Area Movement

Mice and Mystics

Game description from the publisher:

In Mice and Mystics players take on the roles of those still loyal to the king – but to escape the clutches of Vanestra, they have been turned into mice! Play as cunning field mice who must race through a castle now twenty times larger than before. The castle would be a dangerous place with Vanestra's minions in control, but now countless other terrors also await heroes who are but the size of figs. Play as nimble Prince Collin and fence your way past your foes, or try Nez Bellows, the burly smith. Confound your foes as the wizened old mouse Maginos, or protect your companions as Tilda, the castle's former healer. Every player will have a vital role in the quest to warn the king, and it will take careful planning to find Vanestra's weakness and defeat her.

Mice and Mystics is a cooperative adventure game in which the players work together to save an imperiled kingdom. They will face countless adversaries such as rats, cockroaches, and spiders, and of course the greatest of all horrors: the castle's housecat, Brodie. Mice and Mystics is a boldly innovative game that thrusts players into an ever-changing, interactive environment, and features a rich storyline that the players help create as they play the game. The Cheese System allows players to hoard the crumbs of precious cheese they find on their journey, and use it to bolster their mice with grandiose new abilities and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

Mice and Mystics will provide any group of friends with an unforgettable adventure they will be talking about for years to come – assuming they can all squeak by...

Expansion advice:

For those who have expansions for this game the recommended order by the game designer for playing them is as follows (see original post HERE):

Sorrow and Remembrance (Base game)
Cat's Cradle (Lost Chapter 1)
Heart of Glorm
The Ghost of Castle Andon (Lost Chapter 2)

Lyssan

It is an empire of changing flags. The old crown fell, and many stepped forward to claim it. That was two centuries ago.

Now the barons and the princes swear loyalty to whichever claimant-emperor garrisons the nearest army today. The clergy sell their sermons for the highest bidder, and spies whisper promises to mercenary generals.

You are the one true ruler of the broken Empire of Lyssan, and it's up to you to put the pretenders (the other players) in their place before their endless squabbling tears your nation apart. You (and others) will attempt to take control by using castles, knights, nobles, priests, and spies:

Knights hold territory and fight masterfully.
Nobles hold territory, support priests, and fight poorly.
Castles hold territory, spawn new units, and protect knights and nobles.
Priests manipulate influence and support spies.
Spies assassinate priests and other spies, and have the devastating power to steal other players' court cards.

Lyssan is an intense board game of strategy, cooperation, and betrayal for two to four players. The winner is the player who claims the most trophies, and each trophy can only be claimed by a single player. One trophy card might call for the player to control the most mines, the next to have most spies deployed, and the next to have the most sophisticated court. An upcoming trophy is revealed each turn, requiring strength, cunning, and adaptability to win.

Lyssan combines tightly designed euro-style rules with the interactivity and flavor of an epic wargame. Lyssan has slim rules comparable to many family friendly games. Yet the play is as rich and interactive as the crunchiest, most grognard-friendly wargames. And Lyssan plays fast. A typical game of Lyssan runs a full hour quicker than comparable games.

Lyssan combines:
A map to be conquered (like Risk)...
...with a few different unit types that act a few different ways each (like Chess or Diplomacy) ...
...with cards that let players pull off devastating surprise moves or permanently improve their abilities. To play one card, you discard others. (Like Race for the Galaxy) These cards can be very powerful, but they can also be stolen by spies. The whole landscape of the game can change in the blink of an eye as ownership of a card changes hands. Get one of your spies into a rival's castle, and you can take over his improvements or turn his own followers against him.

All interrupting effects have been stripped out of the game, so each player can complete their turn quickly, without waiting for the others. The game has been designed from the start to allow timed play, like a tournament chess match. This is good for players who want extra-brisk play, or who just have one slowpoke at the table who needs to be reined in.

