New Game Round-up: Tell Stories, Avoid Marbles, Pose Like a Nut, and Gain Mastery Over Others

One-hundred years ago, The Infinity Engine was shattered and its reality-bending shards have destroyed most of the world. Now, it falls upon you to gather your forces, defeat your adversaries, and rebuild the Infinity Engine! Will you survive?

Shards of Infinity combines an unprecedented level of strategy and customization into one small box. Rather than competing for points, players must outlast their opponents and reduce their health to zero, which can be done in a number of ways. Each player starts the game with a basic deck of cards, and they can acquire new cards from a central display of six cards (as in Ascension) and add these new cards to their deck or use them immediately, depending on what they are.

Every character starts with fifty health and zero mastery. On each turn, you can spend one gem (a.k.a., money) to gain a mastery point. The more mastery you have, the more powerful your cards become. This lets even the weak cards in your starting deck become more powerful as the game progresses. If you reach a total of thirty mastery, you can activate your Infinity Shard, which instantly defeats your opponent.

As you acquire new cards, you can employ allies and champions to craft your strategy. Mercenary cards can be added to your deck as in other deck-building games or they can be played immediately from the center row for their ability; this adds even more drama to each player's turn as a key mercenary flip can alter the very outcome of the game!

Will you neutralize your opponents before they can fully master the Infinity Shard? With careful planning and aggressive gameplay, only one player can emerge the winner!

The famous pirate Blackbeard has summoned you to his deathbed and entrusts you with his dearest secret: the location of his hidden treasure! But the old rascal played one last trick on you by also revealing the location to every renowned pirate on the seven seas. The race is on, but in order to reach the treasure, you need a ship, sturdy and fast — except everyone has had the same idea and the battle is already raging in the harbor before the ships have even been completed!

Figure out how to finish your ship first in Sabordage, and you'll be on your way to treasure!

Since ancient times, the twinkling of the heavens inspired people across the globe to create stories that answered the most important of questions: "Who are we… and how did it all begin?"

Open this box, and join the storytellers of old. Before There Were Stars... is a storytelling game in which each player tells the mythic creation story of "their people". Inspired by constellation cards, players craft tales about the creation of the world, the origins of civilization, the rise of a great hero, and the end of days.

Investigate unspeakable horrors without losing your marbles — literally!

The veil between worlds in thinning, an ancient horror is awakening, and the very existence of the world hangs in the balance. You must investigate a series of horrific locations and discover the unknowable truth before the world ends — or go mad in the attempt to save it. Find the paranormal gates that have opened onto our world, and be stout of heart and strong of mind for only then will you discover how to seal the gates and save humanity.

In Tower of Madness, a three-dimensional clock tower, standing a foot tall and filled with marbles of four distinct colors, stands before you. Thirty unworldly tentacles push through the tower walls in every direction in this high-tension, push-your-luck dice game of Lovecraft-inspired horror. Fail your investigation dice rolls and you will be forced to draw a tentacle from the tower. Any marbles that fall as a result affect your character immediately, whether adding to your discovery total, gaining you spells and knowledge that man was not meant to have, or gaining madness; drop one of the three DOOM marbles, however, and you summon Cthulhu and end the game.

Investigate every horrific location in the deck, each with its own unique dice challenge, in order to save the world before your luck runs out. The player with the most discovery points is declared the hero and wins the game. Otherwise, the insane players collectively enjoy a brief moment of victory as Cthulhu rises, destroys the world, and eats them last...as their reward.