variable player powers

From the imagination of legendary game designer Richard Garfield comes a game unlike anything the world has ever seen—a game where every deck is as unique as the person who wields it and no two battles will ever be the same. This is KeyForge, where deckbuilding and boosters are a thing of the past, where you can carve a path of discovery with every deck, where you can throw yourself into the game with the force of a wild wormhole and embrace the thrill of a tactical battle where wits will win the day!

Along with this new breed of game comes a new world: the Crucible, an artificial world built from the pieces of countless planets across the stars. Here, anything is possible. This world was built for the Archons, god-like beings who, for all their power, know little about their own origins. The Archons clash in constant struggles, leading motley companies of various factions as they seek to find and unlock the planet’s hidden Vaults to gain ultimate knowledge and power.

KeyForge: Call of the Archons is the world’s first Unique Deck Game. Every single Archon Deck that you'll use to play is truly unique and one-of-a kind, with its own Archon and its own mixture of cards in the deck. If you pick up an Archon Deck, you know that you're the only person in existence with access to this exact deck and its distinct combination of cards. In fact, in just the first set of KeyForge, Call of the Archons, there are more than 104 quadrillion possible decks!

Every Archon Deck contains a full play experience with a deck that cannot be altered, meaning it's ready to play right out of the box. Not only does this remove the need for deckbuilding or boosters, it also creates a new form of gameplay with innovative mechanics that challenges you to use every card in your deck to find the strongest and most cunning combinations. It is not the cards themselves that are powerful, but rather the interactions between them—interactions that can only be found in your deck. Your ability to make tough tactical decisions will determine your success as you and your opponent trade blows in clashes that can shift in an instant!

KeyForge: Call of the Archons is played over a series of turns where you, as the Archon leading your company, will use the creatures, technology, artifacts, and skills of a chosen House to reap precious Æmber, hold off your enemy’s forces, and forge enough keys to unlock the Crucible’s Vaults. You begin your turn by declaring one of the three Houses within your deck, and for the remainder of the turn you may only play and use cards from that House. For example, if you take on the role of the Archon Radiant Argus the Supreme, you will find cards from Logos, Sanctum, and Untamed in your deck, but if you declare "Sanctum" at the start of your turn, you may only use actions, artifacts, creatures, and upgrades from Sanctum. Your allies from Logos and Untamed must wait.

Next, you must strive to gain the advantage with a series of tactical decisions, leveraging both the cards in your hand and those in play to race ahead of your opponent. If you wish to weaken your rival’s forces, you may send out your allies to fight enemies on the opposing side, matching strength against strength. Otherwise, you may choose to use your followers to reap, adding more Æmber to your pool.

Notably, no card in KeyForge has a cost—choosing a House at the start of a turn allows you to play and use any number of cards from that House for free, leading turns to fly by with a wave of activity! Yet balance is key. If you simply reap more Æmber at every opportunity, your rival may quickly grow their team of minions and destroy yours, outpacing your collection and leaving your field barren. But if you focus on the thrill of the fight alone and neglect the collection of Æmber, you won't move any closer to your goal! If you succeed in finding a harmony within your team and have six Æmber at the start of your turn, you'll forge a key and move one step closer to victory. The first to forge three keys wins!

—description from the publisher

Werewolves of Miller's Hollow is a game that takes place in a small village which is haunted by werewolves. Each player is secretly assigned a role - Werewolf, Ordinary Townsfolk, or special character such as The Sheriff, The Hunter, the Witch, the Little Girl, The Fortune Teller and so on... There is also a Moderator player who controls the flow of the game. The game alternates between night and day phases. At night, the Werewolves secretly choose a Villager to kill. During the day, the Villager who was killed is revealed and is out of the game. The remaining Villagers (normal and special villagers alike) then deliberate and vote on a player they suspect is a Werewolf, helped (or hindered) by the clues the special characters add to the general deliberation. The chosen player is "lynched", reveals his/her role and is out of the game. Werewolf is a social game that requires no equipment to play, and can accommodate almost any large group of players.

The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow/les Loups-Garous de Thiercelieux/Die Werwölfe von Düsterwald is a published version arranged by Hervé Marly and Philippe des Pallières and published by Lui-même, 2001 for 8-23 players. This has been nominated for the 2003 Spiel des Jahres award.

Werewolves of Miller's Hollow is a separate game from Werewolf, and was split from that entry at the request of Asmodee.

In Villainous, each player takes control of one of six Disney characters, each one a villain in a different Disney movie. Each player has their own villain deck, fate deck, player board, and 3D character.

On a turn, the active player moves their character to a different location on their player board, takes one or more of the actions visible on that space (often by playing cards from their hand), then refills their hand to four cards. Cards are allies, items, effects, conditions, and (for some characters) curses. You need to use your cards to fulfill your unique win condition.

One of the actions allows you to choose another player, draw two cards from that player's fate deck, then play one of them on that player's board, covering two of the four action spaces on one of that player's locations. The fate deck contains heroes, items, and effects from that villain's movie, and these cards allow other players to mess with that particular villain.

In Hunt for the Ring, one player takes the role of Frodo and his companions, who are journeying from the Shire to Rivendell, while up to four other players represent the Nazgûl who are trying to hunt down the hobbits. While traveling, Frodo and others must resist being corrupted by the Ring that he wears.

Hunt for the Ring is a hidden movement game played in two chapters, with each chapter being played on a different game board. In the first chapter, the Frodo player attempts to move from the Shire to Bree, gaining corruption points if they fail to do so after sixteen turns. If the Frodo player succeeds, they can either record their exit point (and other game details) to play the second chapter at a later time, or they can continue immediately, with the second chapter having the Frodo player move from Bree to Rivendell. In this chapter, the Frodo player doesn't control the hobbits directly, but instead draws cards from a journey deck, with each card showing one of many paths to Rivendell.

Welcome to the experiential table top game that is going to redefine what it means to play a game. Nyctophobia, which means "fear of the dark", is a cooperative game of survival in which up to four players must work together to escape a maniacal predator chasing them in a pitch-black forest. But there's a wrinkle: Would-be survivors play the game with blackout glasses. Players cannot see the board and have to rely on touch to navigate their way to safety. So, are you afraid of the dark?

In more detail, Nyctophobia is a cooperative tactile maze game for 3 to 5 players. All but one of the players play the game completely unable to see the board. The blinded players make up the Hunted team. They are tasked with finding the car space on the board and surviving until the police arrive to rescue them. The sighted player is the Hunter, who is tasked with chasing down the Hunted and reducing one of the Hunted to zero health before the police arrive.

Nyctophobia includes two versions of the Hunter that you can use: the axe murderer and the mage. The axe murderer is stalking you and your friends in the forest, plodding forward without care or thought, chopping down the trees that separate you to get to you all the quicker; this is the most basic and carnal of all of the experiences you can encounter in Nyctophobia. The mage, by contrast, is a trickster. It's not enough for the mage to hunt her victims. Messing with their mind, manipulating the forest around them, and leaving the blind opponents more lost than when she found them is her aim. The mage can rotate the map, move trees around the forest, and generally confuse the players.