Bluffing

In Secrets, the second co-design between Eric Lang and Bruno Faidutti, players are assigned a hidden team — the CIA or KGB — and are trying to collect the most points for their side. In addition, one or two players are secretly anti-establishment Hippies who are working for nobody. Their goal is to fight the Man and have the fewest points.

On your turn, offer one of two randomly drawn agent cards to another player. These cards are worth points and have varying good or bad abilities. That player either accepts the agent, in which case they score it, or they refuse, in which case the card returns to you, and you score it. The game ends when a player has five cards, after which the teams are revealed; the team with the highest combined score wins, unless a Hippie has the single lowest score, in which case they win.

The interactions between the character cards are the spice of the game, but since the abilities are discoverable during play, the game can be taught in three minutes.

A Battle of Wits (a Princess Bride game) is an exciting game of bluff and double bluff for between two and ten players. A row of goblets sit in the middle of the table, ready to be filled with either wine or poison. Players each take the role of one character but it is only at the very end of a game that they will drink, one from each goblet. During the game, they must play their cards, one each turn, either into the top of a goblet (adding poison or wine to a goblet) or to the bottom of a goblet (bidding on the goblet). Who will fall prey to their enemies and who will eliminate themselves? Only the most intelligent will survive!

In Two Rooms and a Boom – a social deduction/hidden role party game for six or more players – there are two teams: the Red Team and the Blue Team. The Blue Team has a President. The Red Team has a Bomber. Players are equally distributed between two rooms (i.e., separate playing areas). The game consists of five timed rounds. At the end of each round, some players will be swapped into opposing rooms. If the Red Team's Bomber is in the same room as the President at the end of the game, then the Red Team wins; otherwise the Blue Team wins. Lying encouraged.

In Lucha Jefe, you are competing with another fight boss to see who can take home three Championship belts first. Players will draft fighters from a starting pool of 8, each with different powers. They will know which of the four fighters their opponent has to choose from, but not which one they're ultimately sending into the ring. Whoever has the highest strength will win the match, unless their fighter's powers change who wins.

Patchistory is a strategy board game with cards that symbolize historical heroes and wonders, with the whole game being divided into three eras. During the game, you acquire these cards through auctions and expand your territory by placing cards so that they overlap one another in a 5×5 space in the first era, a 6×6 space in the second era, and a 7×7 space in the third era. When your land—that is, the layout of your cards—is well built, the card functions are activated. You can earn victory points with diplomatic actions, domestic politics, war movement, the actions of production, etc., and at the end of the game, the person with the highest score after the third era wins.

Because you can make combos with lots of features on historical cards and you can score in various ways, Patchistory will give you another new exciting play every time it hits the table.