Vendor: Fireside Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 10.95

ETA Q2 2024

Cooperate to match cards and make your way up the pyramid as a team in this exciting, colorful, addictive game. Make clever matches by number or color. Will you use 1 card or 2? Addition or subtraction? Mix colors (yellow + blue = green)? Will you risk a card now or save it for later? Can you guess what card the other player needs? Make a perfect match of both number and color to feel the thrill and gain the rewards of an Ultimatch!

Ultimatch includes both public and private cards and requires the kind of clever decision making about when to use cards that seasoned card players enjoy. Silently trading 1 card facedown with 1 other player keeps all players engaged throughout, introduces a push-your-luck element, and calls on players to read each other. Will you risk trading a card with another player? If so, who is likely to know what you need? Is your card better to keep for later use? The thinking goes quickly as do the turns. Every match is a mini-win, and win or lose, players keep coming back for more.

—description from the publisher

Vendor: Fireside Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 19.95

You and your friends are on a relaxing camping trip. But as you hammer in the last stake, you hear rustling. Bears are romping through the campsite! Who will survive the rampage? And who will be eaten by bears?

Bears! is a fast-playing, competitive game in which you score points by pairing dice. Shoot bears and run from tents for a few points, or take a risk and score big by sleeping through the attack! But watch out! If any bears remain at the end of the round, your sleeping campers are done for!

Vendor: Fireside Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 42.95

Become a witch and enter the medieval world of Wickersby in this worker placement, resource management game with spellcasting! Make villagers fall in love, turn them into frogs, or teleport them to different locations. Use your familiars to gather ingredients and cast spells on the villagers to achieve goals and score victory points as you vie to be named the village crone.

All the players are witches who have come upon a medieval village without a crone. They send out familiars to gather ingredients they can use in spells to complete Witch's Scheme cards. Each of the cards is worth 1, 2, or 3 points, which also indicates how difficult the scheme is to complete. The witch who scores 13 points wins.

The village consists of 6 location game boards: village green, lord's manor, farm, mill, forge, and tithe barn. The locations are modular and can be placed in any order or configuration as long as the gridlines line up. (The easiest way to play is with a 3x2 retangular configuration.)

The villagers, who are the most frequent targets of the Witch's Schemes, have starting locations. The peasant begins in the village green, the lord in the lord's manor, the farmer in the farm, the miller in the mill, the blacksmith in the forge, and the priest in the tithe barn.

The ingredients can be found at 4 of the 6 locations. Silver is in the lord's manor, soil in the farm, flour in the mill, and fire in the forge. There are also 3 eye of newt cards in each stack of ingredients and can be used as wild cards in spells.

At the beginning of the game, each player is dealt 1 of each of the 3 levels of Witch's Scheme cards. Consulting their Books of Spells (which are the same for each witch) to determine which ingredients will be needed to cast the spells on their Witch's Scheme cards, they put 1 familiar in the village green, take turns placing 2 additional familiars in other locations, and draw 2 ingredients from those locations.

The first step in the order of play is to tithe. As soon as each player knows which ingredient they will sacrifice, they place it facedown in the tithe barn. This seeds the tithe barn with ingredients that can be gleaned with the Fortune spell (which allows a player to draw any 3 ingredients from the tithe barn). However, any player who placed a familiar in the tithe barn does not have to tithe.

Then, in turn order, players may move their own familiars and/or villagers and cast spells. (Spells may be cast for strategic or tactical purposes as well as to complete Witch's Schemes.) The movement is limited to a total of 6 spaces, and the number of spells is limited only by the ingredients the player has. The movement and spellcasting can be in any order on a player's turn. A player can even intersperse movement and spellcasting. If a player completes a Witch's Scheme, the card is turned over so that the other players can clearly see how many points that player has. After he/she is finished moving and casting spells, he/she draws 1 of each of the 3 levels of cards, reads them, and decides which one(s) to add to his/her hand as replacements.

When all players have finished moving and casting spells, the players harvest 2 ingredients for each familiar in a location, and the broom (which indicates the first player) is moved clockwise.

The spells are Conjuring (to add up to 2 more familiars into play), Love (to join the fates of 2 villagers, meaning spells cast on one affect the other and movement of one moves the other), Transformation (to turn a villager into a frog or vice versa), Binding (to lock a location down and prevent anyone or anything from entering or leaving a location), Switching (to change the place of 2 familiars and/or villagers), Summoning (to cause a villager to move to a location containing one of the player's familiars), Fortune (to allow a player to draw any 3 ingredients from the tithe barn), and Protection (to block a spell cast by another player). 1 silver can also be used to complete a Scheme out of turn or to discard and draw a new Witch's Scheme card. Each spell requires not only ingredients but also an incantation, which is provided in the Book of Spells. Alternatively, players can make up their own incantations. If a player is caught trying to complete a spell without speaking the incantation, the spell does not work.

Each witch has access to the same number of starting familiars, the same ingredients, the same spells, and 3 Schemes of the same level. But the witch who most cleverly uses these resources to reach 13 points is named the village crone.

The Village Crone also includes rules for solitaire play.

Vendor: Fireside Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 3.95

Just when you had that bear attack under control, things got all Trail Mix'd! See if you can adapt as the game changes with each roll of the die!

Before each round of Bears!, the expansion die is rolled and a new rule is in effect. One round you're scoring double for Runners, the next your rerolls are limited — or maybe you're trying for bonus points by shooting the most bears.

Think fast and roll even faster in this ever-changing expansion to Bears!

Vendor: Fireside Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 34.95

Munchkin Panic is a semi-cooperative board game that blends the all-for-one gameplay of Castle Panic and the all-for-me gameplay of Munchkin.

In this hybrid game, the Munchkin monsters have found the Castle Panic towers and are on the rampage! Players need to combine cards to hit and slay the monsters before they destroy the castle. The card combos available in Munchkin Panic are created from a unique mixing of the decks of the two source games. Each defeated monster becomes a trophy and gives up its treasure to the victor. If players work together to defeat the monsters, the player with the highest point count becomes Master Munchkin — but players must balance their self-interest with the cooperation necessary to survive. If players get too greedy, the monsters will stomp the castle flat while the players are too busy fighting amongst themselves!

Vendor: Fireside Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 19.95

You and your friends are on a relaxing camping trip. But as you hammer in the last stake, you hear rustling. Bears are romping through the campsite! Who will survive the rampage? And who will be eaten by bears?

Bears! is a fast-playing, competitive game in which you score points by pairing dice. Shoot bears and run from tents for a few points, or take a risk and score big by sleeping through the attack! But watch out! If any bears remain at the end of the round, your sleeping campers are done for!