New Game Round-up: Making Squares, Toppling Kings, Evolving Critters & Ironing Cities

In Mentis, your goal is to capture the opponent's king. Each player's king is fragile, unable to move from his hill on the side of the 7x7 board, but he defends that hill by sending out forces of Spears, Trenchmen and Nobles to fight across the board. Each turn, you either deploy, move or capture:

• Deploy — Place 1-3 pieces in a stack orthogonally adjacent to your king's hill in a square not adjacent to an opponent's piece. You can place on an empty square or one holding your pieces, but you can't create a stack more than three pieces high.

• Move — Move pieces orthogonally 1-3 spaces depending on the type of piece on top of the stack. You can drop off and pick up pieces as you move as long as you obey the three piece limit.

• Capture — Use the top piece of your stack to capture an opponent's piece, but only if that piece is exactly the right distance (1-3 spaces) from the capturing piece and isn't of a type immune to attack from the capturing piece.

At the start of the game, each player receives ten cards face down, laying out three of them as simple animals while placing the other seven in a deck. In a round, each player plays each card one by one by (1) adding it as a new separate animal, (2) adding it to a pile as another animal of an existing type, or (3) flipping the card to reveal its property, then placing it under an existing animal stack to grant its power (or drawback) to the animals in that stack.

In the climate phase that follows, the first player lays out colored cubes to represent how much food is available in this round (red chips), how many refugees are present (green chips), and how many parasites appeared (black chips). Players then distribute chips, placing red and green chips on their own creatures to support them and placing black chips on opponents' creatures or on predators that want to feed on their animals. During the extinction phase that follows, unfed animals die as do animals attacked by parasites or predators.

Players then get a new deck of cards and the game continues with a new round. When the deck runs out and the final round ends, players scores two points for each of their living animals, one point for each property, and any bonuses from card combinations. Whoever has bred the most successful species in a constantly changing and dangerous world wins!

Scientists and engineers are perfecting the methods of creating mechanical men — powerful, effective workers that never tire if given enough fuel. The great nations of hogmen, toads, Cresarians, and humans race for the advantage this synergy of magic and technology grant them — but automatons are not the only leap forward in this age of discovery. Experts design terrifying war zeppelins, ships that can navigate beneath the waves, and other marvelous machines. Only the nations that embrace tomorrow will emerge ahead.

City of Iron: Experts and Engines includes new, unique citizen and military cards for each nation which open up a new range of strategies and make playing each nation a distinct experience. It also includes Steambot tokens, which can be placed on building cards to give extra goods. Another addition is the Kraxian Pirates token, which can be placed to negate coin bonuses on goods.