A group of explorers have sailed around the world amassing a mountain of treasure, but on the voyage home, they're hit by a massive storm! The ship and all its treasure are going down! The explorers, in an attempt to save their hard-earned treasure from sinking to the bottom of the sea, begin to feverishly load the lifeboat. You may want to save all your treasure, but the other explorers will be trying to save theirs as well. Which treasure should you load into which boat? You must plan your moves carefully!

Some cards are easier to load than others in Flotsam Fight, so you need to determine which are which to defeat your fellow explorers and save all of your treasure.

This Reiner Knizia concoction is a sort of a trick-taking game, but instead of everybody playing one card and seeing which one wins the trick, everybody takes turns adding cards until the total adds up to 10 or more and the player who added that card takes the whole pile.

This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the player's goal for that particular round! There are five rounds in the game and exactly five different goals to be fulfilled: to take as many mushroom cards as you can, or as many pea soup cards, or as many onion cards, or as many chili pepper cards, or to take no cards at all. (The pepper cards, incidentally, count minus 1 unless your goal for the round is to collect them.) Goals are revealed simultaneously, so you may or may not be in competition with another player for the same cards during the round. And you can't choose a goal you've already chosen, so things can get pretty tough especially on the last hand, where no matter what cards you're dealt, you *have* to go for whichever of the five goals you haven't done already.

Since the game is always exactly five rounds, it lasts a good dependable half an hour every time.

Gaïa is a 2-5 player game in which you create a world, instill life in it, build cities, try to satisfy their needs, and use godly powers to shape the world to your benefit.

In game terms, Gaïa involves tile placement, area control and influence with a twist of power cards. Each player has five wooden figures, and if you're the first to place all five of your figures on the board, you win!

Gaïa includes two levels of rules, with the basic rules allowing for play with those as young as eight thanks to the game's simple mechanisms and non-attacking nature. The advanced rules give you the opportunity to use godly powers — lightning, volcanoes, rain, sun, earthquakes, etc. — to shape the world after it has been created. You can even steal an opponent's cities, making it a more aggressive game with a higher level of strategy.

This Halloween the land has been blighted by an unnatural curse. Crops have rotted in the fields, feral beasts stalk the villages and children wake with night terrors.The ever vigilant members of the Infernal Club have discovered the source of the corruption. Witches!!!As one of the club’s supernatural enforcers it is the players' duty to conduct a witch hunt and capture as many of the coven as they dare.

Ghost Hunter: Witches is a card game for 2 or more players (up to 6 with one deck or 12 with two decks). Players must lay down higher and higher Witch cards until one can lay a set of three capturing all the cards on the table at that time. A player who cannot keep up with the witches being laid will be forced to pick up the stack and add it to their hand. Every captured card is worth points at the end of the game. Many cards have special rules that effect the order of play, who may capture or other game dynamics. Some cards are marked as 'innocent' meaning that if they are captured, which is often unavoidable, they are worth minus points at the end of the game. When the first player has gotten rid of all of their cards the game ends, then the player who has the most positive points wins overall with the others being ranked behind them based on their scores.

The deck can be integrated with all the other Ghost Hunter decks like the blues Spirits deck or the red Vampires deck.

So assemble your trusted associates, light your torches and prepare for the wickedness of Ghost Hunter: Witches.

Go For Broke is a roll and move game for 2-5 players. Players receive one million dollars from the bank and race to be the first player to spend all of their money and go bankrupt. Players can risk money at the Racetrack, the Casino, play the Stock Market or make donations to charity. Outcomes are determined by spend and receive cards and by the spinners that represent the various locations.

Goblins, Inc. is a corporation dedicated to building unstoppable giant doomsday robots, and it's looking for a new Boss. Do you have what it takes?

Team up with your greed-driven fellow goblins and build the ultimate doomsday robot. Meet other teams in epic battles and blow them up, but always remember, only one goblin can win because there is no "G" in team work!

The game plays over two rounds in which you partner up with each of your fellow players to try to build the ultimate giant doomsday robot – but the other players don't know which hidden agendas you must complete to impress the Boss! During the four phases of the round, the teams take turns designing, building and piloting their robots in order to destroy the other team and get one step closer to becoming the next Boss of Goblins, Inc.

America in the 19th century: You are a rancher and repeatedly herd your cattle from Texas to Kansas City, where you send them off by train. This earns you money and victory points. Needless to say, each time you arrive in Kansas City, you want to have your most valuable cattle in tow. However, the "Great Western Trail" not only requires that you keep your herd in good shape, but also that you wisely use the various buildings along the trail. Also, it might be a good idea to hire capable staff: cowboys to improve your herd, craftsmen to build your very own buildings, or engineers for the important railroad line.

