fighting

"Life is Battle; Battle is Glory; Glory is ALL"

In Blood Rage, each player controls their own Viking clan’s warriors, leader, and ship. Ragnarök has come, and it’s the end of the world! It’s the Vikings’ last chance to go down in a blaze of glory and secure their place in Valhalla at Odin’s side! For a Viking there are many pathways to glory. You can invade and pillage the land for its rewards, crush your opponents in epic battles, fulfill quests, increase your clan's stats, or even die gloriously either in battle or from Ragnarök, the ultimate inescapable doom.

Most player strategies are guided by the cards drafted at the beginning of each of the three game rounds (or Ages). These “Gods’ Gifts” grant you numerous boons for your clan including: increased Viking strength and devious battle strategies, upgrades to your clan, or even the aid of legendary creatures from Norse mythology. They may also include various quests, from dominating specific provinces, to having lots of your Vikings sent to Valhalla. Most of these cards are aligned with one of the Norse gods, hinting at the kind of strategy they support. For example, Thor gives more glory for victory in battle, Heimdall grants you foresight and surprises, Tyr strengthens you in battle, while the trickster Loki actually rewards you for losing battles, or punishes the winner.

Players must choose their strategies carefully during the draft phase, but also be ready to adapt and react to their opponents’ strategies as the action phase unfolds. Battles are decided not only by the strength of the figures involved, but also by cards played in secret. By observing your opponent’s actions and allegiances to specific gods, you may predict what card they are likely to play, and plan accordingly. Winning battles is not always the best course of action, as the right card can get you even more rewards by being crushed. The only losing strategy in Blood Rage is to shy away from battle and a glorious death!

The Kingdom of Aldramere is in the midst of a long, brutal, and magical war that is threatening to tear the fabric of the world apart. Each side is too proud to concede, but they have agreed to settle the conflict though a battle of champions. The High Council of Aldramere has summoned its most powerful wizards to the ruins of Orleal on the Misty Moorlands to compete for the right to represent their kingdom in the battle.

Incantris is a game of magical combat set in the Kingdom of Aldramere. Each player controls a team of three wizards, each with unique spells and abilities. Rain down fiery meteors with the Sorceress, call upon the bear spirit to unleash destruction with the Shaman, strike from afar with the Shadow Weaver, or pummel foes with the Druid’s tempest. Decide how best to use these abilities to defeat the other players and become the champion of Aldramere.

Incantris is a fast-paced and thought-provoking game that pairs strategy with a beautiful gaming environment. Use the modular board and 3D terrain to create a different battlefield for every game. The game also features 25 different spells and abilities ensuring that each game of Incantris will be a unique experience. Set-up is quick with each player selecting a team of three wizards optimized for a particular play style.

The wizards wield magic from the Spirit, Elemental, and Astral realms. The spellcasting and warding system is intuitive and exciting. To emerge victorious, players will have to outmaneuver their opponents, use their wizards’ strengths, and take advantage of the opposing teams’ weaknesses.

A group of monsters is traversing the perils of the castle conquering guard after guard, collecting treasurers along the way, as kings set new rules. You and your fellow players are these monsters in Mighty Monsters (first announced as Heroes' Gold).

The game is played in rounds equal to the number of players, except that in a three- or four-player game the number of rounds is doubled. Each round has three phases — Placement, Resolution, and Cleanup/Setup — and is controlled by a king who sets a special rule for the round.

Players can choose from six races of monsters; each player receives a unique set of five monster cards in their chosen race with strength ranging from 1-5 and healing costs ranging from 0-2. To conquer the king and therefore conquer the castle and gain the treasure, players in turn order may place an available monster from their hand on any empty guard space in the castle.

Once the placement phase is over, guard cards are revealed one at a time and resolved, working your way towards the king.

From the publisher's website:

Once again, our unfortunate friends find themselves foreigners trapped within the frightful Fortress Furor of the fanged Prince Fieso who would, with felicity, see them flounder and faint. These fine fighters could feasibly face their finish in this forbidding fortification, whose fearsome floors even now flow frighteningly from beneath their feet as the famished Furunkulus forages the fringes, fixing to feast on the foreigners’ flesh. Forthwith, must our fighters fashion their flight from this foulest of fates! But what’s this? By the light of their fallow and flickering flares, our friends find the depths fraught with the most furious of fiends and the fiercest of freaks! With fleet feet, the fearless foreigners follow these ferocious fellows through the fortress, with its multifarious footpaths and their frustrating forks, forging fervently forward toward freedom and fame. Our fighters must not falter from whatever feud or fracas would foil their function: to finally furnish the forlorn Faerie Fabula her freedom from feckless Fieso’s fists!

Theme
Formidable Foes is a light-hearted dungeon crawl. The players all take the role of heroes competing with each other to amass the greatest hoard of treasure. They do this by exploring the dungeon and fighting monsters.

Goal
The goal is to collect as much gold as possible. The winner is the richest player.

Gameplay
On each turn, a player either moves twice; moves once and fights a monster; or collects 'power tokens' which allow a player to improve their dice rolls in subsequent turns. In the early part of the game, the monsters are fairly weak and easily defeated. Defeating a monster increases a character's 'wisdom' which allows them to fight and defeat ever-harder monsters. Fighting monsters involves rolling a dice and then adding power tokens to improve the roll if required.

In Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn, a two-player expandable card game, players take on the roles of Phoenixborns, demi-gods and protectors of this world. These characters are the great saviors of their civilizations. Before they came into existence, the humans were plagued by monsters like chimeras that took away their lands and forced them to live in walled-off cities. When the Phoenixborns came, they fought off the chimeras and freed the lands for humans to take over once again.

But the time of peace was short-lived. A prophecy arose that if one Phoenixborn was able to absorb enough Ashes of others, they would ascend into full gods and take mastery over this world. This, as well as humans' greed for land, fueled the War of Ashes. The great cities now fight among each other, each one of them with a Phoenixborn at its helm, and you will decide who will rise and who will fall to ashes.

—description from the publisher