New Game Round-up: Playing with Noir, Being the Law, Driving Ogres, and Telling Stories

• In the first half of 2017, Upper Deck Entertainment will release Legendary: Noir, a 100-card expansion for the Legendary deck-building game set in the Marvel Comics universe, with this expansion originating from the stories and characters featured in the Marvel Noir series of stories released in 2009 and 2010.

• A similarly grim comic-based game announcement comes from Steve Jackson Games, with the 15-card Munchkin Apocalypse: Judge Dredd booster due out in February 2017.

• On the opposite end of the emotional spectrum comes Munchkin Valentines, due out from SJG in January 2017, with this item containing actual valentines and envelopes as well as five packs of Munchkin cards to inflict/gift on your sweetheart.

• Also due out in January 2017 from Steve Jackson Games is the sixth edition of Steve Jackson's Ogre, with this edition of the game being compatible with the continent-spanning Ogre Designer's Edition released in 2013. From the publisher: "The sixth edition features large 3-D constructible models for the Ogres and Command Posts, with oversized, full-color counters for regular units. The Ogres come in a new, stylish blood-red and gunmetal-grey color scheme. The garage-style box inlay is big enough to store the constructed models comfortably." Stylish blood-red, mind you, not that gaudy stuff.

Plastic Ogre miniatures for use with either the sixth edition of Ogre or the Ogre Designer's Edition will follow, along with the 2017 release of Ogre Reinforcements, which includes units, scenarios, and new rules for use with either Ogre set.

• In 2017, Osprey Games plans to release Yuo's Tarot Storia — first released in Japan by Kocchiya in 2015 — under the name Shahrazad with the original art being paired with new graphic design (as with Osprey's 2016 release of a new edition of Kuro's The Ravens of Thri Sahashri).

In Tarot Storia, 1-2 players play from a hand of two cards, trying to build one or more "stories" of cards from left to right that constantly increase in value. Cards that don't fit into stories are turned face down, then players score points for color groups and lose points for face-down cards and gaps in their stories.