If you cleverly manage your herd and navigate the opportunities and pitfalls of Great Western Trail, you surely will gain the most victory points and win the game.

The second edition of Great Western Trail includes solitaire rules, making for a player count of 1-4.

Second Edition:
Remember the old days in the West? Well, the times they are a-changing’! From new solo opponent to incredible landscapes, you won't know where to start. And there is a new herd of cows for you to sell!

Great Western Trail is the critically acclaimed game of cattle ranching by Alexander Pfister. Players attempt to wrangle their herd across the Midwest prairie and deliver it to Kansas City. But beware! Other cowboys are sharing the trail with you. We invite you to saddle up!

The changes in the Second edition:


Brand New Artwork by Chris Quilliams
Solo Mode: A New Challenger in the West
Dual-Layered Player Boards
Addition of a new breed of cows: The Simmental breed
Two new reversible buildings (#11 & 12)
Twelve Exchange Tokens, First introduced in the Rails of North Expansion, for more interaction with other players
Four new Master Tiles added for more strategy, replayability, and challenges


—description from the publisher

Hako Onna is a game of horror hide-and-seek. One player plays the “Hako Onna” (the Woman in the Box), and the rest are “Visitors”, who are trying to escape from the mansion. As Visitors, you’ll try not to make noise as you search the shadowy rooms of the mansion for items to protect yourself, for information, and for a way to escape what you do not see, but know is there. But if you stumble upon the Hako Onna, you’re dead. Players who discover the Hako Onna become a Hakobito, one of her servants, and wake up with her to move throughout the house.

During most of Hako Onna's turn, the human players must keep their eyes closed so they cannot see where she moves to or what action she has done. The game also features a unique optional dexterity element that adds to the game's overall tension and dread. Before a visitor can take their turn, they need to avoid making noise by stacking a small disc on top the previous ones; if the tower collapses, they've made noise and it instantly becomes Hako Onna's turn.

Hako Onna can win the game in two ways:

If all visitors are turned into Hakobito, or
If she has made it impossible for the visitors to win.


The human players can win in one of three ways:

If they manage to kill Hako Onna after finding her only weakness,
If they find the secret exit, while in posession of the key ring hidden inside the safe, or
If they can bring peace to Hako Onna by bringing the remains of her body to her precious doll, Mary.


Since its original publication in Japanese, Hako Onna has reached its fourth edition, and has been republished in English by WizKids. The English edition features all-new cards for players to use as they experience the thrilling horror of this thematically-rich game.

•••

ジャパニーズ・ホラーをテーマとした非対称対戦＆協力型脱出ゲーム。
館に潜む怨霊「箱女」と、館を訪れた訪問者に分かれてゲームを行います。
箱女を見つけてしまうと訪問者は死亡し、ハコオンナの眷属、箱人となってしまいます。訪問者全員が箱人になってしまえば箱女プレイヤーの勝ち、訪問者全員が箱人になる前に３つの勝利条件のいずれかを達成できれば訪問者プレイヤーの勝利となります。

Hanabi—named for the Japanese word for "fireworks"—is a cooperative game in which players try to create the perfect fireworks show by placing the cards on the table in the right order. (In Japanese, hanabi is written as 花火; these are the ideograms flower and fire, respectively.)

The card deck consists of five different colors of cards, numbered 1–5 in each color. For each color, the players try to place a row in the correct order from 1–5. Sounds easy, right? Well, not quite, as in this game you hold your cards so that they're visible only to other players. To assist other players in playing a card, you must give them hints regarding the numbers or the colors of their cards. Players must act as a team to avoid errors and to finish the fireworks display before they run out of cards.

An extra suit of cards, rainbow colored, is also provided for advanced or variant play.

Hanabi was originally published as part of Hanabi & Ikebana.

Dockmaster Schlibble and Constable O'Brady cordially invite you to visit their bustling Harbour town! Attend to business at the Trader's Guild or the Masoner's Hall. Break for lunch at the Sushi Shop, or stop off for a drink at the Pub. Don't forget to check out the Wizard's Traveling Imaginarium before you go! But no matter where you go, keep on the lookout for a bargain... the denizens of this town are always wheeling and dealing! Collect and trade resources as you visit the various buildings of Harbour, and cash them in to buy your way into the town. Whoever has the most points worth of buildings when the game ends, wins!

