cards to prepare their hand of cards for the second stage. On a turn, a player takes one of three actions:

• Play one or more matching cards on the Cemetery equal to or higher than the cards played previously, then refill your hand to four cards by drawing from the Crypt (deck).
• Take all the cards from the Cemetery into your hand; any card can be played on an empty Cemetery.
• Draw one card from the Crypt and try to play it, taking all the cards from the Cemetery into your hand if the play isn’t valid.

Once the Crypt is empty, the second stage begins and players take turns either playing valid cards into the Cemetery or taking all cards from the Cemetery into their hand. If a player plays two or three matching ghosts, he takes another turn immediately; if he plays four cards that match (or plays cards that complete a quartet), those cards and the Cemetery are removed from play, then he takes another turn. If a player’s hand is empty, he draws the top card from his mansion, playing it if valid and taking all the Cemetery cards into his hand if not. If a player empties his hand and mansion, he’s out and the others keep playing. Play continues until only one player has cards in hand; this player loses the game and everyone else wins.

Ghooost! includes a scoring system that allows for multiple rounds.

Fisticuffs!

Fisticuffs! is a free-for-brawl fighting card game created by The Nerdologues, a bunch of people you don’t know but could totally be friends with. Four to six players engage in head-to-head (-to-head-to-head) constant combat until the frenzy peaks and one player emerges victorious.

Set in an alternate 1920s, an eclectic collection of some of the world’s greatest fighters are pitted against each other by the magnanimous Baron Reginald Fistcuffington Smythe aboard his monolithic floating airship. Baron Smythe, inventor of the new super-element Hydrolium, offers the winner of his “Fisticuffs Bouts” the granting of a single wish, whatever their heart desires most. The surviving fighter will get their wish fulfilled – and become champion of Fisticuffs!

Gameplay is simple. Each player picks a fighter from our cast of characters, each with their own backstory and special move. The stable of fighters include a sky pirate, a flapper, a saxo-magician, the son of a slain Chicago mayor, and a robot built by Baron Smythe himself. Every player gives their fiercest battle cry, and whoever’s is best begins the game.

Each player starts with five cards from the Punch Card deck. These Punches will be a fighter’s offense and defense. On a player’s turn, they throw a Punch against any opponent – but that player can Block if they are holding a Punch of the same name. This leaves the attacking player open for a Counter, allowing the defending player to attack with a Punch that is the same color as their Block.

Combat continues until a Punch goes un-Blocked or a Block goes un-Countered. When an attack successfully lands, the defending player loses health. Everybody starts at 12, and when they reach 0, they’re knocked out for the rest of the match. Every remaining player gets a turn each round.

Once a full round (one turn for everybody) has been completed, the fighters return to their corner. This is when you draw new Punch Cards – and when you get a Round Card, a special action that will help provide a tactical advantage by giving you more attacks, depleting an opponent’s defenses, or giving you the edge you need in the middle of combat. The new round begins to the left of the person who started the last round.

The rounds keep going until there are two boxers left, at which point they enter Close Combat – no more rounds, no more Round Cards, just two boxers fighting over one dream. The fighter that is left standing is the winner of the bout and the champion ofFisticuffs!

Jolly Roger: The Game of Piracy & Mutiny

In the card game Jolly Roger: The Game of Piracy & Mutiny, you’re a crew member aboard a pirate ship and have just elected a new captain. This man will lead you toward either fortune or disaster — and thankfully no matter what course of action he takes, if you don’t agree with his choices, you can always start a mutiny and become the next captain yourself…

Each turn, the captain chooses a destination for the ship, a target that it will attack. Once the ship is attacking, the players (more or less!) co-operate to defeat their victim, then they divide the treasure amongst themselves — but your gold is never secure until you bury it on Treasure Island.

