Vendor: Gigamic
Type: Board Games
Price: 272.95

Vendor: MJ Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 26.95

Vendor: MJ Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 21.95

Vendor: Mayfair Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 29.95

Lascaux is a game about the French caves containing animal paintings; discovered in 1940 by four teenagers.

This auction game is based on the bidding mechanism of Michael Schacht's Mogul also implemented in No Thanks!

The deck consists of 54 cards each representing one of six animals and a combination of two colors. At the beginning of a round, cards are turned face up until all six colors are showing or seven cards are face up. All players secretly decide which color cards they hope to win at the end of the round. On their turn, players bid by placing a stone on the table. If a player passes, he picks up all the stones currently on the table and places his token on top of the token pile. The last player remaining grabs all the cards of the color he had chosen earlier in the round. The second to last player, whose token now sits at the top of the token pile, then picks up all the cards of his chosen color if any cards of that color are left. The same process is repeated for each player when their token is at the top of the token pile. The game ends when all the cards of the deck have been claimed. Players then earn points for each animal for which they have majority.

Components: 54 cards, 50 stones, 30 markers, rules.

Released: Essen 2007.

Vendor: Lui-même
Type: Board Games
Price: 22.95

Note: This game is in French.   Loose translation of English rules can be found here.

"Choose your area, start your boomerangs, capture the animal ... and beware of other players.

Auction game of bluff. Players use cards with animals of two colors to win majorities and win the animal cards. A simple mechanism but players need a good self-control to get opponents to make mistakes.

Vendor: Ystari Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 39.95

Sylla was the name of a Roman Consul and dictator; the name of the game is a reference to his person. The designer tried to bring together "Res Publica Romana" and "Saint Petersburg," furthermore playable in one hour.

The players will try to become the premier Consul of Rome. Each of the five years (turns) is subdivided into seven phases in which the players take their actions. It will be semi-cooperative as one player alone cannot influence all parts of the Roman social or political life. They also have to prepare for negative events like epidemic plague or persecution of the Christians and also decadence.

The Ystari games website has downloadable rules for the game for 2 players.

Vendor: Gigamic
Type: Board Games
Price: 39.95

Vendor: GameWorks
Type: Board Games
Price: 27.99

TSCHAK!' is a card game in which everybody gets to play with exactly the same hands. But who will be the most successful in avoiding the troglodytes and bigger monsters, while going for the fattest treasures, or even better, the legendary rings of power?

The card deck in TSCHAK! is composed of twelve wizards (blue), twelve warriors (green), twelve dwarfs (red) and four artifacts (purple). Before the first round, a player receives three wizards, warriors and dwarfs and one artifact. (When playing with fewer than four players, deal out hands to virtual players; these are not used during the current round.) Set up the keep by placing one monster and one treasure tile face up on each of the three levels.

Players now assault the keep, trying to avoid the monsters and claim treasure. On the first level, players choose one card from their hand, reveal it, choose another, reveal it, choose a third, and reveal it. A player must create a team of adventurers with three different colors, and the strengths of these teams (the sum of the cards' values) are then compared. (The chameleon wizard with a ? equals the strongest wizard on the table. The artifact doubles the weakest character on your team.) The weakest team gets the monster card, which costs points, and the strongest team gets the treasure card, usually positive points. Ties are broken in favor of the strongest wizard, then in favor of the wizard with the wand, then the strongest warrior, and so on.

On the second level, players reveal one card, then a pair of cards, then compare strengths. On the third level, players reveal three cards at the same time. Players then compare the last card in hand, gaining 0-3 gold depending on the strength of that final card.

Once all ten cards have been played, each player passes his whole hand to his left neighbour, a new dungeon is created, and you now play with the same cards as the player sitting to your right. After four rounds, the game ends and players tally their points. Some treasures and monsters are worth a set number of positive or negative points; others are worth the square of the number of them you've collected (whether positive or negative); additional treasures have special abilities, like eliminating one monster card from the tiles you've collected. The player with the highest score wins.

Good hand management, double-guessing, a tad of luck, and the victory is yours!

Vendor: Ubik
Type: Board Games
Price: 28.95

Note: This game is in French but the game itself is language independent.  English rules can be found here.

This game has a large deck of oblong cards and a fairly simple map of provinces in Renaissance Italy. The object of the game is to acquire four connected provinces. Game play is fairly simple as players use numbered cards to get the highest bid for a given territory. Unlike standard auctions, in which only the highest bidder loses their bid to the "bank", in Condottiere, every player loses their bid. Players are, in effect, bidding the number of troops they are willing to lose to win the territory. However, several special effect cards shake the contests up and keep the players guessing.

The newer version (FFG) has a much smaller box, standard-sized cards, slightly tweaked rules, new card abilities and a lower price.

Vendor: Rio Grande Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 9.73

The Ystari Box comprises expansions for five Ystari games:

• Caylus Magna Carta: The Favors - small gameboard to add a few king's favors to the game (as in its parent game, Caylus), new set of prestige buildings, components for a fifth player
• Amyitis: The Palace - small gameboard with two additional characters
• Yspahan: The Souks - small deck of cards to replace those in the base game with mostly new abilities
• Sylla: Caveant Consules - small deck of cards with new characters, projects, and events
• Metropolys: Extension Cards - a few new goal cards
• Mykerinos: The Nile - (only in Rio Grande Games edition, making six expansions in that edition)

Vendor: GameWorks
Type: Board Games
Price: 27.99

Vendor: Gigamic
Type: Board Games
Price: 31.95

Vendor: Gigamic
Type: Board Games
Price: 17.95

Amoebas have escaped and are slithering around in all directions! Catch them fast!