Harbour is a worker placement game where players move their worker from building to building, collecting and trading Fish, Livestock, Wood, and Stone; and cashing those resources in to purchase buildings (which are the worker placement spots) from the central pool. Once a building is purchased, it is replaced from the deck, and the central pool is a small subset of the deck, and is therefore different every game.

The game ends when a player has purchased his fourth building. After that round finishes, the player with the most points worth of buildings is the winner!

At the heart of Harbour is a dynamic market mechanism. Each time a player purchases a building, the value of the resources they used drops, while the value of the other resources rise. You'll have to carefully time your purchases to take advantage of the ebb and flow of market prices, or be prepared to waste some resources!

In Harmonies, build landscapes by placing colored tokens and create habitats for your animals. To earn the most points and win the game, incorporate the habitats in your landscapes wisely and have as many animals as you can settle there.

—description from the publisher

The aim of Hearsay is to identify personalities, television programs, movies and songs from the "Hearsay" clues.

This is a great game in which you can hear what you're saying but not necessarily say what you are hearing!
Clues lead to answers which individually are merely words - put them together however and they take on a whole new meaning!

Even if you solve the clues within the time limit you might still fail to put them together and give the correct solution. What is certain is that your opponents will revel in your struggle and doubtless be highly amused at you being so near but so far- particularly if they have already worked it out!

An example of a hearsay round is...

The category is T.V.

Your clues are:-
1) Scottish word for small.
2) Fondness or affection
3) Castle
4) Female Sheep
5) Sound of the 14th letter.

The answers to the clues are:-
Wee - Love - Fort - "N".
Answer = "Wheel of Fortune".

Game Contents:
1 x playing board
200 x "Hearsay" Cards (800 x Challenges)
40 x Category Tiles
1 x sixty-second timer
1 x Cone
6 x Pawns
1 x Dice
1 x Score Pad
2 x Note Pads
6 x Pencils
1 x Rules Sheet

The game was exclusively developed and designed for WH Smith by Games Talk. Developed by Christopher Shaw and Kari Nightingale.

This is a party game for families, friends and cow rustlers. The aim of the game is simple: think like the herd and write down the same answers as your friends.

If your answer is part of the majority, you all win cows. Yeehaw! If everyone else writes an answer that is matched by at least one other person, but yours is the odd one out, then you land the angry Pink Cow, and your herd of cows is worthless until you can offload it onto someone else.

The first player to collect eight cows wins.

HexRoller is a roll-and-write game in which each round players draft two of the dice rolled, then fill in spaces on a hexagonal grid, attempting to both complete regions and create lines of identical numbers in order to maximize their score. Who can use their bonuses at the right time to zoom into the lead?

High Score is an ingenious dice game with unique challenges. Turning over a new challenge card tells players how to score points this round and how you can re-roll your dice. Will even numbers score 0 points this round? What effect will the vortex have this round?

After the first player finishes their turn, the other players can attempt to beat their score, but risk too much and you may come away empty-handed. Whoever has the most points after seven rounds wins.

After establishing themselves in Honshu, the Lords and Ladies head north to Hokkaido. Beholding Hokkaido’s mountainous landscape, they see that expansion on this land will prove to be a greater challenge than before.

Hokkaido is the second map-building card game in the Nippon series, bringing new ideas and mechanisms to the first design Honshu. A game of Hokkaido consists of twelve rounds, each divided into two separate phases. Each player must expand their personal map to maximize their scoring possibilities.

—description from publisher

The mythical realm of Hyperborea was ruled by an ancient civilization that used magical crystals as their main source of energy. With time, the Hyperboreans became greedy, and their search for power in the deep made the crystals unstable, causing earthquakes, mutations, droughts and floods. Hyperboreans just dug deeper, and only a few wise mages, foreseeing the inevitable, built an unbreakable magical barrier. When the unharnessed magical energy was unleashed from the deep, the Hyperborean civilization was destroyed in a single day, only the magical barrier preventing the disappearance of life from the whole land. The survivors living in the small outposts outside Hyperborea were now sealed out by the barrier. The knowledge of crystals was declared forbidden it was because too dangerous, or simply forgotten.

Over centuries, six rival realms were born from the ashes of the Hyperborean civilization: the militarist Red Duchy; the Emerald Kingdom and its death-delivering archers; the Purple Matriarchy fanatically worshipping the goddess of life; the skilled diplomats and merchants of the Golden Barony; the Coral Throne with its efficiently organized society and finally the secluded and enigmatic Celestial Reign.