Ghost Stories

Ghost Stories is a cooperative game in which the players protect the village from incarnations of the lord of hell – Wu-Feng – and his legions of ghosts before they haunt a town and recover the ashes that will allow him to return to life. Each Player represents a Taoist monk working together with the others to fight off waves of ghosts.

The players, using teamwork, will have to exorcise the ghosts which will appear during the course of the game. At the beginning of his turn, a player brings a ghost into play and places it on a free spot, and more than one can come in at the same time. The ghosts all have abilities of their own – some affecting the Taoists and their powers, some causing the active player to roll the curse die for a random effect, and others haunting the villager tiles and blocking that tile's special action. On his turn, a Taoist can move on a tile in order to exorcise adjacent ghosts or to benefit from the villager living on the tile, providing it is not haunted. Each tile of the village allows the players to benefit from a different bonus. With the cemetery, for example, Taoists can bring a dead Taoist back to life, while the herbalist allows to recover spent Tao tokens, etc. It will also be possible to get traps or move ghosts or unhaunt other village tiles.

To exorcise a ghost, the Taoist rolls three Tao dice with different colors: red, blue, green, yellow, black, and white. If the result of the roll matches the color(s) of the ghost or incarnation of Wu-Feng, the exorcism succeeds. The white result is a wild color which can be used as any color. For example, to exorcise a green ghost with 3 resistance, you need to roll three green, three white, or a combination of both. If your die rolls fall short, you can also use Tao tokens that match the color in addition to your roll. You may choose to use these after your roll. Taoists gain these tokens by using certain village tiles or by exorcising certain ghosts. One of the Taoists has a power that allows him to receive such a token once per turn.

To win, the players must defeat the incarnation of Wu-Feng, a boss who arrives at the end of the game. There are also harder difficulty levels that add more incarnations of Wu-Feng, in which to win, you must defeat all of them.

There are many more ways to lose, however. The players lose if three of the village's tiles are haunted, if the draw pile is emptied while the incarnation of Wu-Feng is still in play, or if all the priests are dead.

Kemet

In Kemet, players each deploy the troops of an Egyptian tribe and use the mystical powers of the gods of ancient Egypt – along with their powerful armies – to score points in glorious battles or through invasion of rich territories. A game is typically played to 8 or 10 victory points, which may be accrued through winning attacks, controlling temples, controlling fully-developed pyramids, sacrificing to the gods, and wielding particular magical powers.

The conquest for the land of Kemet takes place over two phases: Day and Night. During the day, choose an action amongst the nine possible choices provided by your player mat and perform it immediately. Once every player has taken five actions, night falls, with players gathering Prayer Points from their temples, drawing Divine Intervention cards, and determining the turn order before the start of the new day.

As the game progresses, they can use Prayer Points to acquire power tiles. Some of these enroll magical creatures and have them join their troops. In addition to intimidating enemies, these creatures provide special powers!

Detailed miniature components represent the combat units and the supernatural creatures that are summoned to enhance them. Combat is resolved through cards chosen from a diminishing six-card hand and enhanced by bonuses.

Panic Station

Panic Station is a paranoia-driven partly cooperative game in which you control two characters in the Extermination Corps sent out by the government to investigate the presence of fiendish alien life forms.

Players need to move both their Androids and Troopers through the base, exploring and gathering equipment that will help them to complete their mission: to find and destroy the Parasite Hive hidden somewhere in the inner depths of this hell. When a player manages to get his Trooper into the Hive location and play three gas can cards to fuel his Flamethrower, he wins the game for the humans.

However, one of the players is a Host. He must keep this identity secret, infecting as many team members as possible to gain allies and prevent the humans from completing their mission. Only players who carefully watch the behavior of team members and find a good balance between cooperation and paranoia will stand a chance against the infected players and roaming parasites.

The game uses a unique exponential traitor-system and combines tactical play with a compelling psychological mindgame amongst players.

Panic Station is a game of growing paranoia in which no one can truly trust anyone. Can you maintain your sanity and destroy the source of this evil?