Vendor: Queen Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 23.95

Vendor: Queen Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 56.95

Description from the publisher:

In the dice-rolling game Risky Adventure, players embark on expeditions and try to find rare artifacts in an undiscovered world. Each player assumes the role of three adventurers trying to roll the right dice combination to get equipment, discover artifacts, and find new and mysterious places. The trick: Players have to mark the things they want to roll for with their adventurers before they actually roll the dice. Assessing the risk, using the right equipment, and finding the best locations to place the adventurers will be key to win a game of Risky Adventure.

Vendor: AEG
Type: Board Games
Price: 29.95

Build a pirate empire in the uncharted Plunder Islands of the Cairribbi— er, Carebbe— er, near the Gulf of Mexico! Seize your destiny of buccaneerrific awesomeness, and gather hordes of pirates, hoards of doubloons, ever greater infamy, and (of course) ever more treasure!

Dark Seas is a dicey island-building game. Each player plots out his own plundering route, filling its ports with docks, hideouts, and shady sea-faring characters. Players sail their ships around their islands, building their reputation by recruiting pirates, gathering doubloons, and acquiring treasure and infamy. Whoever amasses the greatest reputation wins!

Vendor: Stronghold Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 37.95

The story thus far...

The life of a Strategic Space Sheep Commander isn't easy, especially if that Commander is assigned to the Lambda Sector. Centuries of peace had lasted throughout Lambda, the various Sheep Systems have settled their remaining differences, and the sector has seen a golden age of prosperity and scientific advancement. With the era of scientific enlightenment came the creation of the Spatial Sheep Distortion Drive, supplanting the now-outdated Warp Drive. The ships outfitted with such operate both independently and synchronously with System bases to enable the crossing of vast distances in relatively short amounts of time. With this, the races of the Systems were brought even closer together. Commerce and cultural trade were at an all-time high, and families allowed their Sheeplings to roam free across the neighboring regions without fear.

All was well in the galaxy – until the first messenger ship arrived from a force that has become known only as "Wolf". Its language was unintelligible, but its message was clear: complete and total annihilation of Sheepkind. Soon after, the first Wolf ships arrived, laying waste to the satellite planets of the Sheep Home Systems. Front-line galactic defense forces were able to stave off further destruction – but what is coming is far, far more terrifying than any threat faced in the galaxy's known history.

All Systems have been placed under Red Alert, with the Strategic Sheep Command called together and a Flock Commander named. As members of Wolf have been spotted in Sheep Commanders' uniform, SSC has determined that the best way of insulating the individual Systems is by outlawing all usage of the Spatial Sheep Distortion drives. Inter-system access is granted only to the Elite "Shepherd" class ships, via a complex network of Hyperspace travel. A fleet of these specialized ships has been assigned to recover the Sheeplings and return them to their Home Systems while the Wolf invasion is repelled.

You are a Sheep.
You are a Defender in the Strategic Sheep Command.
You have trained all of your career for this moment in history.
You will issue Tactics to the Shepherd Fleet to direct the Rescue Mission.
You know how to defeat Wolf – "Ewe's The Force..."

Space Sheep! is a real-time, customizable, cooperative game – with possible traitor(s) in your midst – for 1-8 players. The Defenders want to get the Space Sheep tokens and Shepherd tokens back to their matching Systems before all the cards are gone and time has run out. (If playing with Infiltrators, thus making the game semi-cooperative, each player receives a secret allegiance card; each player knows only her own allegiance, leaving her to guess and decipher who else is on her team.)

In Space Sheep!, on each player's turn, the player will play a card from her hand, allowing her to:

1. Activate a System and take the action associated with it (moving the Space Sheep and Shepherds),
2. Play a card to move a Shepherd clockwise, or
3. Play any card face down to the Defense Mat.

Additionally, a player may play a card matching the System occupied by the Wolf to attack (and knock the Wolf token on its side).

In Space Sheep!, one player acts as the Supreme Flock Commander, managing the one-minute sand timer. If the sand runs out, Wolf attacks and players must discard cards from the Defense Mat, the deck, or their hands; if they can't, they lose the game. If the Wolf token has been knocked on its side, the Supreme Flock Commander may flip the sand timer before it runs out to avoid the Wolf attack, standing up the Wolf token and moving it to another System in the process.

Players who are Infiltrators will, of course, be attempting to delay action, make poor moves, and subtly manipulate the other players into making poor choices of their own. At any time players may point at one another in an accusatory fashion. If more than half the players simultaneously point at one player, this player is out of the game. He then reveals his Allegiance and:

• If players have found an Infiltrator, shuffle the player's cards in hand and place them on the bottom of the deck.
• If players have found a Defender, place the player's cards in hand on the face-down discard pile. On the ousted player's turn, Wolf attacks.

If the Defenders get all shepherds and space sheep to their matching systems, then they win the game. If the sand timer runs out and players can't discard enough cards – or if the number of Infiltrators matches the number of Defenders in the game – then the Infiltrators win.

Vendor: Rio Grande Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 14.95

Welcome to the Renaissance!

In Renaissance Man, each player is an example of the title character – skilled as a scholar, a merchant, a knight, and a baker – and throughout the game will hire, recruit and train others with the goal of producing a Master of one of these four areas of study. Each round consists of players creating actions by combining a worker in play with a card from hand:

• Merchants hire new workers.
• Knights compete to recruit workers from the common pool.
• Bakers offer their goods in exchange for workers' actions.
• Scholars train others in the ways of the Renaissance Man.

Vendor: R&R Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 14.95

Hey Waiter! is the first published design from Tichu fan extraordinaire Anthony Rubbo, and while it's not a trick-taking game, it is a game with tricky card play. Each player is a waiter trying to deliver his stack of dishes before anyone else, with the dishes being represented by a stack of colored chips on a face-down card.

Players each have a hand of cards, a few of which might be special action cards while the majority will be divided into two narrow rectangles. To play these cards, the player chooses two cards and uses the right half of one card and the left half of the other. Thus with a handful of cards, each half of a card can be combined in up to a half-dozen ways. The cards let you take actions like moving a token from one stack to another, with the primary action being to deliver food. When you deliver a dish, however, everyone with that type of dish on top of his stack gets to deliver it, so ideally you can first place a token on the opponent’s stack in order to lock down that dish.

You can also split your stack into two or more stacks, thereby giving you more opportunities to deliver dishes – but doing so reduces your hand size and limits the chances that you'll be able to do what you want!