New Game Round-up: Lots of Laska, Limited Lectio, Laukat Looks Forward & Concept Emerges

The game board and play of Laska resembles that of Checkers, but captured pieces remain on the board and can possibly be freed later in the game.

Each player starts the game on the 7x7 board with eleven soldiers. On a turn, a player moves one soldier diagonally forward one space. If a capture is available, then the player must make that capture, trapping the captured piece underneath the capturing one; if the newly captured piece had previously had one or more pieces underneath it, then those pieces are now free to move in future turns. If a soldier reaches the opponent's back row, it's flipped and promoted to an officer, which can move diagonally in all directions. The game continues until either a player can't move or a player has no pieces remaining on the board. In both cases, this player loses the game.

In Concept, your goal is to guess words through the association of icons. A team of two players – neighbors at the table – choose a word or phrase that the other players need to guess. Acting together, this team places pieces judiciously on the available icons on the game board.

To get others to guess "milk", for example, the team might place the question mark icon (which signifies the main concept) on the liquid icon, then cubes of this color on the icons for "food/drink" and "white". For a more complicated concept, such as "Leonardo DiCaprio", the team can use the main concept and its matching cubes to clue players into the hidden phrase being an actor or director, while then using sub-concept icons and their matching cubes to gives clues to particular movies in which DiCaprio starred, such as Titanic or Inception.

The first player to discover the word or phrase receives 2 victory points, the team receives points as well, and the player who ends up with the most points wins.

In an ancient, faraway world forgotten by time, five tribes leave behind old traditions as they flock to growing city-states. The cities boast the latest in art, culture, and advancement, and with the strength of the combined tribes, each competes to be the most powerful and influential in the world.

The Ancient World combines the depth and tactics of a worker-placement game with the variety and easy set-up of a card game. Players compete to grow the largest and most influential city-state by managing the population, treasury, and military. Players take turns sending workers to take special actions or construct building cards from a pool available to all players. Building cards give players more workers, money, and abilities. Players also play military cards to claim and hold important regions in the surrounding lands. After eight rounds, the player with the most influential city-state wins.