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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 Colin 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 horde 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.

The year is 3012. It's been a millennium since the Armageddon. Deep in the Yucatan jungle, humanity has mutated, degenerated, and segregated into five clans: Jaguar, Snake, Monkey, Gar, and Bat. These clans now battle it out for dominance in the region, cooperating when it suits them and actively working against each other when the opportunity arises.

In 3012, players start the game with small decks of Scout cards, which provide gold to make purchases. Two piles of cards – an Ally deck and a Weapon deck – provide static cards to buy, with three cards from each deck always available to purchase each round. Cards that are not bought remain there for other players to buy. Two non-static Action decks – one with cheap cards, the other expensive – are also available, and at the start of your turn, you reveal one card from each of these two Action decks. You get the benefits of the Action cards you reveal, whether you buy them or not, and they're removed from play if you don't buy them.

Dungeon Command: Sting of Lolth is a card-driven skirmish game played on modular interlocking map tiles that uses action cards, creature cards and miniatures. The object of the game is to remove all of the gold from your opponent's vault.

Each player controls a faction comprised of 12 miniatures, while also having a deck of 12 creature cards and a deck of action cards, the number of which varies by faction. Play begins with each player choosing, then putting into play creatures whose combined levels total no more than seven, with and no creature exceeding the third level during this initial placement. Each player then draws three action cards and three creature cards, then places 20 gold into his vault.

Creatures are put into play from your hand by paying gold from your supply equal to the creature's level. Action cards can be played by creatures whose stats match the card. (For example, a creature with Dex as its main stat can play any action card that has Dex as its requisite stat.)

When a creature is killed, the creature's controller moves gold from his vault into his supply equal to the creature's level. The game ends when a player can no longer move gold from his vault to his supply. Players receive victory points (VP) for gold in their vault, and the player with the most VP wins.

Most screenplays have a three-act structure, following an organization that dates back to Aristotle's Poetics. The three acts are setup (of the location and characters), confrontation (with an obstacle), and resolution (culminating in a climax and a dénouement). In a two-hour film, the first and third acts both typically last around 30 minutes, with the middle act lasting roughly an hour.

Fantasy Flight is publishing a new version of Netrunner, a standalone game rather than a trading card game. I am not involved with the design – Fantasy Flight offered to involve me but the time frame seemed too tight. I have not yet seen the design though it has been described – and based on its description and Fantasy Flight's excellent handling of many classic games, I am sure it is in good hands.

Android: Netrunner is an asymmetrical Living Card Game for two players. Set in the cyberpunk future of Android and Infiltration, the game pits a megacorporation and its massive resources against the subversive talents of lone runners.

Corporations seek to score agendas by advancing them. Doing so takes time and credits. To buy the time and earn the credits they need, they must secure their servers and data forts with "ice". These security programs come in different varieties, from simple barriers, to code gates and aggressive sentries. They serve as the corporation's virtual eyes, ears, and machine guns on the sprawling information superhighways of the network.

In turn, runners need to spend their time and credits acquiring a sufficient wealth of resources, purchasing the necessary hardware, and developing suitably powerful ice-breaker programs to hack past corporate security measures. Their jobs are always a little desperate, driven by tight timelines, and shrouded in mystery. When a runner jacks-in and starts a run at a corporate server, he risks having his best programs trashed or being caught by a trace program and left vulnerable to corporate countermeasures. It's not uncommon for an unprepared runner to fail to bypass a nasty sentry and suffer massive brain damage as a result. Even if a runner gets through a data fort's defenses, there's no telling what it holds. Sometimes, the runner finds something of value. Sometimes, the best he can do is work to trash whatever the corporation was developing.

The first player to seven points wins the game, but not likely before he suffers some brain damage or bad publicity.

Courtier began its game life as Henry the Great. This title may bring to mind Henry VIII of England, however my game was about the much-revered Henry IV of France (1553-1610). Champlain's Dream, David Hackett Fischer's engaging history of French-speaking settlements in the New World, inspired me to make a game about the complicated court intrigue surrounding Henry IV.

Fischer describes a world populated by strange but important-sounding figures such as Intendant, Chancellor, and Marshal who sought to administer the kingdom of France. Many religious groups, both Catholic (Jesuit and Recollet orders) as well as Protestant (Huguenot), and numerous artisans and businessmen all vied for the patronage of their king. Added to this web were several layers of nobility and those supporting the Queen, Marie de Medici (yes, those Medicis). In 1600, the famous Cardinal Richelieu was only a bishop, yet he had already begun to maneuver his way into the royal court. And hardly anything was done without the consent of the powerful Minister Maximilien de Bethune, duc de Sully. Champlain, the great explorer and founder of Quebec, routinely wove his way in and out of this complex mess to secure needed permissions, capital and supplies.

I admired Champlain's skill at navigating this sea of bureaucratic red tape. It seemed like a compelling setting: the kind of story that could be told by a board game.