As you carry out the attack, unrest is always brewing in the kettle. Each time the captain makes a choice, it’s possible for one of the other players to call “Mutiny” and try to overthrow him to become the new captain. And when the mutiny begins, you need to decide how to use your cards during the mutiny and the looming battle. How much will you co-operate when you assault an enemy, and what will you keep to yourself to prepare for when the next mutiny starts?

As is fitting for a pirate, your greatest desire is for gold, and you’ll do anything to reach your goal. In the end, whoever collects the most gold becomes the richest pirate in Tortuga!

Harry Potter UNO

Basically the same as UNO, except with colorful cards from the charcters and items from Harry Potter.

Cards that are different from traditional UNO:

• The Howler Wild card — makes the next player shout out every card they have and forfeits their turn.
• Invisibility Wild card — a protection card that stops any command card played against you.

Four Taverns

In Four Taverns, everyone is competing to have the best tavern in the land. And how do you measure success for a tavern? Customers. No, wait – awesome customers who have done great things that inspire others to come drink with them and your tavern. Thus, you’re going to support adventurers on their quests to do great things, which will ideally bring renown upon you and your tavern in the end.

In game terms, each player starts with a hand of adventurers and some coins. Two or three quests are laid out face-up, and each quest shows the strength of the adventurer party – in terms of warrior, wizard, cleric and rogue – required to complete the quest. On a turn, you draw two adventurers cards, then play any number of cards (including zero) – paying their costs at the same time – in order to complete quests and gain the income and renown associated with it. When a quest is completed, all other adventurer cards are discarded.

Why not just hold adventurers in hand until you can send out a massive party all at once? Your tavern is tiny at the start of the game, so you need to keep sending out adventurers in order to make room for more. As you gain renown, though, you’ll increase the size of your tavern and have room to hold more adventurers in wait. Champions are special adventurers who fulfill two roles at once, and special action cards bring spice to the game play.

The first player to collect twenty renown wins.

Bohnanza

Bohnanza is the first in the Bohnanza family of games and has been published in several different editions.

The cards are colorful depictions of beans in various descriptive poses, and the object is to make coins by planting fields (sets) of these beans and then harvesting them. To help players match their cards up, the game features extensive trading and deal making. One of the most unique features of the game is that you cannot rearrange your hand, as you need to play the cards in the order that you draw them.

The original German edition supports 3-5 players.

The English version from Rio Grande Games comes with the first edition of the first German expansionincluded in a slightly oversized box. One difference in the contents, however, is that bean #22’sWeinbrandbohne (Brandy Bean) was replaced by the Wachsbohne, or Wax Bean. This edition includes rules for up to seven players, like the Erweiterungs-Set, but also adapts the two-player rules of Al Cabohne in order to allow two people to play Bohnanza.

Stuff and Nonsense

Stuff and Nonsense is “the Inevitable Aftermath of Professor Elemental’s Imaginary Polar Expedition”, an adventure game about never leaving London. The players move about the city, collecting artifacts and stories, and then return to the Adventurer’s Club to tell made-up stories of adventure. This game plays something like a board game, though the board is made entirely of cards. The mechanics revolve around collecting sets of cards, while trying to avoid meeting Professor Elemental, and deciding which destinations to pretend to return from. The cards are filled with humorous text and whimsical illustrations by Harold Fay.

Exploding Kittens

Exploding Kittens is a kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette. Players take turns drawing cards until someone draws an exploding kitten and loses the game. The deck is made up of cards that let you avoid exploding by peeking at cards before you draw, forcing your opponent to draw multiple cards, or shuffling the deck.

The game gets more and more intense with each card you draw because fewer cards left in the deck means a greater chance of drawing the kitten and exploding in a fiery ball of feline hyperbole.

Harbour

Dockmaster Schlibble and Constable O’Brady cordially invite you to visit their bustling Harbour town! Attend to business at the Trader’s Guild or the Masoner’s Hall. Break for lunch at the Sushi Shop, or stop off for a drink at the Pub. Don’t forget to check out the Wizard’s Traveling Imaginarium before you go! But no matter where you go, keep on the lookout for a bargain… the denizens of this town are always wheeling and dealing! Collect and trade resources as you visit the various buildings of Harbour, and cash them in to buy your way into the town. Whoever has the most points worth of buildings when the game ends, wins!

