Thematic Game

Apocalypse Chaos

We are in grave danger. Enemies are swarming around the ship, and they will not go down without a fight. We'll have to work together in order to get out of this one alive. We're going to need a plan, and we need it fast. Let's not let these...things...outsmart us, outnumber us, and certainly not outshoot us! I need you all to do what you do best. Got it? Let's do this!

In Apocalypse Chaos, your ship has been surrounded by a hostile alien race and the situation looks dire, but you and your crew ain't going down without a fight! You must work together to contest the onslaught of enemy forces, recover items of scientific interest, rescue the innocent, escape imprisonment, and destroy the alien leader.

• An action-packed cooperative experience for you and your friends to conquer.
• Modular components allow players to craft their own missions.
• Includes a campaign of scenarios to test your courage and inspire your creativity.

Village Crone

Become a witch and enter the medieval world of Wickersby in this worker placement, resource management game with spellcasting! Make villagers fall in love, turn them into frogs, or teleport them to different locations. Use your familiars to gather ingredients and cast spells on the villagers to achieve goals and score victory points as you vie to be named the village crone.

All the players are witches who have come upon a medieval village without a crone. They send out familiars to gather ingredients they can use in spells to complete Witch's Scheme cards. Each of the cards is worth 1, 2, or 3 points, which also indicates how difficult the scheme is to complete. The witch who scores 13 points wins.

The village consists of 6 location game boards: village green, lord's manor, farm, mill, forge, and tithe barn. The locations are modular and can be placed in any order or configuration as long as the gridlines line up. (The easiest way to play is with a 3x2 retangular configuration.)

The villagers, who are the most frequent targets of the Witch's Schemes, have starting locations. The peasant begins in the village green, the lord in the lord's manor, the farmer in the farm, the miller in the mill, the blacksmith in the forge, and the priest in the tithe barn.

The ingredients can be found at 4 of the 6 locations. Silver is in the lord's manor, soil in the farm, flour in the mill, and fire in the forge. There are also 3 eye of newt cards in each stack of ingredients and can be used as wild cards in spells.

At the beginning of the game, each player is dealt 1 of each of the 3 levels of Witch's Scheme cards. Consulting their Books of Spells (which are the same for each witch) to determine which ingredients will be needed to cast the spells on their Witch's Scheme cards, they put 1 familiar in the village green, take turns placing 2 additional familiars in other locations, and draw 2 ingredients from those locations.

The first step in the order of play is to tithe. As soon as each player knows which ingredient they will sacrifice, they place it facedown in the tithe barn. This seeds the tithe barn with ingredients that can be gleaned with the Fortune spell (which allows a player to draw any 3 ingredients from the tithe barn). However, any player who placed a familiar in the tithe barn does not have to tithe.

Then, in turn order, players may move their own familiars and/or villagers and cast spells. (Spells may be cast for strategic or tactical purposes as well as to complete Witch's Schemes.) The movement is limited to a total of 6 spaces, and the number of spells is limited only by the ingredients the player has. The movement and spellcasting can be in any order on a player's turn. A player can even intersperse movement and spellcasting. If a player completes a Witch's Scheme, the card is turned over so that the other players can clearly see how many points that player has. After he/she is finished moving and casting spells, he/she draws 1 of each of the 3 levels of cards, reads them, and decides which one(s) to add to his/her hand as replacements.

When all players have finished moving and casting spells, the players harvest 2 ingredients for each familiar in a location, and the broom (which indicates the first player) is moved clockwise.

The spells are Conjuring (to add up to 2 more familiars into play), Love (to join the fates of 2 villagers, meaning spells cast on one affect the other and movement of one moves the other), Transformation (to turn a villager into a frog or vice versa), Binding (to lock a location down and prevent anyone or anything from entering or leaving a location), Switching (to change the place of 2 familiars and/or villagers), Summoning (to cause a villager to move to a location containing one of the player's familiars), Fortune (to allow a player to draw any 3 ingredients from the tithe barn), and Protection (to block a spell cast by another player). 1 silver can also be used to complete a Scheme out of turn or to discard and draw a new Witch's Scheme card. Each spell requires not only ingredients but also an incantation, which is provided in the Book of Spells. Alternatively, players can make up their own incantations. If a player is caught trying to complete a spell without speaking the incantation, the spell does not work.

Each witch has access to the same number of starting familiars, the same ingredients, the same spells, and 3 Schemes of the same level. But the witch who most cleverly uses these resources to reach 13 points is named the village crone.

The Village Crone also includes rules for solitaire play.

Tragedy Looper: Midnight Circle

Tragedy Looper: Midnight Circle is an expansion for Tragedy Looper that includes some of the material previously released in the Japanese expansions Midnight Zone and Mystery Circle.

In more detail, Tragedy Looper: Midnight Circle includes three Basic Tragedy scripts akin to those in the base game and nine scripts located in the Tragedy Sets of Midnight Zone and Mystery Circle. In Midnight Zone, you must be wary of believing everything that you hear for lies abound; in Mystery Circle, all supernatural elements have been banished, leaving players to rely only on logic and deduction.

Bootleggers

It's January 1921. Prohibition has been in effect for a year, and it looks like the 18th Amendment is here to stay. The problem, however, is that outlawing the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors" hasn't done anything to reduce the demand for booze! As a result, illegal stills dot the countryside and secret (or not-so-secret!) speakeasies are popping up all over in cities large and small. Local law enforcement may look the other way (especially if they're properly motivated) but Elliot Ness' G-Men are harder to convince. With this much money at stake, organized crime is sure to take an interest.

In Bootleggers, players take on the role of enterprising bosses seeking to make a name for themselves in the illegal alcohol trade at the height of the 1920's prohibition era. Deceit, lies, and alliances of convenience are the norm as players attempt to control distribution through money and corruption by muscling in on the competition, paying off the local law authorities, building underground speakeasies, and shipping trucks of "hooch"!

Tentative plans for the 2012 edition of Bootleggers include two double-influence cards, four blank cards, more cash, a revised rulebook, colored dice for each player, additional variants (including a two-player scenario), and improved trucks with easier-to-read numbering.

Witness

Witness is set in the world of Blake and Mortimer, a Belgian comic series started in the 1940s by writer/artist Edgar P. Jacobs. In the game, which is playable strictly by four players, you each represent one of four characters and your goal is to solve mysteries or crimes by sharing information with one another — but you are quite restricted in how you can share information!

Witness includes 64 cases for you to solve, and each case starts with an explanatory scene or image or both that someone reads or shows to the group. Each player then looks in his personal casebook to find information available only to his character. Players randomly decide who shares information first and in which direction, e.g., player A might whisper information to player B while player C talks to player D. Next, B will share both his information and A's information to C while D talks to A.

After two more rounds of the most inefficient crime-solving system ever created, players read the conclusion of the case, which might offer additional information or another visual, then they each individually answer three questions about the case, with the group scoring one point for each correct answer for a final score ranging from 0 to 12.