Abstract Strategy

Welcome to Scotland, a country famous for its whisky, the Highlands, its castles, and, of course...its ghosts!

The Phantom Society is a ghost-hunting game in which you play as sly spirits seeking to ruin a manor hotel or, if you prefer, intrepid ectoplasm hunters who are a bit destructive around the edges but who also never falter in pursuit of their prey. For the ghosts, the goal is to inflict at least £45,000 of damage (in tribute to Special 45 – Old Faydhutee Single Malt) on the manor, whether it is inflicted by the ghosts or the hunters. The ghost hunters want to stop the ghosts before they achieve their objective.

The dual-level game board represents a manor floor composed of 36 rooms, with each room being a tile representing a value from £1,000 to £6,000; each of the four ghosts corresponds to a room type and will hide beneath a tile of this type, starting its devastation of the hotel by removing tiles adjacent to the one it's hidden beneath. The ghost hunters must try to determine where the ghosts are hiding based upon the tiles destroyed. While doing this, though, the ghost hunters will also remove tiles – thus destroying them and adding to the total damage – to see whether a ghost is hidden beneath.

The ghost hunters must think carefully and logically over which tiles to remove while the ghosts have to use cunning and psychology in order to cloud their investigation and remain concealed. Will the manor come through this madness intact?

Talat, originally published in an all-wood edition under the name Drei, is an abstract strategy game specifically designed for three players. Each pair of players shares a game board, forcing each player to pay attention to two different gaming scenarios at once. The goal is to capture the opponents' pieces and to move your own pieces to the opponents' starting rows.

Players have nine towers in three heights and three shapes (squared, hexagonal and triangular prisms). To set up the game, players lay out the game boards, then take turns placing towers one by one on the starting edges of their game boards, five towers on one board and four on the other.

On a turn, a player must move one tower one space forward, either straight or diagonally; the player can choose freely which tower to move on which game board, but moving on one board precludes movement on the other, so choose wisely! A tower can capture another tower by moving onto its space, but only in the right circumstances. If the two towers are the same height, the capturing tower must have more sides than the one being captured; if their heights differ, the capturing tower must be one level taller than the tower being captured. The exception is the smallest triangular tower, which can capture the opponent's tallest hexagonal tower. A tower can also move sideways when capturing, but not when merely moving on the game board; thus, even after a tower reaches the opponent's back row, it might still be at risk of capture (or possibly the one doing the capturing).

If no captures are possible on a game board, that board is frozen and players can no longer move their pieces on it. As soon as two boards are frozen, the game ends. Players score five points for each tower they've captured and three points for each of their own towers that has reached an opponent's starting edge. The player with the highest score wins.

An abstract strategy game for 2 players with four 3×3 grids arranged into a larger 6×6 grid. This game re-implements the well known "connect 4" with a twist: after placing a marble of his colour, the player has to twist one of the grids by 90°, so changing the board after every turn. The first player to get 5 in a row wins.

Indigo is a tile-laying game along the lines of Metro, Tsuro and Linie 1 in which players build paths bit by bit, with no player owning the individual paths and everyone trying to exploit the paths already present. Unlike those earlier games, however, your goal is to move gemstones from their starting locations on the board to your designated goals, with the player who scores the most points winning the game.

To set up the game board, place the central hex tile, then add five green and one indigo gems to it. Place six "u-turn" tiles at their designated locations on the outer edge of the game board, then place a yellow gem on each such tile. Each player places goal markers on goals between these u-turn tiles on the edge of the game board: in a two-player game, the players alternate goals; in a three-player game, each player has one goal to herself, while sharing two others; and in a four-player game, each player shares a goal with every other player.

On a turn, a player places a tile on any space on the game board, with the only restriction being that a player cannot create a route directly from one goal to another. Each tile has three route segments on it, connecting one pair of edges. If a player places a tile next to a gemstone, that gemstone "moves" as far as possible along the route so that all players can see where to place tiles to next move that gemstone. (Thus players avoid the mental gymnastics required in Metro and Linie 1 in which nothing moves until a route is complete.) When connecting to the central tile, the green gems move off first, with the indigo gem moving only with the sixth connection.

If a player places a tile so that one gem would run into another, both gems are removed from the game!

When a gem is moved to a goal owned by only one player, that player keeps the gem. If two players own the goal, then both players collect a gem of that color, taking the extra gem needed from the reserve. Once all the gems have been claimed, the game ends, with players earning 3 points for an indigo gem, 2 for green and 1 for yellow. The player with the most points wins.

Kamisado is a game of pure skill and strategy with no dice, cards or other chance element — it's just you against your opponent!

The aim in each round is to be the first to get an octagonal "dragon tower" to the opposite side of the board; towers move in straight lines, either forwards or diagonally forwards. The twist is that you must move the tower of the color matching the space on which the opponent moved on her previous turn. As the game progresses, you'll find that the routes you want to use are blocked by enemy towers — and sometimes your own! If you can't move, your opponent moves again immediately, moving the tower matching the color of the space occupied by the stymied tower.

As the game unfolds, your towers will be promoted to "Sumos" and have the ability to push your opponent's pieces backwards, earning you extra turns. The situations continue to become more complex and challenging, until one player accumulates the required winning total and can be declared a "Kamisado Grand Master" — until the next game!