The fragile peace between the different realms was not intended to last. One day, the magical barrier suddenly collapsed. A whole new land stood in front of the six kingdoms, still haunted by the old Hyperboreans turned into harmless but ominous ghosts, full of ruins to discover and cities to explore. Each realm is now sending its best warriors and explorers to Hyperborea in order to achieve dominance over their rivals, but which will prevail? Brutal strength or deep understanding of science? The discovery of valuable artifacts in the lost ruins or the retaking of long, lost cities? Only you, as the leader of one of the factions, can lead your people to the ultimate dominance over Hyperborea!

Set in a mythical land of the same name, Hyperborea is a light civilization game for 2 to 6 players that takes 20-25 minutes per player. The game begins at the time when the magic barrier protecting access to the mythical continent of Hyperborea suddenly falls.

Each player takes the role of the leader of a small kingdom situated just outside the now open to be conquered and explored land. Her kingdom has limited knowledge of housing, trade, movement, warfare, research, and growth, but new and exciting powers are hidden in Hyperborea. During the game, this kingdom will grow in numbers and raise armies, extend its territory, explore and conquer, learn new technologies, etc...

The game's main mechanism, which can be described as "bag-building", involves you building a pool of "civilicubes". Each cube represents specializations for your kingdom: war, trade, movement, building, knowledge, growth. Grey cubes represent corruption and waste, and players will acquire them by developing new technologies. (Power corrupts by its own definition, and the more complex a society becomes, the more waste it generates.) Each turn, players draw three random cubes from their bags, then use them to activate knowledge (technologies) they own.

Ice Flow is a strategic family game, interesting enough for gamers, as there are many tactical decisions to make.

Inspired by Karl Bushby's 1998 Goliath Expedition, players race their explorers across the Bering Strait from Alaska to Siberia - riding ice floes, dodging polar bears, and collecting useful items on the way. Thus, at its heart, Ice Flow is a resource management game coupled with a traveling salesman type problem where the ground (or ice) is constantly moving.

Each player has three explorers and rucksack card (to store a limited amount of rope and fish in). The board consists of an array of hexagonal spaces with ice floes (hexagonal plastic tiles) that are introduced at the top and can be moved down the board by players with rates dependent on where they are on the board. On their turn players must first move, rotate or introduce a new ice floe, then they can move one of their explorer as far as they can (or want) before collecting an item from the tile they finished on. When moving, explorers are limited by the obstacles they must overcome and the tools they have available. For example, the ice floes have smooth sides and rough side: the rough sides depict "pack ice" which is hard to cross, and costs a rope. Similarly, explorers can swim up to one space, but that costs a fish as swimming through arctic waters is energy sapping. Polar bears are also a hazard that must be avoided or lured away with fish; beware they can be lured away from one player straight into the path of another!

The winner is the first player to negotiate all the hazards and arrive in Siberia with his three explorers intact.

Not to be confused with: IceFloe

In Imhotep, the players become builders in Egypt who want to emulate the first and best-known architect there, namely Imhotep.

Over six rounds, they move wooden stones by boat to create five seminal monuments, and on a turn, a player chooses one of four actions: Procure new stones, load stones on a boat, bring a boat to a monument, or play an action card. While this sounds easy, naturally the other players constantly thwart your building plans by carrying out plans of their own. Only those with the best timing — and the stones to back up their plans — will prove to be Egypt's best builder.

Impulse is a quick-playing 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) game set in space with the game board being composed of cards that have actions on them. Players also have cards in hand, and in addition to featuring one of ten possible actions, these cards have a color (red, yellow, blue or green) and a size (1, 2 or 3, as indicated by the number of icons on the card). Each card also has six edges, and these edges connect adjacent cards in the hex-shaped playing area.

The cards in the playing area start face down, with each player controlling a card(their Home) on a corner of this area. Each player has two transport ships in the center of his Home card and a cruiser on an edge. Cruisers are used to patrol sectors of space and destroy opposing transports, while transports let you activate sectors that you enter.

On a turn, a player adds a card to the Impulse from his hand, then (optionally) performs an action for a tech in his playing area, then (optionally) performs all the actions in the Impulse, then draws two cards and adds them to his hand. The Impulse is a line of cards shared by all players that changes turn by turn as players add cards to it and as cards fall off once it reaches maximum size. Thus, players need to feed the Impulse with actions that benefit them more than opponents, but that's easier said than done.

When you perform actions – whether from moving transports to them or using the Impulse – you can boost them by having minerals of the same color or lots of transports. Each action has a single numeral on it, e.g., "Command [1] ship for one jump" or "Build [1] cruiser at home"; when you boost an action, you increase that numeral.

Players score points by destroying enemy ships (one point per ship), by controlling edge spaces on the central card (one point per edge), and by taking other actions via cards. The first player to score 20 points wins!