variable player powers

Being a sidekick is hard work! Sure, the hero is the main character of the story, but when they get in trouble, it's up to the sidekick to help them out.

In the co-operative game Disney Sidekicks, villains — Captain Hook, Gaston, Scar, Jafar, and Maleficent — have captured your favorite heroes and locked them up in a castle. Now you take on the role of one or more sidekicks from famous Disney films — Timon and Pumbaa, Tinker Bell, Abu, Lumiere, or Flora, Fauna and Merryweather — to travel through the game board together with other sidekicks to battle villains, rescue villagers, collect locks, and build your powers to become a hero in your own right.

To win, the sidekicks must reach and enter the castle, then defeat the villain. Each villain is unique, creating a different challenge each time you play. Are you up for the challenge?

Legend has it that a long time ago, mankind was ignorant to the extent of not knowing how to count or tell the years apart. The ever-benevolent Jade Emperor wanted to help mankind out. From there, the idea of a twelve-year cycle and the naming of each year in the cycle after an animal was born.

But how should the Jade Emperor choose twelve animals from among so many animals in the living world, while remaining impartial? To resolve this equitably, the Jade Emperor decided to hold a race involving all animals on his birthday. The first twelve animals to cross the river and reach the Heavenly Palace will have a year named after them, in the order of how they finished the race. The race became known as The Great Race and the twelve-year cycle was named the Chinese Zodiac.

Race for the Chinese Zodiac is a board game that recreates The Great Race. Each player has a hand of eight action cards (numbered 1-8) as well as energy cards of different values and karma tokens. Each player selects one animal token and takes the corresponding animal card, which grants the player advantages during the race. All players place their animal token on the start space of the racetrack. Players assemble the dual-layered and double-sided action wheel that's used to determine the effectiveness of each action and place it in the center of the table.

On a turn, all players select an action card and an energy card from their hand, then they reveal these cards simultaneously. If the action card selected is one value lower than the player's previously played action card, the player must spend one karma token; if two or more values lower, they must spend two karma tokens. Players then resolve all played actions based on the orientation of the wheel, ideally gaining movement, new energy cards, and karma. Everyone places their played cards face up in front of themselves, then rotate the wheel clockwise by one space and start a new turn.

The first animal to complete the race earns the coveted right of having the first year of the Chinese Zodiac named after it!

—description from the publisher

Messina 1347 takes place during the introduction of the plague epidemic (a.k.a. the "black death") and the spreading of its infection through town. During this time period, merchant ships delivering luxury goods to Europe brought to these countries an unprecedented epidemic — and one of the first affected cities was Messina, Italy.

In the game, players take the role of important Messina families who are leaving town and moving to the countryside out of fear of being infected by the plague. While doing this, they are focusing on saving other inhabitants and helping to fight the plague infection in town. They must also endeavor to prosper in their countryside residence, where they are temporarily accommodating rescued residents. They are all waiting there for the epidemic to subside, then they return to Messina to take over and dominate particular districts in the town.

In the quiet village of Ravenswood Bluff, ‌a demon walks amongst you...

During a hellish thunderstorm, on the stroke of midnight, there echoes a bone-chilling scream. The townsfolk rush to investigate and find the town storyteller murdered, their body impaled on the hands of the clocktower, blood dripping onto the cobblestones below. A Demon is on the loose, murdering by night and disguised in human form by day. Some have scraps of information. Others have abilities that fight the evil or protect the innocent. But the Demon and its evil minions are spreading lies to confuse and breed suspicion. Will the good townsfolk put the puzzle together in time to execute the true demon and save themselves? Or will evil overrun this once peaceful village?

Blood on the Clocktower is a bluffing game enjoyed by 5 to 20 players on opposing teams of Good and Evil, overseen by a Storyteller player who conducts the action and makes crucial decisions. The goal of the game is to successfully deduce and execute the demons before they outnumber the townfolk.

During a 'day' phase players socialize openly and whisper privately to trade knowledge or spread lies, culminating in a player's execution if a majority suspects them of being Evil. Of a 'night' time, players close their eyes and are woken one at a time by the Storyteller to gather information, spread mischief, or kill.

The Storyteller uses the game's intricate playing pieces to guide each game, leaving others free to play without a table or board. Players stay in the thick of the action to the very end even if their characters are killed, haunting Ravenswood Bluff as ghosts trying to win from beyond the grave.

If you arrive late to a game, you can enter after it's started as a powerful Traveller character with unusual talents and questionable allegiances. Each character comes with their own special ability and no two players in a game are ever the same character.

Three days after the disappearance of Ichabod Crane, four Tarrytown residents with strange ties to the supernatural venture into an ever-darkening Sleepy Hollow to uncover its mysteries.

In Legends of Sleepy Hollow, players take on the roles of the four residents — undertaker Jeremiah Pincke, Revolutionary War veteran Matthias Geroux, minister Elijah Kappel, and tanner Emily Van Winkle — in a cooperative, miniatures-based campaign game full of secrets and twists. During the game, players will use an action pool to move about, investigate, interact with their environment, or unleash powerful attacks and abilities unique to each character. Once selected, however, these abilities will be unavailable until that character’s action pool has emptied — a process that becomes more complex as that character gains fear.

The players will have to work closely together to overcome their fear, unravel the mysteries of the glen, and become true Legends of Sleepy Hollow.