Assorti is a new card game for 2-4 players ages 7 to adult. The 80-card deck and the rules come in a very compact box for easy storage and transportation. After everyone is dealt a hand of cards, on your turn you draw a new card and then discard a card. A certain number of each player's discards will be displayed in front of them. The winner each round is the one whose hand of cards matches the tableau in front of his or her opponents. Deciding which cards to keep and which to discard while keeping track of your opponents' tableaus is the challenge. A round can often be played in 10-20 minutes.
Hybrid Dungeon is a cooperative role-playing game for 2-8 players, ages 10 to adult. You and your fellow players are on a quest to find out what happened to the queen's potion master. The potion master's lab has been trashed, and a door is ajar leading downward into a dungeon where players will draw three cards (head, body, and legs cards) that will determine their character's abilities from among 17 possible creatures. (You might have an owl head, elephant body, and a mermaid tail!) In every room, there is a new weapon or tool to collect and use. In every room, there is a trap or guardian blocking each of the exits. Through cooperation, new implements, and drinking magic potions to change your character's body, you move toward your goal: Collect all four of the magical gems in the dungeon without losing any of the characters. With variations in the size, configuration, and difficulty of the dungeon, play can last from one to several hours.
16 Kingdoms is a historical war game set in 4th to 6th century China for 2-7 players, age 12 to adult. Each player manages a different tribe moving in to claim territory with infantry and cavalry units. Players must manage their army, their treasury, and their artistic units to achieve the eventual victory condition: When one player controls the two northern capitals and another player controls the southern capital, whichever player achieves a middle rank in territories, money, and arts influence wins. (The northern emperor was an adherant of Taoism, the Middle Way.) The game includes foreign invaders, exporting arts, harvesting 12 resources, collecting taxes, buying troops and ships and ports, river and sea movement, and battles resolved with minimal randomness (one-to-one die matching, one die per unit) and occasional stalemates. Game duration varies with the number of players; a game of up to three players takes as little as 30 minutes, and a game of 6 or 7 players could take as much as 3 hours.
