My apologies to Mr. Nepitello for butchering his name, which Lincoln pointed out to me later, and for not knowing a thing about War of the Ring, which I've yet to play. (Lord of the Rings has never held any appeal to me, so I'm at a loss in terms of what to ask about this expansion and what to summarize in this space: "So, um, more dwarves in this one, I see?" Thus endeth my confession for today.)
• Getting an overview of Beez from Dan Halstad and Next Move Games was much more my speed given that I didn't have to know anything about actual bees (or even "beez") in order to follow what was being said.
The gist of the game is that you want to collect pollen, and to make your movement through the flowers more beelike, you can never move in the same direction two turns in a row. You dart in one direction, then make a 60º turn, then turn around and rush the other way. Are you lost and trying to find your way around? No, you're just being a bee!
• Last-Second Quest from Christian Giove and WizKids has a Galaxy Trucker feel to it, with players trying to stuff items into their backpacks — which come in various sizes from one round to the next — to complete quests quickly while leaving no space wasted.
• Zoch Verlag's Rüssel raus! is an incredibly simple game from the design team of Inka Brand, Markus Brand, and Matthias Prinz, but sometimes you need a lot of brain power to get to the level of simplicity that's optimal.
Rüssel raus! presents a new take on rock/paper/scissors — sort of — is that each round players simultaneously put out either a fist or one finger, with the fingers then being summed and everyone placing one of the cards on display into their termite mound of the same number. Collect three termites of the same type into a mound, and you score; score twice, and you win. Pepper spray causes some complications but also another way to score.
• Mike Georgiou's Zen Garden from Queen Games is one of the few 2020 titles that I've played at this point, with the game having a very Queen feel to it. Players buy tiles from a display for 0-2 coins, then place that tile adjacent to others in their garden, slowly building a 4x4 display that tries to maximize points in several different areas, kind of the way you might look at several overlapping Venn diagrams and try to find whatever fits into the most of them as the answer to your troubles.
• Flyin' Goblin from Corentin Lebrat, Théo Rivière, and IELLO will be launched soon at the FIJ 2020 fair in Cannes, France, and this quick look at the game gives you an idea of what to target as you prepare your goblins on the launch pad.