Fantasy

In Citadels, players take on new roles each round to represent characters they hire in order to help them acquire gold and erect buildings. The game ends at the close of a round in which a player erects her eighth building. Players then tally their points, and the player with the highest score wins.

Players start with a number of building cards in their hand; buildings come in five colors, with the purple buildings typically having a special ability and the other colored buildings providing a benefit when you play particular characters. At the start of each round, the player who was king the previous round discards one of the eight character cards at random, chooses one, then passes the cards to the next player, etc. until each player has secretly chosen a character. Each character has a special ability, and the usefulness of any character depends upon your situation, and that of your opponents. The characters then carry out their actions in numerical order: the assassin eliminating another character for the round, the thief stealing all gold from another character, the wizard swapping building cards with another player, the warlord optionally destroys a building in play, and so on.

On a turn, a player earns two or more gold (or draws two building cards then discards one), then optionally constructs one building (or up to three if playing the architect this round). Buildings cost gold equal to the number of symbols on them, and each building is worth a certain number of points. In addition to points from buildings, at the end of the game a player scores bonus points for having eight buildings or buildings of all five colors.

The expansion Citadels: The Dark City was initially released as a separate item, but the second edition of the game from Hans im Glück (packaged in a tin box) and the third edition from Fantasy Flight Games included this expansion. With Dark City, Citadels supports a maximum of eight players.

In Blood Bound, a deduction game played in 15-30 Minutes, players assume the roles of members of two clans – the brutal, animalistic warriors of the Clan of the Beast and the graceful, deadly members of the Clan of the Rose – and (with an odd number of players) the human inquisition. Disguised by a secret identity, they try to kidnap the Elder of the opposing clan or give their lives for the benefit of their own Elder. Malicious attacks, aimed indiscretions, and assistance from others will slowly uncover the truth: Who fights for whom? And who is the Elder?

At the start of the game, each player knows three things:

Who he is and to which clan he belongs
That a few other players are his allies, while everyone else is the enemy of both him and his clan
The clan to which one of his neighbors belongs – although some characters can lie about their clan identity

Now the players have to figure out who the Elder of the opposing team is (if there is one) and capture him. To do this, players need to attack, negotiate and deduce, with an attacked player being required to reveal information, such as his rank or clan affiliation. Each player has an ability unique to his character, and this ability can be used only at the moment that he reveals his rank. The Assassin forces players to suffer wounds, for example, while the Guardian protects a player of the character's choice.

In the end, if you capture your rival clan's Elder, you win – but if you capture the wrong vampire, you've fallen into the enemy's trap and lose the game.

From the publisher: "Torches are blazing, mists are wafting ... in the Holy Circle the High Priestess celebrates her ritual with her novices. They sing with all their heart, cuddle the artifacts, and rearrange them in ever new patterns.

"But what if you do not know the religious rules? The best thing is to watch what the others are doing and imitate them. But cautious: Maybe your neighbor just violated a taboo and made the High Priestess angry …

"Each player takes the role of the High Priestess once and determines the rules of her own religion. The other players are novices trying to sense these rules and thus gather as much karma as possible."

The "priestess" player secretly chooses four cards that determine which actions are rewarded and which taboo. The other players simply move a pawn on the board and are awarded points by the priestess based on how their actions (including seemingly irrelevant ones like body movement or tone of voice) correspond with the rules. At the end of a round the priestess receives the same score as the highest-scoring adept, encouraging her to make the rules difficult but not impossible to guess.

Excerpted from publisher's blurb:

In Cave Troll, each player controls a party of explorers raiding the cave troll’s lair. Using knights, dwarves, thieves, and other adventurers, the players search the lair for gold and magical artifacts. The players must be careful, however, because they aren’t only competing against each other, but against savage orcs, terrifying wraiths, and the fearsome cave troll itself!

Cave Troll is a fast-paced dungeon-crawling board game of strategy, looting, and monster-bashing from Tom Jolly, the creator of Drakon. Cave Troll is playable in 20-60 minutes for two to four players, Ages 10 and up.

Elfenland is a redesign of the original White Wind game Elfenroads. The game is set in the mythical world of the elves. A group of fledgling elves (the players) are charged with visiting as many of the twenty Elfencities as they can over the course of 4 rounds. To accomplish the task they will use various forms of transportation such as Giant Pigs, Elfcarts, Unicorns, Rafts, Magic Clouds, Trollwagons, and Dragons.

Gameplay: Players begin in the Elf capitol, draw one face down movement tile, and are dealt eight transport cards and a secret 'home' city card that they must reach at the end of the 4th round or lose points for each city space away from 'home' they are at the end of the game. Markers of each player's color are placed in each city on the board and are collected when the player visits that city (each counts as 1 point).

The round proceeds in 2 stages. The first part of the round consists of the drawing of Tiles showing the differing types of transport (except rafts) from a combination of face up and face down tiles (if a player doesn't like the 5 tiles that are face up; they can always draw blind from the face down tiles and hope to get one they need). These transport tiles need to match the Transportation cards in your hand to use them most effectively. After each player has a total of 4 tiles they take turns placing a tile on any one of the roads that run between the elf cities. Only one transport tile may be placed on each road; so players may use other players tiles to travel if they have the matching cards in their hand. This frequently causes a readjustment of planned travel routes as other players tiles can allow you to move farther or shorter than you had first thought. Players can play their tiles to help themselves or hinder others by playing a slow mode of transport on another players (perceived) path.

Each mode of transport has certain terrain it can travel through quickly or slowly, and those that it cannot. These are listed on the top of each transportation card by the number terrain symbols. The number of terrain symbols equals how many matching cards you must play to move across a given tile in a given terrain. For example, a Magic Cloud tile placed in a mountain would take one Magic cloud card to travel across (1 mountain symbol on card means Magic clouds are fast in mountains). If the same tile was placed on a road in forest terrain it would require 2 Magic Cloud cards to travel that route (2 Forest symbols on card means Magic Clouds are slow in Forest). Magic Clouds cannot travel in desert terrain at all (no desert symbols on card). All modes of transport are different and Rafts can be used on rivers or lakes without needing tiles. Rafts go slow upstream (2 raft cards needed) and fast downstream (1 card needed). The small lake requires 1 raft card to travel across and the larger lake requires 2 cards to travel across. Players may keep one unused transport counter and up to 4 Transportation cards from one round to the next.

The second part of the round begins after all players have finished placing their transportation tiles for the round. Each player plays his cards and moves his elf-boot around the board collecting his tokens from the cities visited. If there is a Transport tile on a route and a player has no matching Transportation card he may 'Caravan' across it by playing any 3 Transportation cards from his hand.

As a bit of 'take that' each player has a trouble tile which can be placed next to any transportation tile during the first part of the round. This counter means that in order to travel that path an additional card of the transport type must be played or 4 cards to 'Caravan'.

Victory: if at the end of round 3 a player has visited all 20 cities he is the winner. If not the game ends after round 4 when 'Home' cities are revealed and each player subtracts points for each city he is away from his 'home' subtracting that from his collected city tokens. The person with the highest score wins.