New Game Round-up: Color-Based Kills, More Masterful-Looking Mastery & Slower-Than-Expected Horror

In Khitan, each player wants to eliminate the opponent's pieces – but both players start with the same number of (nearly) identical pieces, so you'll need to play carefully in order not to get knocked down yourself.

To set up, each player takes a set of hexagonal pieces, which are double-sided and have the same six colors on their two faces, and places them in the starting locations on the board. On a turn, you flip one of your pieces to an adjacent space. If a colored edge on that piece is now in line with an identically colored edge on an opponent's piece, remove the opponent's piece from the board. More that one piece can be destroyed with the same move. Zap all the opponent's pieces, and you win!

Khitan includes two variants. In the first, each player has a reserve of three pieces, and the first three times that you eliminate an opponent's piece, you add a new piece to your side of the board. (NB: You can't make captures when placing a piece, only when flipping.) In the second variant, each player has a reserve of six pieces and this reserve is replenished by pieces removed from the board, so you'll need to set up multiple attacks to keep the opponent from playing tit-for-tat and staying alive forever.

Enter a medieval realm as you take the role of a feudal King embroiled in a war to gain control over the surrounding lands. As a King, you must send your retinues of brave knights onto the field of battle, who then fight with strength of arms and courage, to drive off your foes and conquer the territories of the region. But that's not all! You must also manage your resources wisely in order to aid your kingdom in times of need, though be wary of your adversaries as all are intent to claim Medieval Mastery!

Medieval Mastery is a fun, tactical board game that incorporates area control, hand management and modular board design as well as variable player powers and phase order. The rules include alternate gameplay variations. This, coupled with a modular game board and a random distribution of crowns, orbs and sceptres, means that no two games will ever be the same! In addition, the number of components included allows for up to three games of varying sizes to be played simultaneously.