First up is 7 Wonders: Babel, an expansion that comes in two parts and can be mixed with any combination of existing expansions, while also working on its own. I wrote about this expansion in October 2013, and based on a single play of an unfinished version with both modules thrown into the game (despite the warning against doing this) I thought it worked fabulously. As Provoost notes in the video, the new options for playing and paying have you re-evaluating each card as with only eighteen being played in each game, every choice you make is important. (Okay, well, the first ones each round are more important than later ones, but you get my drift.)
• Bruno Faidutti's Mascarade has been a huge success for Repos, selling 40,000 copies to date worldwide of one of the most gorgeous games released in 2013. (Seriously, how did this game not get nominated for "artwork and presentation" in the Golden Geek Awards?!) This expansion includes new characters that can be mixed with those in the original game, and Provoost runs through a few of those characters. He also mentions in passing that the base game will return to print in the U.S. and elsewhere, which I suppose is a given since (1) it sold well in the first printing and (2) why would you release an expansion if the original game weren't available for purchase, too?
• Ludovic Maublanc's Ca$h'n Gun$ was the second release from Repos (and is the firstmost annoying title to type!), and for 2014 Repos is taking all of its development experience and revamping this design, stripping out the rules complexity and timing issues caused by things like the "Bang! Bang! Bang!" card and the division of loot. (You might find it hard to believe that people had trouble splitting the revealed money into piles of equal value based on the number of players getting a share at the end of the round, but I'll just say that you haven't played the game with enough people.)
Provoost explains some of the changes you'll see in the new version of this game, which should debut at Gen Con 2014 in August with Maublanc and artist John Kovalic both scheduled to be on hand to witness the massacres.
• Designer Reinhard Staupe, who works as a developer at German publisher Nürnberger-Spielkarten-Verlag, took the Spiel des Jahres-nominated Qwixx from Steffen Benndorf and transformed it into Qwixx: Das Kartenspiel, a card game that uses the same principles of gameplay while not being an exact copy of the original game. Considered as a design challenge, it's a great example of how something like this can be accomplished. As for how it plays, well, I didn't have time to play it at the fair. Maybe next time...
• In addition to being a developer, Staupe is a designer in his own right, and he's also taken a whack at his game Basari, eliminating the game board that was largely inconsequential to begin with to reduce everything to cards and stones in Basari: Das Kartenspiel. NSV's Michael Kroupal explains how to play this new version of the game.