New Game Round-up: Dominion's Dark Ages, Deck-Building with the Classics, Game Designer Clique & Mushrooms!

Times have been hard. To save on money, you've moved out of your old castle and into a luxurious ravine. You didn't like that castle anyway; it was always getting looted and never at a reasonable hour. And if it wasn't barbarians it was the plague, or sometimes both would come at once, and there wouldn't be enough chairs. The ravine is great; you get lots of sun, and you can just drop garbage wherever you want. In your free time you've taken up begging. Begging is brilliant conceptually, but tricky in practice since no one has any money. You beg twigs from the villagers, and they beg them back, but no one really seems to come out ahead. That's just how life is sometimes. You're quietly conquering people, minding your own business, when suddenly there's a plague, or barbarians, or everyone's illiterate, and it's all you can do to cling to some wreckage as the storm passes through. Still, you are sure that, as always, you will triumph over this adversity, or at least do slightly better than everyone else.

Dominion: Dark Ages is the seventh addition to the game of Dominion. It contains 500 cards but is not a standalone game. It adds 35 new Kingdom cards to Dominion, plus new bad cards you give to other players (Ruins), new cards to replace starting Estates (Shelters), and cards you can get only via specific other cards. The central themes are the trash and upgrading. There are cards that do something when trashed, cards that care about the trash, cards that upgrade themselves, and ways to upgrade other cards.

Fantastiqa is a deck-building board game set in a fantastical landscape of dark forests, mist-shrouded highlands, and frozen wastes. As you and your opponents journey around the board, you will subdue strange creatures and fulfill fabulous quests.

Each creature you encounter has both an ability and a vulnerability. By playing card symbols to which a creature is vulnerable, you can subdue it and recruit it as an ally. Each creature you defeat is added to your expanding deck of cards, making its special ability into an ability of your own! A defeated Enchantress will wield her beguiling charms to help you overcome wandering Knights. Knights in turn subdue Dragons, adding their fiery breath to your cause. By combining the powers of different creatures you can fulfill curious quests: Send forth your Rabbits of Unusual Size to Nibble Through the Violin Strings of the Violent Vampire Volnar! Deploy a party of web-slinging Spiders to String a Bridge Across the Chasm of Chaos! Send your Dragons and Vampire Bats together on a mission to Ignite the Whisker-Wick'd Candle Guarded by the Ice Cats of Kituviel!

Some of the creatures you encounter carry precious gems, which you can spend to purchase powerful artifacts or to summon mythical beasts to your aid. You begin with little, but you will grow in power as you adventure and gather allies! By completing quests you score victory points and claim other special rewards. The board changes every time you play, so prepare for a new, exciting adventure each time you enter the world of Fantastiqa!

Fantastiqa is easy to learn but challenging to master – a game for families and gamers alike. The components are lavishly illustrated with fine art by Caspar David Friedrich, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Arthur Rackham, John William Waterhouse, John Bauer, Edward Burne-Jones, Francisco Goya, and others.

The woods are old-growth, dappled with sunlight. Delicious mushrooms beckon from every grove and hollow. Morels may be the most sought-after thing in these woods, but there are many tasty and valuable varieties awaiting the savvy collector. Bring a basket if you think it's your lucky day. Forage at night and you will be all alone when you stumble upon a bonanza. If you're hungry, put a pan on the fire and bask in the aroma of chanterelles as you sauté them in butter. Feeling mercantile? Sell porcini to local aficionados for information that will help you find what you seek deep in the forest.

Morels, a strategic card game for two players, uses two decks: a Day Deck (84 cards) that includes ten different types of mushrooms as well as baskets, cider, butter, pans, and moons, and a smaller Night Deck (8 cards) of mushrooms to be foraged by moonlight. Each mushroom card has two values: one for selling and one for cooking. Selling two or more like mushrooms grants foraging sticks that expand your options in the forest (that is, the running tableau of eight face-up cards on the table), enabling offensive or defensive plays that change with every game played. Cooking sets of three or more like mushrooms – sizzling in butter or cider if the set is large enough – earns points toward winning the game. With poisonous mushrooms wielding their wrath and a hand-size limit to manage, card selection is a tricky proposition at every turn.

Following each turn, one card from the forest moves into a decay pile that is available for only a short time. The Day Deck then refills the forest from the back, creating the effect of a walk in the woods in which some strategic morsels are collected, some are passed by, and others lay ahead.