Fantasy

Wizard's Brew is a reimplementation of the Spiel des Jahres-nominated Das Amulett. Players are wizards who use their energy to power spells and collect ingredients from the game board. Collect the right combination of ingredients – which varies depending on the number of players – and you win!

Spell cards are the heart and soul of the game. You get two random spells at the start of each game, then can acquire more via short, "once around" auctions at the start of each round. You bid energy cubes in these auctions, and you have only ten, so bid wisely. When you win an auction, you place energy cubes equal to your bid on the spell card. A certain number of these cubes are removed from the card at the end of each round; once the final cube is removed, the spell leaves the game and you lose that power.

Spell cards generate the Element cards depicted on them for their owners. You then use these Element cards to bid on and collect Ingredients. You can bid for Ingredients only with the Elements shown on the landmark tokens on areas of the game board; these tokens are placed randomly each game. To increase the strategy and player interactivity, some Spell cards let you bid extra cards or different cards, while others allow you to change the rules for bidding. After visiting 3-6 areas, with the number being determined by a die roll at the start of the round, the round ends and players remove Energy cubes from their spells.

The game ends as soon as a player collects the required number of ingredients, e.g., in a six-player game, five differently colored ingredients or six ingredients in any combination of colors.

Runebound is a classic adventure game from Fantasy Flight Games in which mighty heroes must take on the perils of Terrinoth. The game can be largely played without conflict between the players but victory can only be claimed by the first player to defeat the Dragonlord Margath, so the players are actually in a race to level up and acquire powerful weapons, armour and allies in order to take on the final adversary.

Runebound features a series of 4 Adventure Decks that helps to pace the speed of the game and ensures that the players level up by acquiring experience before they are ready to take on a harder set of challenges (events and monsters).

Several of the key features of Runebound are that combat is played out in 3 phases, Ranged, Melee and Magic and a player has the ability to specialise in a particular discipline, although this may make them vulnerable against certain creatures. The game also features a novel movement system using a series of terrain dice.

Runebound is playable solo and is expandable by many adventure packs that alter the final challenge (replacing the Dragonlord for example). Runebound 2nd Edition also has a series of big box expansions that provide a new map or central map overlay to alter the game in some way.

Runebound 2nd Edition is different from 1st Edition in that the original game featured a d20 and this was replaced by 2 10-sided dice, which helped to better balance the luck factor.

The classic collectible card game Deadlands: Doomtown returns as an Expandable Card Game in Doomtown: Reloaded. Featuring four factions fighting for control of Gomorra, California. Doomtown: Reloaded allows you to build your own deck from a fixed set of cards in the box. Play your dudes to control deeds in the town, and use actions, hexes, and more to thwart your opponents.

Shootouts are resolved via a poker mechanism as every card has a suit and value. Preparing for the hands you want to draw is as much a part of deck building as choosing the actions and dudes you'll want to play. Your deck is built around an Outfit, one of the four main groups attempting to control Gomorra, California, and these outfits are:

The Law Dogs: The Sheriff and his deputies, tasked with enforcing law and order in an extremely chaotic town.

The Sloane Gang: The main cause of a lot of the chaos, the Sloane Gang takes what they want, no matter who it costs.

The Morgan Cattle Company: Progress and investment, Morgan Cattle has moved into the surrounding ranch lands and uses its deep pockets to influence the town.

The Fourth Ring: It's that circus that's been here for months, but I swear it just arrived...

The base set of Doomtown: Reloaded will be followed by Saddlebag expansions, in-store OP events, and the Badge Series of tournaments.

"This world's not big enough for all of us, so it's time you step aside to make room for me."

That's the spirit of Philippe Keyaerts' award-winning Small World, and the 2011 release Small World Underground is a standalone game that keeps that spirit intact, while putting a new spin on the game play.

Small World Underground includes 15 fantasy-themed races of creatures along with 21 special powers. Each player will control several creature/power combinations over the course of the game – spending points to draft these combinations – and will use those creatures to claim control of various subterranean locations. Some locations hold relics or are designated as "places of power", and monsters must first be conquered before a player can claim these special benefits. At the end of each turn, a player scores points for the regions he holds, and the player with the most points at game end wins.

Small World Underground is playable on its own, but can be combined with other Small World releases. The publisher recommends that players be familiar with Small World before playing Small World Underground.

In Small World, players vie for conquest and control of a world that is simply too small to accommodate them all.

Designed by Philippe Keyaerts as a fantasy follow-up to his award-winning Vinci, Small World is inhabited by a zany cast of characters such as dwarves, wizards, amazons, giants, orcs, and even humans, who use their troops to occupy territory and conquer adjacent lands in order to push the other races off the face of the earth.

Picking the right combination from the 14 different fantasy races and 20 unique special powers, players rush to expand their empires - often at the expense of weaker neighbors. Yet they must also know when to push their own over-extended civilization into decline and ride a new one to victory!

On each turn, you either use the multiple tiles of your chosen race (type of creatures) to occupy adjacent (normally) territories - possibly defeating weaker enemy races along the way, or you give up on your race letting it go "into decline". A race in decline is designated by flipping the tiles over to their black-and-white side.

At the end of your turn, you score one point (coin) for each territory your races occupy. You may have one active race and one race in decline on the board at the same time. Your occupation total can vary depend on the special abilities of your race and the territories they occupy. After the final round, the player with the most coins wins.

Clarifications: available in a pinned forum post.