Harbour is a worker placement game where players move their worker from building to building, collecting and trading Fish, Livestock, Wood, and Stone; and cashing those resources in to purchase buildings (which are the worker placement spots) from the central pool. Once a building is purchased, it is replaced from the deck, and the central pool is a small subset of the deck, and is therefore different every game.

The game ends when a player has purchased his fourth building. After that round finishes, the player with the most points worth of buildings is the winner!

At the heart of Harbour is a dynamic market mechanism. Each time a player purchases a building, the value of the resources they used drops, while the value of the other resources rise. You’ll have to carefully time your purchases to take advantage of the ebb and flow of market prices, or be prepared to waste some resources!

Minecraft Card Game?

Based on the hit video game, players have the opportunity to mine, craft or reserve to win.

Players “mine” Resource Cards of Wood, Stone, Iron, Diamond, or Gold, and then use those cards to “craft” Craft Cards for points. If you desire a certain Craft Card, but are currently unable to pay for it, you may Reserve the card in your card holder to craft later. Craft Cards can become Tools with special powers you can you can use in your favor to control the game play—but watch out! TNT and Creeper cards are hiding in the deck for unexpected upsets.

The player who reaches the game point goal first, wins.

One Hit Kill

One Hit Kill is a card game of ridiculously overpowered weapons and monsters and cuddly rabbits. The Core deck is for 2 to 3 players, but expansions can accommodate up to 6 players.

Players compete to be the first to build a weapon, formed through a combination of numbered Component cards, which must be arranged in sequence. This mechanic resembles gin, or a straight inpoker.

There are also Special cards which allow players to take additional actions such as drawing additional cards or forcing opponents to discard cards.

On each player’s turn, the player must perform exactly one action:

• Draw a card
• Play a Special card
• Discard any number of cards
• Get a new Weapon
• Win the game, by playing a completed Weapon

The Death & Lore expansion increases the player count to 6.

Gloom

The world of Gloom is a sad and benighted place. The sky is gray, the tea is cold, and a new tragedy lies around every corner. Debt, disease, heartache, and packs of rabid flesh-eating mice—just when it seems like things can’t get any worse, they do. But some say that one’s reward in the afterlife is based on the misery endured in life. If so, there may yet be hope—if not in this world, then in the peace that lies beyond.

In the Gloom card game, you assume control of the fate of an eccentric family of misfits and misanthropes. The goal of the game is sad, but simple: you want your characters to suffer the greatest tragedies possible before passing on to the well-deserved respite of death. You’ll play horrible mishaps like Pursued by Poodles or Mocked by Midgets on your own characters to lower their Self-Worth scores, while trying to cheer your opponents’ characters with marriages and other happy occasions that pile on positive points. The player with the lowest total Family Value wins.

Printed on transparent plastic cards, Gloom features an innovative design by noted RPG author Keith Baker. Multiple modifier cards can be played on top of the same character card; since the cards are transparent, elements from previously played modifier cards either show through or are obscured by those played above them. You’ll immediately and easily know the worth of every character, no matter how many modifiers they have. You’ve got to see (through) this game to believe it!

Each of the three expansions for Gloom adds one more player, thus with all three expansions, this should be playable with seven players.

Machine of Death

Machine of Death: The Game of Creative Assassination is a storytelling game set in a world in which a machine can predict how a person will die with 100% accuracy with only a small blood sample. However, the machine delights in being vague and twisted. A card reading “Old Age” could mean you die in your sleep at age 120, or it could mean you’re run over tomorrow by an elderly driver who forgot to take his pills today. Players of the game take the role of assassins, who must use the various tools at their disposal — from storytelling to a slew of items available from specialty Black Market shops — to create a situation in which a target is killed in a way in line with their Death Prediction. The Machine of Death Game uses this basic idea, of assassins working in a world were cause of death is known to create various game modes.

