New Game Round-up: Korea Boardgames — Abraca... what?, Coconuts Duo, King's Pouch, Grand Slam, Heroes of the Three Kingdoms & Boom: Runaway Bombs

Abraca... what? is a family game of deduction and spellcasting. On your turn, you try to cast one of the spells you have in front of you — but it's harder than it looks because only the other players can see which spells are available to you! So with cunning wit, clever logic, and a little luck, you have to determine which spells to use against your competitors. Watch your magic words, though, because if you try to cast the wrong spell too often, you'll lose the game!

In King's Pouch you take the role of a feudal lord in a kingdom divided by internal strife. After the king's death, the powerful dukes and counts of the land are fighting for supremacy. You are one of these nobles, looking to write your name in the annals of history. You will use your citizens to develop your lands, muster armies, and amass wealth. You may even try to secure the goodwill of influential public figures, like the remainders of the royal family. But never forget to keep the dishonest parts of your society in check: Excessive corruption may lead to your downfall sooner than you think. The goal is clear!

But the path you take to get there is yours to decide: Will you be a peaceful protector of the royal family? Or maybe a warlord, taking what you want by force? Or will you fail to fulfill your ambitions and be lost among the anonymous masses? Take up the king's pouch and find out!

King's Pouch is a "pouch-building" strategy game set in a medieval kingdom. Each round offers tough choices on how to expand your pool of citizens and buildings. Using the resources you acquire, you may raise powerful armies or secure the support of powerful characters. In the game, you will use several kinds of citizens (cubes and prisms) in different ways, with the ultimate goal of earning prestige points. Your pool of citizens is represented by your pouch: You draw available citizens from there and return used citizens to the pouch only when you cannot draw any more because it is empty.

The game takes place over nine rounds. At the end of rounds 3, 6 and 9, a great council allows for the scoring of additional prestige points from influential characters and conquered territories. After the ninth round, the game ends with the third great council and a final scoring in which you can gain or lose points depending on your corrupt officials and buildings, then the player with the most prestige points wins.

In Grand Slam, each player has a deck of 24 cards, each of which depicts two parts of a tennis court: One half-court can be used for defense, returning a ball that comes your way; the other half-court can be used for offense, sending a shot across the net. You never use both halves of the card at once — either one or the other.

A turn consists of first playing a card to cover the shot your opponent played, then playing another card to dictate which of the six zones you'll hit the ball to. Finally, you play a preparation card, indicating which zones you're prepared to cover. The preparation card can be used to cover a shot if the appropriate zone is highlighted; otherwise you must cover the shot with a card from your hand, in which case the preparation card becomes the attack. Thus, by playing cards that your opponent cannot cover with her preparation card, you maintain control of the match because you'll see from where the next attack will come and will be able to prepare for that. Of course if a player cannot cover a shot at all, then the point is lost.

Combinations of cards can create special shots, which if not covered by the corresponding combination of cards, leave a player off balance, with her drawing only one card at the end of the turn instead of the usual two. This will leave her with fewer options and make it less likely that she'll cover your shots.

Heroes of the Three Kingdoms is a light strategic card game with 75 unique renderings of legendary heroes of the Three Kingdom period. The deck consists of 75 hero cards in five colors with three types of icons (goblet, sword and fan) and 25 contract cards, and each player starts a round with a random hand of three hero cards.

On a turn, a player lays down 1-5 hero cards or 1-5 contract cards; played hero cards must share either a color or an icon. If she lays down hero cards, she can steal one card of the same color or with the same icon from each of her neighbors. (If her cards share both color and icon, then she must steal cards of the same color or icon.) She then adds these cards to her holdings, sorted by color.

With each contract card, a player can either scout — meaning she steals the topmost card from any opponent's hero stack and adds it to her holdings — or secure a color by placing the contract card on one color of hero stack in front of her. When she does this, the player with the most cards of this color removes one card of this color and places it under her castle card as a point; in case of ties, all players score. The hero cards under a contract card cannot be stolen by a scout, but they can be covered by additional hero cards. After either move, a player then refills her hand to five cards.

When the deck runs out, keep playing until each player has had the same number of turns, then score each color of hero cards, with the player who has the most of a color scoring three points and the secondmost player one point. Record the points, then shuffle the cards. The game lasts as many rounds as the number of players, and whoever has the high score wins.

Boom: Runaway Bombs is a light bidding/bluffing/deduction card game in which the players want to help peace-loving bombs flee from an armory so that they can live out their lives in peace not blowing anyone (and themselves) to bits. If too many bombs try to leave at once, though, the armory guards could force them back to work.

In game terms, each round you reveal a guard card that shows a number for each of the five colors of bombs in the game. Players have a hand of bomb cards, and they first simultaneously reveal one card, then they simultaneously reveal two cards. After this, players now compare the sum for each color of bombs played. If the sum is equal to or lower than the guard's value, then whoever played the highest block of this color earns points equal to the value of the cards played and everyone else scores one point per card of this color; if the sum surpasses the guard's total, then the player with the highest sum throws away his cards of this color, then you recheck the sum. After checking each color, you reveal a new guard, then continue play.

The game ends when at least one player has played a certain number of cards from his hand, at which point the player with the most points wins.