Fantasy

Yomi is a card game that simulates a fighting game. It tests your ability to predict how your opponents will act and your ability to judge the relative value of cards from one situation to the next. Also, it lets you do fun combos and be a panda. There are 10 characters to choose from, each with their own deck, abilities, and style. Each deck also doubles as a regular deck of playing cards with beautiful artwork (the complete game features a whopping 120 different character illustrations).

Yomi is the Japanese word for “reading”, in this case as in reading the mind of your opponent. Yomi: Fighting Card Game is a simple competitive card game that simulates a fight between two characters. Each deck in Yomi represents one character, with 10 decks in the first release.

Champion fighting game tournament player and tournament organizer David Sirlin designed the game to test the skills of Valuation and Yomi. Valuation refers to your ability to judge the relative value of moves (or cards) as they change over the course of the game. Yomi, the game's title, refers to your ability to guess which moves your opponent will make. There is more to it than guessing, though: some players have the uncanny ability to “guess” right almost every time, no matter the game.

The core mechanic is a paper-rock-scissors guessing game between attack, throw, and block/dodge (sometimes modified by special ability cards). Attacks and throws usually let you follow up with combo cards from your hand, while blocks let you draw a card. While it first seems "just random," you soon discover that the unequal and uncertain payoffs in this guessing game allow you really read what the opponent will do. Yomi captures the kind of mind games that occur during the high level in fighting game tournaments.

Wizard's Brew is a reimplementation of the Spiel des Jahres-nominated Das Amulett. Players are wizards who use their energy to power spells and collect ingredients from the game board. Collect the right combination of ingredients – which varies depending on the number of players – and you win!

Spell cards are the heart and soul of the game. You get two random spells at the start of each game, then can acquire more via short, "once around" auctions at the start of each round. You bid energy cubes in these auctions, and you have only ten, so bid wisely. When you win an auction, you place energy cubes equal to your bid on the spell card. A certain number of these cubes are removed from the card at the end of each round; once the final cube is removed, the spell leaves the game and you lose that power.

Spell cards generate the Element cards depicted on them for their owners. You then use these Element cards to bid on and collect Ingredients. You can bid for Ingredients only with the Elements shown on the landmark tokens on areas of the game board; these tokens are placed randomly each game. To increase the strategy and player interactivity, some Spell cards let you bid extra cards or different cards, while others allow you to change the rules for bidding. After visiting 3-6 areas, with the number being determined by a die roll at the start of the round, the round ends and players remove Energy cubes from their spells.

The game ends as soon as a player collects the required number of ingredients, e.g., in a six-player game, five differently colored ingredients or six ingredients in any combination of colors.

Runebound is a classic adventure game from Fantasy Flight Games in which mighty heroes must take on the perils of Terrinoth. The game can be largely played without conflict between the players but victory can only be claimed by the first player to defeat the Dragonlord Margath, so the players are actually in a race to level up and acquire powerful weapons, armour and allies in order to take on the final adversary.

Runebound features a series of 4 Adventure Decks that helps to pace the speed of the game and ensures that the players level up by acquiring experience before they are ready to take on a harder set of challenges (events and monsters).

Several of the key features of Runebound are that combat is played out in 3 phases, Ranged, Melee and Magic and a player has the ability to specialise in a particular discipline, although this may make them vulnerable against certain creatures. The game also features a novel movement system using a series of terrain dice.

Runebound is playable solo and is expandable by many adventure packs that alter the final challenge (replacing the Dragonlord for example). Runebound 2nd Edition also has a series of big box expansions that provide a new map or central map overlay to alter the game in some way.

Runebound 2nd Edition is different from 1st Edition in that the original game featured a d20 and this was replaced by 2 10-sided dice, which helped to better balance the luck factor.

The classic collectible card game Deadlands: Doomtown returns as an Expandable Card Game in Doomtown: Reloaded. Featuring four factions fighting for control of Gomorra, California. Doomtown: Reloaded allows you to build your own deck from a fixed set of cards in the box. Play your dudes to control deeds in the town, and use actions, hexes, and more to thwart your opponents.

Shootouts are resolved via a poker mechanism as every card has a suit and value. Preparing for the hands you want to draw is as much a part of deck building as choosing the actions and dudes you'll want to play. Your deck is built around an Outfit, one of the four main groups attempting to control Gomorra, California, and these outfits are:

The Law Dogs: The Sheriff and his deputies, tasked with enforcing law and order in an extremely chaotic town.

The Sloane Gang: The main cause of a lot of the chaos, the Sloane Gang takes what they want, no matter who it costs.

The Morgan Cattle Company: Progress and investment, Morgan Cattle has moved into the surrounding ranch lands and uses its deep pockets to influence the town.

The Fourth Ring: It's that circus that's been here for months, but I swear it just arrived...

The base set of Doomtown: Reloaded will be followed by Saddlebag expansions, in-store OP events, and the Badge Series of tournaments.

"This world's not big enough for all of us, so it's time you step aside to make room for me."

That's the spirit of Philippe Keyaerts' award-winning Small World, and the 2011 release Small World Underground is a standalone game that keeps that spirit intact, while putting a new spin on the game play.

Small World Underground includes 15 fantasy-themed races of creatures along with 21 special powers. Each player will control several creature/power combinations over the course of the game – spending points to draft these combinations – and will use those creatures to claim control of various subterranean locations. Some locations hold relics or are designated as "places of power", and monsters must first be conquered before a player can claim these special benefits. At the end of each turn, a player scores points for the regions he holds, and the player with the most points at game end wins.

Small World Underground is playable on its own, but can be combined with other Small World releases. The publisher recommends that players be familiar with Small World before playing Small World Underground.