The General Gameplay of most modes works like this:

• A target is assigned, and given certain details (includingDeath Prediction, and extra Intel details, such as things they particularly like or dislike – to help predict their behavior).
• Players – assassins – are given Black Market Gift Cards. These are the items they are allowed to use in order to accomplish their goal: killing the target.
• Players use the Gift Cards to devise a plan. Each Black Market card provides an item to be used in an Action. Three actions should chain together in some way that results in the death of the target.
• The plan is greenlit, either by a Chief player, or via consensus, depending on game mode.
• The timer starts and the plan is put into action. This is represented by dice rolling to beat a “difficulty score.” An unlikely plan hinging on a single item may need to roll a 6 for that Action, but a rock-solid intricate plan may need to only roll a 2 for each card.
• The skull face on the die also adds a frantic element (replacing the 1 face, if the skull is rolled it prompts the flipping of a Fate Coin to add additional randomness).
• In case of failure of any die roll, that Action didn’t work, and the plan must be revised. While the timer continues running, the assassins draw a new Black Market item, amending their previous plan and rolling for a new Action. They may also call in “Specialists”, who are characters with special skills (earned in previous rounds).
• If any three Actions are successful before the timer runs out, the target is killed. With the remaining time, the players may roll for Aftermath tasks (such as fleeing the scene or destroying the evidence). Completion of these tasks earns Specialist cards to be used in later rounds. This is the only way to replenish the group’s overall Budget of playable cards.
• If the timer runs out before three Actions are completed, the target escapes. This is the end of the round.
• In the published rules, this also ends the game. This rule was subsequently revised, allowing players to make another attempt on the same target, or take the loss and move on to additional targets. Hard-core players may end the game at this point.
• The team wins if they can accomplish four successful kills before their total Budget of Black Market cards are exhausted.

Game Variants:

• Chief Mode is where one player takes on the gamemaster role of the Chief, answering questions and deciding on the difficulty of the plan being created by the other players. Groups of 4 or more work best in this mode. In groups of 2-3 players, each player states their opinion, and the hardest value is the one used.
• Psychopath is similar to Cards Against Humanity or Apples to Apples. Each player holds a hand of Death Prediction cards that represent hostages. One psychopath announces a murder weapon (based on a drawn Black Market card), and players each toss in the hostage they believe will be most likely to be killed by that weapon. Designed for 4+ players.
• Speed Round is faster-paced and useful for introducing players to the death prediction concept. One Chief presents the Death Prediction Card of an assassination target, and players rush to play a Black Market or Specialist card that they think can kill the person in the predicted way. The Chief assigns a difficulty value to the fastest player’s proposed plan, and the player rolls to see if they can pull it off. If they do, they earn that Death Prediction Card as a point; if they fail, another player may propose a plan.
• Mechanical Chief uses 14 regular playing cards to replace the subjective judgments of the Chief. Each Black Market card is dealt with a playing card, the value of which is kept hidden until the die is about to be rolled. This variant is good for faster play, and directs discussions toward justifying the revealed values within the story, rather than debating the merits of various plans.
• Teams is useful for very large groups. The players split into two rival assassination teams, and alternate attacking targets, with a single Chief moderating. Teams operate under spelling bee elimination rules (one team’s failure, followed by the victory of the other, results in the first team’s elimination). A target that a team fails to kill must then be attempted by the other team, and a continuous narrative persists throughout the entire game.

Dixit

One player is the storyteller for the turn and looks at the images on the 6 cards in her hand. From one of these, she makes up a sentence and says it out loud (without showing the card to the other players).

Each other player selects the card in their hands which best matches the sentence and gives the selected card to the storyteller, without showing it to the others.

The storyteller shuffles her card with all the received cards. All pictures are shown face up and every player has to bet upon which picture was the storyteller’s.

