New Game Round-up: Fantasy Flight Tells Winter Tales, Ghenos Sets Sheep A-racing & Bombyx Lines Up the Trains

Following the victory in the Conflict of Autumn, The Regime of Winter has clutched the Land of Fairy Tales in its cold grasp. Fuelled by hate and fear, Winter aims at extinguishing the flame of Love and the light of Hope under a blanket of snow and the never-ending chill of a winter night. In the winding alleys and the small houses desperately clinging to the hillside of Wintertown, frightened Tales move in the shadows, knowing they cannot allow all Hope for the future to be snuffed out by the cold and ready to fight to drive Winter away and let Spring come again.

In Winter Tales, a storytelling board game, players tell the tale of the conflict between the characters of fairy tales, who represent all that is good and hopeful, and the Soldiers of Winter, who incarnate evil and the fierce cold of Winter. Players will ally themselves with one of the warring Factions, controlling characters and fighting for the comeback of Spring or the suffocation of all hope, bringing on an endless Winter.

Winter Tales is an ever-changing game as each time the players will tell a completely different story, creating a shared plot.

In The Sheep Race, players must place bets on three races, with six sheep participating in each race. Each sheep starts with a number of "breath" cubes (in three colors) on it, along with numbers for three speeds of movement: trot, walk, and gallop.

On a player's turn, he rolls the two dice – one a normal d6 and the other having values 0-0-0-1-2-3 – then moves the sheep in the appropriate lane, with a 7 or 8 moving the sheep in the outer two lanes and a 9 moving the lazy sheep at the back of the pack. When you move a sheep, you choose one of the three types of movement, advance the sheep the indicated number of spaces, and remove the appropriate breath cubes required – or you make the sheep rest so that it recovers two blue breath cubes.

If a sheep hits the "end zone" – the final five spaces of a lane – with no cubes on it, then the sheep is exhausted and can't move or rest again. The race ends when three sheep reach the finish line or when all the sheep are exhausted. The first three positions pay off for those who bet on them, even if one or more of those positions contains an exhausted sheep.

Players place three bets in the first two races (two secret and one visible) and two bets in the final race (both secret). Whoever collects the most in bets wins!

With the advanced rules, players choose which sheep to move each time and the game lasts only one race, with players betting on the final order of all the sheep. Sheep sometimes get blocked and can move again only when passed by the flock leader.

In Continental Express, players add train cars to their station in the hope of fulfilling objectives and maximizing the value of their secret contract. To start the game, each player chooses one of two contract cards dealt to them; these contracts require players to collect icons of a particular color or groups of like-colored icons or icons and company tokens of differing colors.

Players then take turns drafting cards from three face-up rows; the card on the end of each row costs nothing, the card in the middle costs $1, and the card closest to each of the three decks costs $2. Players start with no money, however, and the only way to get some is to draft it – but naturally that means you'll be forgoing other cards. If a player has train cars matching one of the three face-up objective cards, he can choose to discard those train cars and claim the objective – and since the objectives have the icons that satisfy contracts, you'll probably want to do that.

In addition to train cars and money, players can draft characters, taking the special action of a character when he drafts one. Actions include things like taking a train car of your choice from the card array, stealing all money from one player, and taking a company token of the color of your choice. The card decks also include two events, and those cards flush either the objective cards on display or the smaller cards that players draft.

When a player claims his fourth objective, each other player takes one more turn, then the game ends. Players tally the points scored for their contract (if any), their claimed objective cards, and any money still in hand. Whoever has the highest score wins!

Players of Cardline: Globetrotter want to rid themselves of cards as quickly as they can, with the first player to have an empty hand winning the game.

The game includes approximately 100 cards. Both sides of each card depict a country, while only one side of the card includes information about that country's size, population, GDP, and CO₂ emissions. For each game, players decide before playing which of these four country traits they'll compare.

At the start of the game, each player places a number of country cards on the table in front of her with the characteristics hidden. One card is placed in the center of the table with its characteristics revealed. Players then take turns placing a card from their tableau in a row on the table; a player can place a card between any two other cards or at either end of the row. After placing the card, the player reveals the characteristics on it. If the card was placed correctly – that is, with the particular characteristic in numerical order compared to all other cards on the table – the card stays in place; otherwise the card is removed from play and the player takes another card from the deck and adds it to her tableau.

The first player to get rid of all her cards by placing them correctly wins. If multiple players go out in the same round, then everyone else is eliminated from play and each of those players are dealt one more card for another round of play. If only one player has no cards after a bonus round, she wins; otherwise play continues until a single player goes out.

In Sultaniya, you're trying to build the most beautiful palace for the new sultan among all the builders.

The game system works like dominoes in that when you add a tile to the palace, every side of it must match the tiles already present. Each player has four visible objectives and two secret ones. Some djinns will help you in your work if you give them sapphires.