Reiner Knizia

Alderac Entertainment Group

Playing as Rats, you are trying to escape from the sinking S.S. Nvrsnks. However, you cannot make it obvious who you want to save, as your opponents will be trying to stop you! You roll dice to move rats up and down the sinking ship. Each player secretly has 3 rats that they can score points from and so must not only decide which rat to move but also bluff the opponents to ensure they score maximum points.

Frédéric Henry and Guillaume Blossier

Alderac Entertainment Group

Players are stuck in a Mayan temple and need to get out. But to do so they need to negotiate a boulder, crushing walls, lava pit and a waterfall while at the same time collecting treasure. Each player has a special skill they can use to help them in getting through the temple. But as they collect more treasure they move more slowly and will begin looking more over their shoulder to the boulder running them down. The production value is high and is a quick fun game.

Alf Seegert

Z-Man Games

When was the last time you got to play as a troll? This game twists around the common fantasy theme of slaying monsters by allowing players to be trolls and capture different types of travellers, from pilgrims to royalty, who may be crossing the bridge they live under. Trolls capture the travellers by throwing boulders at them and extracting tolls and ransoms. This then allows the trolls to improve their bridge and the player with the most impressive troll bridge, wins the game.

Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc

Asmodee

It is a well designed and produced game where players call on the favours of the ancient Greek gods such as Zeus or Athena to help them take control of the islands of Cyclades through the building of two Metropolises. Players bid to win the favour of the Gods, and then carry out that favour to improve their position in the game. The players can also enlist the help of mythological creatures such as Pegasus and a Chimera to further their cause. The rules are well written and make the game easy to learn.

Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc

Asmodee

Players are stuck in a good old American Western town called Dice Town, where you are trying to get the most victory points through claiming property or mining for gold. You do this by rolling poker dice and making sets. The sets allow you to take actions that either give immediate victory points, or else provide a benefit to help you get points in the future. After you roll the dice you must secretly select the dice that gives you the action you want. On each turn all players will get a choice so that no one misses out.

Ralf zur Linde & Wolfgang Sentker

Bernd Eisenstein

Who would have thought packing and stacking a truck would be so frantic? In this game, players are allotted a number of cuisenaire-like rods that they must pack and stack onto the top view of a truck. The trick is to pick the truck that would best fit your load before someone else grabs it. Players are penalised for not utilising trucks efficiently, or even worse, for having to make two trips.

Roll Through the Ages: the Bronze Age is a fun game that has a lovely feel to it. It mixes two very different sorts of games: Yahtzee and Civilization, and combines them with the pleasure of pegging your points on neat wooden boards. On your turn you roll a number of dice equal to the number of cities you have. Each face on the die earns you something different such as food, coins, trade goods, or more workers; but there are also disasters such as famine and pestilence. Then you will need to make decisions about whether to spend your hard-earned coins and trade goods on developing skills such as engineering, medicine or irrigation; and also whether to set your people to raising monuments such as the Hanging Gardens or else developing more cities in your nation. The game can be played solo, trying to get the best score, but is most fun when you are racing your opponents to build the Great Wall before they do!

Small World is a rampaging game of territorial conflict where your army of Diplomat Ghouls may take on the Beserk Halflings and the Wealthy Ratmen. The game captures the cycles of civilization: for a while the Heroic Sorcerors will hold sway, but gradually they will be overrun by another race, and forced into decline. Each player will control 2 or 3 races over the course of a typical game, and the whole rising and falling of civilizations will only take you an hour and a half! Other clever features of this game are that the races are mixed and matched: next game you might have Flying Ratmen and Heroic Ghouls, so that the game plays differently every time. The other major innovation is that there are no dice, which lets combat be resolved quickly and simply, and rewards the better general over the luckier die roller!

Bruce Allen

It is a clever game that pushes players into choosing cards that determine where treasures are located, through a process of elimination, on an island in the Caribbean. Once treasures are discovered, players race to be the first there but they all share in the booty depending on their involvement in discovering the treasure. Each game plays differently as the island is made up of 3 x double sided boards as well as a random setup of palm trees and statues. The game has a high level of production with easy to follow rules and examples and it looks magnificent.