What's New Mind Games? 'Spring has Sprung' Edition

Once in a bluish moon Mind Games receives a lovely little letter from some dear intercontinental friends. Sometimes sent by air, often by sea, but each and every time it is a delight to receive. This particular kind of letter consists of several piles of large cardboard boxes filled with love... and games!

This time the zooming iron stork of the cloud-kingdom has delivered a whole litter of new surprises from the American and European front-line of tabletop hype! Thankyou great air-borne machine bird!

There’s limited stock of all this great and exclusive loot so get in while the frying pan is sizzling or you’ll miss the cook-off!

Here’s a few in-depth looks at some of the exciting crap that has just flown onto our shelves:

Ultimate Werewolf: Legacy

At a Glance

Genre: Bluffing

Complexity: medium - low

Players: 8-16

Playtime: 60min (20 min per round)

Main mechanics: Social Deduction, Deception, Bluffing, Legacy

First up, our pick for the most exciting release of the spring: Ultimate Werewolf: Legacy! If you haven’t played Werewolf (other versions often call it ‘Mafia’), it is one of the most prominent social deduction games in the world. A large group of players (sometimes dozens!) gather together to form a fictitious village where werewolves have begun a murder spree during the night. Everyone receives a secret role, most of them villagers or allies to the village, a select few: bloodthirsty werewolves who during the night choose a victim from the among the players to murder.

If you haven’t played a Legacy game, it is basically a board game that changes every-time you play, each game being influenced by the all the previous games played before it. Stickers are placed on boards and cards permanently, cards are ripped up and tossed away, and characters gain new abilities or even die.

In Ultimate Werewolf: Legacy, these two hugely popular mechanics collide in the best of ways!

Make a bad decision early on, and it can haunt the village for years (future games) to come! Players can earn titles, which provides them with special abilities in future games, regardless of their role. Players are each given a public family card in addition to their secret role card, and they team up with the other members of their family to work together...unless one or more of their family members is secretly working against them. Its all happening in Ultimate Werewolf: Legacy!

War Chest

At a Glance:

Genre: Strategy

Complexity: medium - heavy

Players: 2-4

Playtime: 30min

Main mechanics: bag-building, Team-play, area control

In the mood for some quick but satisfying strategy? War Chest is an exciting new bag-building game of conflict and war. Each round you draw three unit coins from your bag, then take turns using them to perform actions. Each coin shows a military unit on one side and can be used for one of several actions. The game ends when one player — or one team in the case of a four-player game — has placed all of their control markers. That player or team wins! In War Chest, Players must manage not only their armies on the battlefield, but those waiting to be deployed.

Thou Sucketh

At a Glance:

Genre: Adventure

Complexity: medium

Players: 2-5

Playtime: 60min

Main mechanics: Deck-building, take-that, humour

Thou Sucketh is a comedy-driven fantasy card game game that combines deck and pool building with easy-to-learn gameplay. You generate resources from your hand, purchase cards for yourself or another’s deck, and compete for the most victory points in your deck at the end of the game. When all is said and done, the winner shouts “Verily, I Ruleth!” loudly and proudly. This supreme victor will inevitably be targeted for last place in the next round. Rinse, laugh, repeat!

Tower of Madness

At a Glance

Genre: Horror, Action

Complexity: easy

Players: 3-5

Playtime: 30min

Main mechanics: Dexterity, Action, Dice, Suspense

The new Cthulhu Dexterity game that took Gencon by storm, Tower of Madness is a dexterity action game with an eldritch twist.

In Tower of Madness, a three-dimensional clock tower, standing a foot tall and filled with marbles of four distinct colours, stands before you. Thirty unworldly tentacles push through the tower walls in every direction in this high-tension, push-your-luck dice game of Lovecraft-inspired horror.

Fail your investigation dice rolls and you will be forced to draw a tentacle from the tower. Any marbles that fall as a result affect your character immediately, whether adding to your discovery total, gaining you spells and knowledge that man was not meant to have, or gaining madness; drop one of the three DOOM marbles, however, and you summon Cthulhu and end the game.*

Before There Were Stars...

At a Glance

Genre: Ancient, Mythology

Complexity: easy

Players: 2-6

Playtime: 40min+

Main mechanics: Dice rolling, Storytelling

Since ancient times, the twinkling of the heavens inspired people across the globe to create stories that answered the most important of questions: "Who are we… and how did it all begin?"

Open this box, and join the storytellers of old. Before There Were Stars... is a storytelling game in which each player tells the mythic creation story of "their people". Inspired by constellation cards, players craft tales about the creation of the world, the origins of civilisation, the rise of a great hero, and the end of days.

This "feel-good" game lets you appreciate the boundless imagination in all of us and awards points for the best story moments — allowing everyone to shine regardless of their skill as a storyteller. Playing this game is a breath of fresh air that never repeats itself, except in the fun and warmth of emotion it brings to your table.