Fantasy

The Abyss power is once again vacant, so the time has come to get your hands on the throne and its privileges. Use all of your cunning to win or buy votes in the Council. Recruit the most influential Lords and abuse their powers to take control of the most strategic territories. Finally, impose yourself as the only one able to rule the Abyssal people!

Abyss is a game of development, combination and collection in which players try to take control of strategic locations in an underwater city. To achieve this, players must develop on three levels: first by collecting allies, then using them to recruit Lords of the Abyss, who will then grant access to different parts of the city. Players acquire cards through a draft of sorts, and the Lords of the Abyss acquired on those cards grant special powers to the cardholder — but once you use the cards to acquire a location, that power is shut off, so players need to time their land grabs well in order to put themselves in the best position for when the game ends.

Waterdeep, the City of Splendors – the most resplendent jewel in the Forgotten Realms, and a den of political intrigue and shady back-alley dealings. In this game, the players are powerful lords vying for control of this great city. Its treasures and resources are ripe for the taking, and that which cannot be gained through trickery and negotiation must be taken by force!

In Lords of Waterdeep, a strategy board game for 2-5 players, you take on the role of one of the masked Lords of Waterdeep, secret rulers of the city. Through your agents, you recruit adventurers to go on quests on your behalf, earning rewards and increasing your influence over the city. Expand the city by purchasing new buildings that open up new actions on the board, and hinder – or help – the other lords by playing Intrigue cards to enact your carefully laid plans.

During the course of play, you may gain points or resources through completing quests, constructing buildings, playing intrigue cards or having other players utilize the buildings you have constructed. At the end of 8 rounds of play, the player who has accrued the most points wins the game.

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.