If nobody or everybody finds the correct card, the storyteller scores 0, and each of the other players scores 2. Otherwise the storyteller and whoever found the correct answer score 3. Players score 1 point for every vote for their own card.

The game ends when the deck is empty or if a player scores 30 points. In either case, the player with the most points wins the game.

The base game and all expansions have 84 cards each.

Dixit: Odyssey supports up to 12 players.

Risus

Risus is a complete Role Playing Game (RPG) designed to provide an “RPG Lite” for those nights when the brain is too tired for exacting detail. Risus is especially valuable to GMs assembling a quick convention game, or any late-night beer-and-pretzels outing. While it is essentially a Universal Comedy System, it works just as well for serious play (if you insist!). Best of all, a Risus character takes about 20 seconds to create!

Scattergories

“The Game of Scattergories,” published in 1988 by Milton Bradley, is a great game for any group to play. In the game each player fills out a category list ‘with answers that begin with the same letter.’ If no other player matches your answers, you score points. The game is played in rounds. After 3 rounds a winner is declared, and a new game can be begun.

Scattergories is a commercial version of an old parlour game known as Categories or Guggenheim.

Bananagrams

A Scrabble-like game without the board — much like Pick Two!, but without the letter values.

Using a selection of 144 plastic letter tiles in the English edition, each player works independently to create their own ‘crossword’. When a player uses up all their letters, all players take a new tile from the pool. When all the tiles are gone, the first player to use up all the tiles in their hand wins.

There are also variants included in the rules, and the game is suitable for solo play.

In this new Target-exclusive version, six wild monkey tiles are added. They can be used as any letter and switched it up.

Tsuro

A beautiful and beautifully simple game of laying a tile before your own token to continue its path on each turn. The goal is to keep your token on the board longer than anyone else’s, but as the board fills up this becomes harder because there are fewer empty spaces left… and another player’s tile may also extend your own path in a direction you’d rather not go. Easy to introduce to new players, Tsuro lasts a mere 15 minutes and actually does work for any number from 2 to 8.

Theme:

Tsuro has an Asian spiritual theme – the lines representing the “many roads that lead to divine wisdom”, and the game as a whole representing “the classic quest for enlightenment”.

This theme is very light and the game essentially plays as an abstract.

Gameplay:

The game consists of tiles with twisting lines on them, a 6×6 grid on which to lay these tiles and a token for each player. Each player has a hand of tiles. On your turn you do two things: place a tile from your hand onto the board next to your token and move your token as far as it can go along the line it is currently on, until it is stopped by an empty space with no tile in (yet), the edge of the board or colliding with another player’s token. If your token reaches the edge of the board or collides with another player’s token, you are out of the game. The aim of the game is to be the last player left with a token on the board. Strategy therefore consists of trying to drive your opponents either into each other or off the board whilst extending your own route in directions that will make it difficult for your opponents to do the same.

X Marks the Spot

In X Marks the Spot, players are pirates who aren’t searching for treasure marked by an X, but rather trying to place that X themselves.

Each player starts the game with three gold(ish) doubloons and a hand of four cards; most cards are divided into two sections, with the sections indicating one of four pirate icons, open water, a ghost ship or a kraken. Some cards contain actions – e.g., cannon, plunder – that can be played against an opponent.

On a turn, a player draws two cards, then plays two cards. Cards are placed to form a grid on the playing area. A pirate icon can cover a pirate icon of the same type; a ghost ship is wild and counts as all pirate icons, and can cover and be covered by any pirate icon; open water can cover or be covered by any pirate icon or a ghost ship. A kraken can be covered only by a ghost ship, although a cannon can remove it from play.

Your goal is to create three Xs in the playing area that feature your secret icon. As soon as you (or an opponent) create an X, whether connected orthogonally or disagonally, you mark the center space with one of your doubloons. The first player to place her three doubloons on the board wins.