Bluffing

Long ago, the Grand Octopus, one filled with cosmically divine powers, reigned over the entire world — until an unfortunate combination of circumstances imprisoned it at the bottom of the ocean. Idle under miles of water, it fell asleep dreaming of the day when its time would come once again.

In Night of the Grand Octopus, you are one of the Elect and have been recruited by the Illuminati to form a cult to glorify the tentacled one. What's more, your dreams have told you that the time has come, the stars have aligned so that you can perform the "Ritual of Appeal" and bring the Grand Octopus to surface once again. To perform the ritual, however, you need the right magical components, components to be found in a famous English university for young wizards and witches — and you're not the only one seeking them.

In each round, players secretly place their cultist and monster tokens on locations, then reveal those locations at the same time. If only one cultist group occupies a location, that cult gains strength — but if two or more cults want the same spot, they must negotiate or both lose cult strength. If, on the other hand, a rival monster occupies the location, the cultist is eliminated. Gulp!

Scruples... The game that poses 252 moral dilemmas on issues of work, money, friends, family, neighbors and, of course relationships!

User review: Each player is dealt five dilemma cards, each with a question of scruples, and one reply card. Each reply card says, “Yes,” “No,” or “Depends.” If the player can correctly match another’s reply with a dilemma card from one’s own hand, then the dilemma card is discarded. Otherwise, the dilemma card is replaced with another card from the dilemma card deck. Mismatched responses can be challenged and put to a vote of the other players. The first player to surrender all of one’s own cards is the winner.

Official rules: http://www.scruplesgame.com/rules.html

The king is holding a great banquet for all the nobles in the realm so that they can bathe in his splendour. Artists and troubadours will bring the necessary entertainment. It is meant to be a feast that will long be remembered!

The guests attending the feast hall feel the same, for in the corners of the castle deadly plots are being developed. The guests are divided into two factions, with both planning to "dismiss" the king. One faction plans to smuggle a dagger into the feast hall to "open the king's heart to the realm" at the right time, while the other faction hopes to give the king "renewed motivation" with a poisoned drink.

In The Last Banquet, each player is a guest at the feast and needs to help his faction reach its goal and ensure that this will truly be the king's last banquet. The game includes 25 role cards, each portraying a person on the front and listing that person's skills on the back. In addition to "The Last Banquet", several other scenarios are provided in the rules that can be played with each of the roles. (GameHeads' Oliver Wolf notes, "Playing time ranges from 30 minutes up to 90 minutes or more, with more people tending to need more time to play." Also, some scenarios involve more than two factions.) Obstacle cards provide challenges for players to overcome.

When a faction succeeds in its goal, all players who belong to that faction win the game.

You are a tiny kingdom with big ambition. You want to expand your population throughout the realms, learn powerful magic, build grand towers, and have your neighbors quiver at the mention of your name. The conflict? All of the other kingdoms want the same thing and there's not enough room for everyone to succeed...

In Tiny Epic Kingdoms, a 4x fantasy game in a pocket-size package, each player starts with a unique faction (which has a unique technology tree) and a small territory. Throughout the game, players collect resources, explore other territories, battle each other, research magic, and work to build a great tower to protect their realm.

Football Strategy boils the sport down to play calling skill. The game's structure is simple: The defensive player selects one of 10 formation cards (ranging from an 8-man line "goal line stand" to a pass prevent defense with five safeties); the offensive player calls a play (a choice of 20, plus punting). Cross-indexing the choices on a matrix shows what happened. Except for "long gains", the outcome of each play against each defense is always the same. Dice are rolled only to determine the distance of long gains and the results of kickoffs and field goal attempts.

Each play consumes a prescribed number of seconds, from 15 to 45. The players mark off the time and play four quarters, following the standard football rules.

For variety, three types of offense ("pro style", "aerial game" and "ball control") are available, each with a different, though not radically different, results matrix.

Simple though it is, the game is engrossing (see the "More Information" screen), and play generally follows realistic patterns, though the handling of punts and on-side kicks (both more effective than in real life) is questionable. Also, because the design changed little after its debut in 1959, the plays and defenses don't reflect the state of the art in contemporary professional football. This is the era of Otto Graham, not Eli Manning.

For those who are so inclined, Football Strategy lends itself to mathematical analysis. Many years ago, an entrant into the tournament at Origins went to the trouble of using game theory to generate charts showing the optimal mix of plays in different situations. He reached the finals but, in a victory for human intuition over number crunching, lost the championship game by a touchdown and a field goal.