New Game Round-up: Hack'n'Slash in Super Fantasy, Steal Treasure in Buccaneer Bones & Cause Mass Destruction in Ka-Boom

Super Fantasy is the first hack'n'slash board game in which up to six players take on the roles of brave and unique heroes. During each game, players embark on tricky and mighty quests into ever-changing dangerous caves and dungeons swarmed with monsters and terrible creatures that try to slaughter them, while heroes try to gain treasures as well as better equipment in order to complete the missions.

Since hordes of monsters repeatedly cross the path of our heroes, bloody clashes are inevitable in order to achieve victory! That is why Super Fantasy uses a simple yet unique dice-based system. Players have a pool of six dice to roll that they manage according to the action they want to perform (such as movement, attack, etc.) and its effectiveness. Each face of the dice shows either a 1, 2 or the Special Power symbol and the sum of the results shown represents the effectiveness of the action performed by the heroes. Every time the Special Power symbol occurs, the hero can choose to charge one of his abilities; once fully charged, the hero can unleash its power against the enemies!

Super Fantasy features double-sided modular board pieces for creating countless scenarios combinations, six mighty heroes and three unique and powerful abilities for each hero, throwing players into a fast-paced world in which anything can happen!

Each player in Buccaneer Bones starts with six ships on the six numbered ports of his player mat; each ship is in a sailing lane that consists of a port, a sea space, and an island. On a turn, the player rolls four dice, then rerolls as many as he wants; if he now has a pair, he advances the ship matching the number rolled one space (from port to sea or from sea to island) and if he has a three-of-a-kind, he advances the appropriate ship two spaces (from port to island). When a player has a ship on an island, he receives a bonus:

• When on islands 1 or 6, he rolls one extra die; on islands 1 and 6, he rolls two extra dice.
• When on islands 2 or 5, he can add or subtract one from a rolled die; on islands 2 and 5, he can do this twice.
• When on islands 3 or 4, he can reroll any number of dice one extra time; on islands 3 and 4, he can reroll two extra times.

When a player has a ship on an island, if he has a three-of-a-kind matching that island number, the ship grabs one treasure, then returns to port.

If a player can't advance a ship, he can place his first mate (1) as a scout on an island to grant himself that power on his next turn, (2) as a thief on a treasure owned by a player with more treasure than him, giving him a chance to steal it next turn if he rolls any three-of-a-kind, or (3) as a defender to remove a thief on one of his treasures.

The game ends the round that a player collects his third treasure. If he's the only one with three treasures, he wins; if multiple players have three, then the tied player who has more ships farther from his ports wins.

Fire and water! These two elements fight for supremacy in Ignis, and round by round players shove a piece into the playing area, trying to push off an opposing piece. If you use clever tactics, you might even finish off an entire row in one go! Which will win in the end: fire or water?

The 6x6 game board starts with eight tiles of each player – one being fire, the other water – in a fixed arrangement. Twelve air tiles and nine earth tiles start play off the board; all of the non-earth tiles have earth on their reverse side. On a turn, a player takes a neutral tile from off the board and slides it onto an edge space, which means at the start of the game the 6x6 border. If this edge space is occupied, the neutral tile pushes those tiles before it. If a non-earth tile is pushed off the edge of the board, flip it to the earth side. Earth tiles can be moved, but they cannot be pushed off the board!

If an outer edge of the playing area ever contains only tiles of the same element, remove these tiles from the board. These spaces are now off-limits on future turns. Thus, when the first edge is removed, pretend that the playing area is 5x6; when the second edge is removed, the playing area will be 4x6 or 5x5. Removing one row of tiles might cause another row to be removed afterward.

As soon as either fire or water are eliminated from the playing area, the opposing player wins.

The towers go up, the towers go down – that's the flow of the game in Ka-Boom, and whether you want the towers to stand or not depends on whether you're the master builder for the round or a saboteur aiming to cause destruction.

At the start of the game, players lay out the 26 tower tiles, with one large tile in the center of the playing area and the remaining tiles placed randomly around it. Each tile depicts a stacked arrangement of blocks as well as a point value. On a turn, the master builder takes the sixteen tower blocks, flips the sand timer, then starts building whichever towers he wishes, with each tower being built on the tile that depicts it. Each other player is a saboteur and has 2-10 ammunition dice that she tries to shoot at the towers with her catapult (which is more like a tiny teeter-totter really). If she knocks over a tower, great! No points for the master builder, although he can use the fallen blocks to rebuild if time remains. If an ammunition die lands on a tower tile, the builder can't build on this tile; if he's started building on this tile but hasn't finished, he must stop and move elsewhere.

If an ammunition die lands with the "Ka-Boom" symbol face-up, nothing happens. However, if a second die shows this symbol, the player who shot this die gets to slam her fist on the table once; if the ensuing earthquake knocks over towers, too bad for the builder. One player has a giant ammunition die, and this can cause an earthquake all on its own, but saboteurs can't cause more than one earthquake a round.

When the sand timer runs out, the master builder claims any tiles on which he has correctly built a tower that still stands. The next player in clockwise order then becomes the new master builder. As soon as a player reaches 16 points, the game ends and he wins!