Ice Hike: Beware of the Bears by NRP games is a interactive game where players try to traverse across an icy landscape from one corner of the board to the opposite corner. On the way you will encounter mountains which you need rope to scale, as well as bears  – both of which may have been played by your opponents to block your path. a simple tile-laying game with some definite in-your-face play which some of you will enjoy.

Run Bunny Run by HenMar games is a simple card game for 2-5 players  in which one player plays the bunny and the others the wolves trying to capture it. There are obstacles on the table: for example fences a bunny can run under but wolves can’t get past, and stone walls that block the bunny and allow the wolves to jump over. Movement is with cleverly designed cards similar to Wings of War which show an outline of the card you must play next on them, so that the bunny can see which direction the wolves are headed; meanwhile the bunny’s movement is more flexible so that it can adapt. Very neat.

Cook Islands is a Trefl game by Klaus Jurgen Wrede aimed at families. Players must choose one of three tiles from their hand and place it on the board, which is a 7×9 grid. The grid is populated with a few islands at the start of the game and the idea is to explore and settle islands while looking for treasure from wrecks – all of which is shown on the tiles that will be placed on the grid during the game. There are also tiles which slow you down, obstacles, and of course a pirate ship which can be used to hinder an opponent. Players start at the top of the grid and the tile that you choose will have a number – indicating the column you must place it in – and a number of sails which indicates how many action points you get. Action points can be used to move ships or place settlements on islands – the cost of which is indicated on the tiles. Often there are more than one settlement on an island, but the second costs more to settle. Although the higher costing settlements are worth more points at the end of the game, some islands show fruit symbols so you may prefer to race to get those islands settled rather than decide to pay more for a higher scoring settlement.  Some tiles when played do neat things like allow you to draw another tile and add its action points;  others are cool because they have a treasure to go after. The unfortunate thing in our view when playing is that there is no control over where in a column the tile has to be placed – it must always be placed at the highest possible point. This, combined with the fact that the points you gain from sunken wrecks is determined by luck – because sometimes treasures when revealed will show  a few extra action points or just a treasure chest which can only be used to bribe pirates – made me think the game could have done with a little more development, for example to draw three treasures and pick one. Still, I enjoyed the game and as a family game it works very well; some may however object to the colonialism that it represents.

Art Society, Published by Mighty Boards, was sold out last Essen and so while it is not a new game it was my first play. I found it an excellent tile laying game with superb production values, quite astonishing actually. Kudos to Mighty Boards for raising the bar with beautiful cardboard pieces, art and game box design and a lovely thinky game in which you attempt to optimise your tile placement on your player board to score the art genre which is trending at the local museum. A nice straightforward auction mechanic to compete over the tiles you place together with the ability to select the tiles for auction on your turn make this a lovely and intriguing game, where the tile no-one selected is boosted in popularity oso trhat you can try to manipulate the final scores if you bid lowest. Coupled with the challenge of trying to place like-framed pictures next to one another but genres separated, the game is a great experience. Played twice already.

Cities, the latest compact game by Devir, is another abstract game in which you build a 3×3 grid of tiles showing parks, water, and the foundations of buildings in 4 different coloursl. Players take turns to use one worker to take an element from each of 4 rows – with players not being allowed to place 2 workers on any one row. The elements are the city tiles;  building pieces in the 4 colours which stack up to create buildings varying from 1-4 in height; adornments to the tiles in the form of decorative tiles for the park and boats for the sea spaces, and scoring cards, the Scoring cards show points for various conditions such as green single-storey buildings or blue buildings of height 4. You will draft 9 of these cards over the 9 rounds and hope to find some scoring in common with what you have taken in previous turns as your city evolves! To provide variability, there are several tiles named after various cities which slot neatly into the upper part of the board – each shows three scoring objectives which players will race to complete in order to earn further points. Overall another successful game in the series, albeit not in the same style as White Castle or Red Cathedral, but very enjoyable nevertheless.

7 Empires, the latest Mac Gerdts game from PD Verlag, is a 1.5 – 2 hour slugfest of a game in which players accumulate influence in the 7  empires of the title. Based on Imperium but with many differences, 7 Empires introduces a new twist on the rondel which is no longer shown on the board but rather uses a mechanic where 5 actions are available but you must wait 3 turns before taking a given action again. Hard to explain but this is neatly shown on the side panel of the board. Meanwhile the main part of the board shows a map of Europe and Asia and players will happily spend their time building armies, invading neutral territories, and hopefully scoring these territories before their armies are taken down by an opposing force. Alternatively they may prefer to build palaces which can score points too. In a game where the victories of war ebb and flow, timing is everything; and players must carefully watch which empire is leading in order to ensure they are on the winning side. Every round players will choose one empire card from 7 decks in which the card values diminish as the deck dwindles, The sum total of this influence taken determines who is Emperor of each Empire, who is then in charge of deciding the country’s next move. This can be very interesting as you will be looking to damage your opponents while avoiding damaging the empires in which you have influence. A neat additional rule means that if on your turn you have no emperors to use but you have influence in a country that hasn’t yet taken their move, you may make the move for that Empire – definitely some scope for sinister plotting there as you utilise troops or ships from another Empire you don’t really care about to help you meet your goals. Overall 7 Empires streamlines and improves the Imperial/Imperial 2030 experience with a reduced run time and some neat, typical Mac Gerdts ideas to ensure that gameplay is smooth and clear. I loved it.