New Game Round-up: Details and Pics of Legendary, Classic Card Games Return & Another Take on City Building

In Card City, you will take on the role of the newly sworn-in Mayor. Your job is to encourage the growth of the residential, commercial, industrial and cultural districts that make up your home and to satisfy the demands of the city's residents. Card City includes six type of cards: Residences, Commercials, Industries, Leisure, Parking and City Hall. The game is divided into ten rounds, and each round consists of five phases:

-----1. Players gain two new buildings (i.e., two cards) through an "I cut, you choose" game mechanism that includes hidden cards.
-----2. Each player constructs the new buildings in his city according to zoning laws.
-----3. When the environment is favorable, residential and commercial districts attract new citizens, and the cities begin to evolve.
-----4. Players earn money from their city thanks to their commercial districts.
-----5. The first player position changes.

At the end of the game, a district of one residence card scores 1 victory point (VP), a district of two residence cards scores 1+2 VPs, a district of three residence cards scores 1+2+3 VPs, and so on. In addition, each five money left is worth 1 VP. If the player has not finished his city, he earns negative points!

In Andantino, two players take turns placing hexagonal tiles in their own color. To start, one tile of each color are placed together on the table. Each tile placed must touch at least two pieces already in play. (Although a variant allows the second player to place one tile next to only one other tile to balance a first-player advantage.) A player wins by surrounding at least one of the opponent's tiles with tiles of his own color or by creating a line of five tiles of his own color.

Heptalion is a special dominoes game played on a diamond-shaped board of 56 squares depicting seven different symbols on them. Two players struggle to place their domino tiles on the board so that both symbols of the tile match with the symbols of the two adjacent spaces on which the tile is placed. The last player placing a tile wins.

The special board configuration has the following properties:

-----• Each symbol is shown exactly eight times.
-----• Each domino is shown exactly three times.
-----• There are exactly 56 squares; the same number of squares that compose the 28 tiles.

To set up Legendary, players choose a number of hero decks – Spiderman, Hulk, Cyclops, Wolverine, etc. – and shuffle them together; since players use only a handful of hero decks out of the fifteen included, the hero deck can vary widely in terms of what's available. Players then choose a mastermind villain (Magneto, Loki, Dr. Doom, etc.), stack that particular villain's attack cards underneath it, then modify the villain deck as needed based on that villain's particular scheme.

Over the course of the game, players will recruit powerful hero cards to add to their deck in order to build a stronger and more resourceful deck. Players need to build both their recruitment powers (to enlist more heroes) and their fighting ability (to combat the villains who keep popping up to cause trouble). Players recruit heroes from an array of six cards, with empty slots refilled as needed. At the start of a player's turn, he reveals a villain and adds it to the row of villains. This row has a limited number of spaces, and if it fills up, the earliest villain to arrive escapes, possibly punishing the heroes in some way. Some villains also take an action when showing up for the first time, such as kidnapping an innocent bystander. The villain deck also contains "master strike" cards, and whenever one of these shows up, the mastermind villain (controlled by the game) takes a bonus action.

As players fight and defeat villains, they collect those cards, which will be worth points at game's end. Players can also fight the mastermind; if a player has enough fighting power, he claims one of the attack cards beneath the mastermind, which has a particular effect on the game. If all of these cards are claimed, the game ends and players tally their points to see who wins. If the mastermind completes his scheme, however – having a certain number of villains escape, for example, or imposing a certain number of wounds on the heroes – then the players all lose.