New Game Round-up: Plaid Hat Offers Mice and Cheese, Cryptozoic Offers a Millennium of Deck-Building & Get Ready to Battle for Dungeon Command

In Mice and Mystics players take on the roles of those still loyal to the king – but to escape the clutches of Vanestra, they have been turned into mice! Play as cunning field mice who must race through a castle now twenty times larger than before. The castle would be a dangerous place with Vanestra's minions in control, but now countless other terrors also await heroes who are but the size of figs. Play as nimble Prince Colin and fence your way past your foes, or try Nez Bellows, the burly smith. Confound your foes as the wizened old mouse Maginos, or protect your companions as Tilda, the castle's former healer. Every player will have a vital role in the quest to warn the king, and it will take careful planning to find Vanestra's weakness and defeat her.

Mice and Mystics is a cooperative adventure game in which the players work together to save an imperiled kingdom. They will face countless adversaries such as rats, cockroaches, and spiders, and of course the greatest of all horrors: the castle's housecat, Brodie. Mice and Mystics is a boldly innovative game that thrusts players into an ever-changing, interactive environment, and features a rich storyline that the players help create as they play the game. The Cheese System allows players to horde the crumbs of precious cheese they find on their journey, and use it to bolster their mice with grandiose new abilities and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

The year is 3012. It's been a millennium since the Armageddon. Deep in the Yucatan jungle, humanity has mutated, degenerated, and segregated into five clans: Jaguar, Snake, Monkey, Gar, and Bat. These clans now battle it out for dominance in the region, cooperating when it suits them and actively working against each other when the opportunity arises.

In 3012, players start the game with small decks of Scout cards, which provide gold to make purchases. Two piles of cards – an Ally deck and a Weapon deck – provide static cards to buy, with three cards from each deck always available to purchase each round. Cards that are not bought remain there for other players to buy. Two non-static Action decks – one with cheap cards, the other expensive – are also available, and at the start of your turn, you reveal one card from each of these two Action decks. You get the benefits of the Action cards you reveal, whether you buy them or not, and they're removed from play if you don't buy them.

Dungeon Command: Sting of Lolth is a card-driven skirmish game played on modular interlocking map tiles that uses action cards, creature cards and miniatures. The object of the game is to remove all of the gold from your opponent's vault.

Each player controls a faction comprised of 12 miniatures, while also having a deck of 12 creature cards and a deck of action cards, the number of which varies by faction. Play begins with each player choosing, then putting into play creatures whose combined levels total no more than seven, with and no creature exceeding the third level during this initial placement. Each player then draws three action cards and three creature cards, then places 20 gold into his vault.

Creatures are put into play from your hand by paying gold from your supply equal to the creature's level. Action cards can be played by creatures whose stats match the card. (For example, a creature with Dex as its main stat can play any action card that has Dex as its requisite stat.)

When a creature is killed, the creature's controller moves gold from his vault into his supply equal to the creature's level. The game ends when a player can no longer move gold from his vault to his supply. Players receive victory points (VP) for gold in their vault, and the player with the most VP wins.