New Game Round-up: The Lost Legion Joins Mage Knight, Become a Garbage-Cleaning Robot & Knizia Gets Round the Table

Stories about General Volkare and his Lost Legion are whispered amongst the Atlanteans – some in hope, all with at least a sliver of fear. Now with word of what appears to be Volkare and his Lost Legion reappearing and yet another new Mage Knight to contend with, the scattered forces across the land are deciding which side is likely to be victorious. Are the Mage Knights the lesser of evils, or is Volkare the true savior they have been waiting for?

Continuing the saga of the worldwide acclaimed hit Mage Knight Board Game, designer Vlaada Chvatil and WizKids present Mage Knight Board Game: The Lost Legion, an expansion that offers players a new Mage Knight — Wolfhawk — and also adds a new foe for the Mage Knights: the mysterious and powerful General Volkare! Included in the expansion set are new location tiles, enemy/ruin tokens, Unit cards, Advanced Action cards, Artifact cards, Spell cards and a rulebook expansion that features new game scenarios and rules to support play for five players.

Whether you and your fellow Mage Knights decide to work together or at cross purposes this expansion supports new play styles and tactics and a new foe that can challenge even the most veteran players.

In the abstract strategy game Rondo, players try to score as many points as possible by placing tokens on numbered spaces on the game board, with the board consisting of two concentric rings of numbered spaces and multiple spokes connecting these rings and the center of the board. (The game board is double-sided, with different values on each side.) The numbers come in five colors, and players start the game by drawing two tokens (also in five colors) from a bag and placing them on a rack, thereby hiding the color of the tokens from other players.

On a turn, a player can either (1) play as many tokens as he wants in a continuous chain, with the first token being placed next to an occupied space or the center space, then drawing one token from the bag or (2) drawing two tokens and placing none on the board. A player can hold at most five tokens on his rack.

When a player places tokens, the color of the token must match the space being covered; he immediately scores the points shown on this space. A player can choose to place a non-matching token face down on a space in order to reach another space, but he scores no points for the face-down token. Alternatively, a player can play multiple tokens of the same color on a matching space and score the listed number of points for each token placed.

The game board has a number of dark grey spaces on it. The game ends at the end of the round in which all of these spaces are occupied or a player cannot draw enough tokens to complete his turn. The player with the most points wins!

Year 2185. Planet Earth. Mankind has discovered the "space leap" and now soars through the universe, but they left something behind on good old planet Earth – mountains of trash! The old cities are full of junkyards, garbage, and not-very-useful refuse. Among the litter, some old and forgotten robots try to keep working so they will be useful for any new master that may come along...

Using your robot, you must challenge the others in a fight to the very last gear: the most important parts you need to keep your robot working! Once you get your precious gears, can you protect them until you can install them in your internal circuits? Or will some other robot steal them from you?

As you know, a good robot is a robot with all its gears in the right place! Out of Gears is a fast and fun game in which you need a touch of strategy and a lot of bluffing!

In Chicago, set in the United States during the age of Prohibition, the players are gang bosses who fight to control the city of Chicago. They try to earn money by controlling the areas of Chicago and building casinos and moonshine stills. Once Prohibition is lifted, the player with the most money wins – but before that happens, the player with the most money is arrested (like Al Capone) and half his funds claimed as punishment. Thus, you need to be second in order to win!