In Tokaido, each player is a traveler crossing the "East sea road", one of the most magnificent roads of Japan. While traveling, you will meet people, taste fine meals, collect beautiful items, discover great panoramas, and visit temples and wild places but at the end of the day, when everyone has arrived at the end of the road you'll have to be the most initiated traveler – which means that you'll have to be the one who discovered the most interesting and varied things.

Through a unique zen mood, Tokaido is a strategic game while being extraordinarily peaceful and easy to apprehend by everyone.

Aztlán is a strategy game with bluffing and challenging mechanisms set in the mythical land of Aztlán, ancestral home of the Nahuatl (Aztec) people. In Aztlán, four tribes strive to survive and prosper, under the scrutiny of the Aztec Gods themselves.

The game develops during five different epochs, each one divided into four phases. Players try to conquer the largest realm, using an intriguing and highly interactive mechanism. In each epoch, the tribes have uneven and secret strengths, so the players' strategy must be based on intuition and bluff.

When winning a conflict, you are faced with the difficult choice between eliminating your enemies, or deciding to co-exist with them. Peaceful co-existence brings the opportunity to develop your own civilization and gain future advantages, but can you trust your opponent?

Road to Enlightenment gives players control of great scientists, artists, philosophers, religious leaders, politicians and military leaders, bringing them uniquely and individually to life.

You play as one of the great monarchs from 17th and early 18th century Europe representing one of the seven top powers of the era: Austria, England, France, Poland, Russia, Spain or Sweden. Your objective is to be recognized as the most prestigious monarch by producing the most admired art and culture, lead the continent in scientific innovations, spread or resist the spread of Catholicism, and attempt military expansion beyond your historical borders. All of this is accomplished by marshaling 134 historical "luminaries": important historical figures covering every relevant domain of human achievement during the period.

The luminaries are rated in between one and seven different areas of endeavour: military, politics, religion, ideas, science, art or wealth. Additionally, each luminary has a unique Action, Enhancement or Response based on their real historical achievements to be brought to bear in service of your nation.

In order to create a game that simulates the battle between nations for prestige - covering war, politics, religion, science and art - while focusing on many of the diverse people of history, we've mashed up aspects from wargames, Euro games, deck building games, and statistical sports simulations. While it is an eclectic mix, this broad spectrum approach to the game's design enabled this diverse and richly detailed set of conditions to come together in a game that is epic in scale but doesn't take all day to play.

In Town Center, players build a city – in particular, the town center. They add cubes on their personal board and try to arrange them as best as possible in order to score the most victory points. Each cube represents a different type of module. Flats, shops, offices, generators, lifts, car parks, town hall can be built and stacked during the course of the game. Each module generates influence on adjacent land and on cubes directly below or above.

Each round, players will gain two cubes of different colors through a non-random mechanism, build them on their game board, then eventually stack them in order to make towers according to the building rules. If the players have done their job well, some modules will be able to evolve, becoming bigger in three dimensions. The last phase is an income phase in which players gain money from the shops and parking lots if they are supplied with electricity.

The bigger and higher your city is, the more victory points players will have at the end of the game, which lasts ten rounds – but do not forget to provide electricity to all your flats, shops, and lifts to make them more efficient.

You're one of the Great Old Ones – beings of ancient and eldritch power. Cosmic forces have held you at bay for untold aeons, but at last the stars are right and your maniacal cult has called you to this benighted place. Once you regain your full powers, you will unleash your Doom upon the world!

There's only one problem: You're not alone. The other Great Old Ones are here as well, and your rivals are determined to steal your cultists and snatch victory from your flabby claws! It's a race to the ultimate finish as you crush houses, smash holes in reality, and fight to call down The Doom That Came To Atlantic City!

You and your fellow players are Great Old Ones competing to be the first to destroy the world. There are two ways to achieve this:

• Any Great Old One can win by obtaining six gates, at which point the game instantly ends. You have only five gate markers because if you open a sixth gate, you win!

• At the start of the game, each Great Old One receives a Doom card providing a shortcut to victory. If you land on one of your gates and meet the preconditions, you may attempt the action listed on your Doom. If you succeed, you win!

It's good to be the Overlord. You have minions to grovel at your feet, limitless wealth, and absolute power over all the lands – but you know that your subjects are plotting. They envy your wealth and hope to steal it for themselves, specifically by removing you from the picture.

So you've decided to secure your power and eliminate these individuals by sending your executioner out with orders to kill the first person he meets. Unfortunately, your executioner is a gullible fellow who's extremely enthusiastic about his job – easy to dissuade and misdirect, if you're clever enough.

Who will be the first player with no excuse to miss his own funeral? Once the axe starts swinging, not even the Overlord is safe!

Kill the Overlord is a fun, fast-paced game of political murder for 4 to 8 players that can be played in about twenty minutes. The goal of the game is simple: Eliminate other players by sending the Overlord's executioner after them, while at the same time saving your own skin. Each time a player dies, his survivors climb another rung up the political ladder, taking the deceased's title and all the wealth and power that comes with it. The player who can secure enough wealth and the title of Overlord first will become the True Ultimate Supreme Overlord (and win the game).