Fresh Releases and Imports from Blue Orange Games – Attila, R, Crab Stack, Thumbs Up! & More

Attila the Hun was an infamous barbarian warlord whose army of nomadic horsemen terrorized the people of Europe and Western Asia for nearly twenty years.

Attila, on the other hand, is a light and fast-paced game in which one player controls Attila and two of his warriors while the other player controls three Roman soldiers, one of them being Roman general Flavius Aetius.

To set up, players create a playing area from the four game board tiles (such as a 5x5 square), then place their figures on empty spaces. On a turn, you move one of your tokens in a knight's move (as in chess); you can traverse occupied squares and empty space as long as you land on a free space. Then you place a scorched earth tile on any empty space. Players alternate turns, and whoever first can't move a token loses the game!

I was surprised when I received the first sketches from the publisher. Since Attila is an abstract game, I was imagining something very sober and classic, with beige and brown chess like knights, not Disneyish cartoons. I asked the Blue Orange guys if they were confident such a light and humorous style could fit with an abstract game. They answered that it seemed to work for Battle Sheep, so they had very consciously decided to do it again. Well, that's their job; let's hope they were right!

Color Clash features round cards that have color words in matching or non-matching colors — e.g., the word "orange" written in blue — on the outer edge and a central image in a strong single color.

Color Clash includes six colors — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple — and spotting these colors quickly is often required in the six games and two solitaire challenges included in the rules.

In "Between Four", for example, you lay out the color tiles in the center of the playing area and place all of the cards face down. Players take turns revealing one card, and as soon as four instances of a color are visible — whether in the center of the card, in the color of the word, or in the word itself — the first player to slap the correct color card claims all cards bearing this color. When all of the cards are face up, the game ends and whoever has the most cards wins.

In "Antipode", you place all of the cards face up, then everyone races simultaneously to grab (with one hand) pairs of cards in which the color of the word on one card matches the written word on the other and vice versa. Whoever grabs the most correct pairs wins.

To set up WINK, lay out an array of numbered cards on the table, then distribute a second set of matching cards face down among the players, with a few cards not used and set aside.

On your first turn, pick one of the cards on the table that doesn't match a card in your hand, then mark it with your pawn and announce the number of this card. The player who has this card in hand must now try to discreetly wink at you in order to let you know. At the start of your next turn, accuse someone of holding the card on which your pawn sits. If you're correct, you score the card from the table while your temporary partner scores the card from their hand; if you're wrong, you turn the card on the table face down. In either case, you then place your pawn on a new card.

Each player also has a number of accusation cards, and if you spot someone winking, you can use one of your cards to call out that player. If you nabbed someone correctly, you claim both of the numbered cards.

Once all the table cards are face down or someone has scored all cards in hand, the game ends. Each scored card and unused accusation card is worth one point, and whoever has the most points wins!

In New York 1901, relive the historic years of the founding of New York that led to what the city is today. Build bigger and higher skyscrapers on some of Lower Manhattan's most iconic streets (Wall Street, Broadway, Nassau, Cedar and Pine). Raise one of four legendary skyscrapers — the Park Row, the Singer, the Metropolitan Life or the mythical Woolworth — and make one of them the crown jewel of your real estate empire!

Players in Crab Stack represent a family of crabs who don't start out stacked, but who will become stacked over the course of the game, preferably being top crab in the end.

Each player has nine crabs — three large, three medium and three small — and they start in random locations on the game board at the start of play. On a turn, you move exactly one of your crabs — with a large crab moving exactly one space, a medium crab exactly two, and a small crab exactly three — so that you land on top of another crab of the same size or smaller, pinning it and preventing it from moving as long as you sit there.

You can't move over open water, and if your move splits the cast of crabs, then the smaller group is washed away by the waves.

If you can't move on your turn, then you're out of the game — even if one of your crabs is left uncovered later. The last player who makes a move wins!