New Game Round-up: Palatia Spiele Offers Something, Z-Man Picks Up Tash-Kalar, Tichu & AEG Gets Greedy, Says Bye

In the card game Arboretum, you try to construct the most beautiful arboretum possible by lining up trees of the same kind. The more identical trees that you line up, the more points you score at the end of the game.

Players start with seven cards in hand, and on each turn you draw two cards — either from the deck or from one of the discard piles, with the number of piles being dependent on the number of players — play a card from your hand into your arboretum, then discard one card. Sounds easy? Not so much! Sometimes you won't have the right cards to continue a line of trees, so you'll need to place them wisely in order to keep your options open.

In the trick-taking card game ebbes, players need to keep on their toes each round as how they're going to score (or lose!) points might not be determined until the round is well underway.

The deck in ebbes contains five colors of cards, and with three, four or five players, you use cards 1-6, 1-8 or 1-10. In addition to the deck, you have a set of determiner cards (6, 8 or 10 depending on the number of players), five tokens that match the card colors, and a player aide card.

Game play follows the pattern of traditional trick-taking games. The lead player for a trick plays one card, and the other players must follow suit if possible, while throwing any other card if they can't. The highest card of the color led wins the trick, unless one or more trump cards were played, in which case the highest trump card wins the trick — but at the start of the round, trump is undetermined! To back up a step, at the start of the round, the first player reveals the top determiner card; the numeral on that card helps determine trump as well as which cards earn or cost players points. If the determiner card shows "7", for example, then the color of the first 7 played determines the trump color for the round; use a colored token to mark the trump color on the player aide. What's more:

• The second 7 determines which color is worth positive points; each card of this color is worth 1 point at the round's end.
• The third 7 determines which the "ebbes" color — "ebbes" meaning "something" in Palatine; at round's end, the player(s) who don't have the most or fewest cards of this color each earn 3 points.
• The fourth 7 determines which color is worth negative points; each card of this color is worth -1 point at the round's end.

After four colors have been determined, the fifth color is automatically the "nix" color. Whoever has the most of these cards determines the start player for the next round after cards have been dealt. At the start of the new round, reveal a new determiner card. After all of the determiner cards have been played — that is, after six, eight or ten rounds — the game ends and the player with the most points wins.

Three variants are included with ebbes. The first vairant extends the game (and probably lengthens the "determining" time) by adding more cards to the deck. In the second variant, players take turns placing a colored token on the determiner card of their choice, and those five particular cards determine the colors for trump, positive points, etc. as each of them is played. In the third variant, each player discards one card at the start of the round, and the player in last place gets to look at these cards; whoever takes the final trick takes these cards prior to scoring.