In Panic Lab, the player-scientists have their hands full trying to figure out which amoeba to catch and where it might have oozed off to. To set up the game, shuffle the 25 cards, then lay them out in a circle.

At the start of a round, one player rolls four special dice which indicate the color, shape and pattern of the amoeba being sought as well as the color of the lab it left and in which direction it was traveling. Competing at the same time, players need to find the lab, then move in the right direction to spot the amoeba (which may, of course, be striped and not spotted).

But wait! If you encounter a vent after leaving the lab, you need to skip to the next vent in the circle before continuing your search. (Amoebas prefer to travel in the dark when possible.) Plus, if an amoeba passes through one of three mutation devices in the circle, you need to alter the criteria for your search, looking for a tentacled amoeba instead of one with a tail, for example, or an orange/red amoeba instead of a blue/purple one. Zap!

The first player to lay her hand on the correct card collects a token, and the first player to collect five tokens wins!

Vendor: FoxMind
Type: Board Games
Price: 14.95

Jungle Smart – one of many names under which this design has been released – is a simultaneous puzzle solving game. Three animals stand on two platforms, and you are trying to change their configuration to match a target card by issuing commands like "Ma", which moves the bottom animal on one platform to the top, or "Ni" which swaps the top two animals on the two platforms. As a result, the game is a race to shout out multi-syllable commands such as the eponymous "MaNiKi", or "LoNiMaSo". The first player to do so correctly wins the target card, and whoever collects the most cards wins!

Vendor: FoxMind
Type: Board Games
Price: 13.99

 
A yummy game for the brain!

This wonderfully simple and attractive game of tactic and memory will have children and adults rallying for second and third servings!

The object of the game is to be the first to build the most spectacular 10-scoop ice cream ConeZILLA. Each player starts with a cone and one scoop of ice cream. All other scoops numbered between 2 to 49 are placed face down on the table. Players take turns flipping over a scoop and decide whether to add it on top of their growing cone or flip it back into place. Players can only add a scoop to a cone if its value is superior to their current top scoop.

Vendor: Z-Man Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 33.99

This game has a large deck of oblong cards and a fairly simple map of provinces in Renaissance Italy. The object of the game is to acquire four connected provinces. Game play is fairly simple as players use numbered cards to get the highest bid for a given territory. Unlike standard auctions, in which only the highest bidder loses their bid to the "bank", in Condottiere, every player loses their bid. Players are, in effect, bidding the number of troops they are willing to lose to win the territory. However, several special effect cards shake the contests up and keep the players guessing.

The newer version (FFG) has a much smaller box, standard-sized cards, slightly tweaked rules, new card abilities and a lower price.

Vendor: Ystari Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 34.95

Serenissima is the new Ystari edition of the 1996 game (Méditerranée in France). The rules have been updated and the game is more fluid.

In Serenissima players represent a merchant family during the Renaissance. Players attempt to balance the need of trading and open commerce versus the cut-throat economic piracy of the day. Players create a fleet of ships to purchase and move various commodities around the Mediterranean while also keeping well manned ships to attack and defend against other player's fleets.

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Board

The maritime areas are bigger and there are fewer of them. Starting ports are different too: Alexandria is one of them in the new version.

Resources and Trade

One of the resources has changed (marble replaces gems) and the ports produce different resources compared to the 1996 version. In the 1996 version, when buying goods from a port owned by another player, you had to bargain. It could be hard. Now, you just pay them 1 ducat, instead of paying the bank.

Wine is now special: one port with wine in its warehouse is worth more VP at the end of the game.

Game Flow (big point)

In the 1996 version, all the players used to bid for turn order. Then, they all played the phases according to this order: they loaded, built and bought, then they all moved their galleys, they fought and finally they took over free ports and made money.

There's no bidding anymore. Now, the galleys you build are numbered, and when it's the turn of one specific galley, its owner can perform their actions (load, move and fight, or build), before the next galley is the active one. If your galleys have successive numbers, you can play several times.

The little flags that used to be awkwardly fixed on the galleys are now useless, and the men have to be in the player's colour (instead of being a nice bunch of nice Sailor Smurfs).

This is a major difference, the game is radically altered.

Counts and Victory Points

There are several counts in the game, and not only one at the end of the game. What's more: another kind of count can bring players money if they have wine in their warehouse. All of that depends on the drawn cards at the end of a galleys' turn. The pace of the game may be altered by those cards, too.

There is no card in the 1996 version.

In this old version, the only way to have your port well valued at the end of the game was to have its warehouses full. It's now different too: a port with one good is better than one with none, but worse than one with two, etc.

Other Changes

There's a building more: basilic. It brings more VP.
Galleys are easier to build but the price is not the same.
Combat rules are very different, the fort has a different power. Dice are different too.
Port limits to recruit sailors are different.
2 and 3 players rules are different.
...and this list is all but exhaustive.