Coming Soon from Tasty Minstrel, Pandasauras, Z-Man, and more!

Lots of games to go through so lets get right to it, first on the list is a new creation from Seth Jaffe and Tasty Minstrel Games called Crusaders.  The object of the game is to spread the influence of your Order far and wide before the king begins to fear your power, and disbands them all, ending the game.  You will accomplish different actions through your own personal rondel of different actions and action cubes you move using a mancala mechanic.  Throughout the game you will be upgrading the spaces on your board, building buildings, and doing all you can to spread your influence.  Be the greatest order of them all before their collapse, and you will be the winner.  Look for this game in September of this year. Next from TMG is an import in the form of Okey Dokey from famed designer Hisashi Hayashi.  This is a cooperative game of animals trying to put on a show, a music show.  Each player will have a hand of cards and they need to play these cards down in a 5x10 grid.  The difficulty comes from the placement restrictions and the fact your can't tell anyone what you have, but you can drop hints.  Look for this small game on store shelves in September. Next is the reprint of the train stock market game, American Rails.  In American Rails you are a wealthy capitalist managing a portfolio of stocks and bonds in six different in game rail companies.  You will be negotiating, trading, and expanding these companies in order to gain the most money.  Whoever is richest at the end will be the winner.  This reprint should be hitting stores in May of this year. Also coming in May from Capstone Games is the latest edition of Xanadu, a highly interactive card game.  Like a lot of games the object is to gain the most money, but to do that you need to sell buildings.  But to build those buildings you need to send workers to other buildings to gain resources, which you can do on your own cards or your opponents.  You can even sabotage your opponents, making this a rather cutthroat game. From Z-Man Games we have a new game announced called Valletta that will be coming out in July.  In the game you are building a town in the baroque era, utilizing a deck building mechanic to get you resources and perform actions.  In this game you don't buy new cards, you build new buildings and you will get new cards that strengthen your deck, pushing you closer to victory.  But like all good deck building type games, at some point you have to turn from resource generating to turning the resources into the points needed to win.  Check out the preview on Z-man's site to find out more about this new game. Next is a game coming out very soon, and that is Oktoberfest from Rio Grande Games.  This is a card game all about serving beer to thirsty patrons during Oktoberfest.  There are twelve tents in the game and you will be playing down patrons in those tents trying to buy up the right beer out of the 6 available.  When a tent closes the most recent beer bought there will score, giving the most points to the majority holder of that beer.  All twelve tents will never be closed so you have to time things right to reap the most points and emerge the winner. Coming soon from Pandasaurus Games we have the latest social deduction game called Red Scare.  This is all about the FBI exposing the communists out to bring down our way of life.  You will have to investigate and accuse those you know and expose their darkest secrets, and maybe you have some secrets of your own!  Look for this game to come out in September of this year. Finally, also from Pandasaurus Games, is the trick-taking style card game called King's Life.  In this game the king has a hard life, and so to keep himself from going nuts he alternates his days of royal duties with days of completely goofing off.  It's your job as part of his court to make sure he is able to both fulfill his duties, and party hard.  Not much else has been said about this game, so we will have to wait for more info as the September release date approaches.