Maybe I missed a resurgence in popularity of the Disney film The Sword In the Stone, but suddenly we're seeing a bunch of mages-kicking-each-others'-butts games: Summoner Wars, Mage Wars, Seasons, and now...Tash-Kalar: Arena Of Legends from designer Vlaada Chvatil.

According to Czech Games Edition, "The game includes three different factions, each with a unique deck of beings to summon and one deck of legendary creatures. Players take turns placing their common pieces on the board, and if they succeed in creating patterns depicted on one of the cards in hand, they may play it. When played, the card summons a particular being and allows the player to perform an effect described on the card: a giant destroys neighboring pieces, a knight moves through enemy pieces, a warlord orders previously placed pieces to move and fight, an enchantress converts enemy pieces to player's own color, etc. After that, the player discards the card and the summoned being turns into a motionless piece which may be used in patterns for summoning other beings – or even be awakened and moved into combat by the effects of other cards."

The game says it's for 2-4 players, but I'm not sure how 4 players will play with only three factions.

It looks very abstract, actually—not at all the heavily thematic games we've seen in Mage Knight The Board Game and Dungeon Lords.

Vlaada is hit-and-miss for me, so I'm not sure how likely I am to try this one. How about you?

By Firestone

As we lead up to Origins in a few weeks, companies are announcing new games and expansions. First, over on Boardgamegeek, designer Alban Viard announced that he's designing a new pair of expansions for Age Of Steam. It sounds like he's going to use the actual game box as a part of the game. From the announcement: "The box might be a mountain and we will have tunnels to cross the mountain under the box! The network will be cut by the mountain and the players might arrange the different maps around the mountain."

Asmodee Games announced on Facebook that their popular card game Seasons is getting an expansion called Enchanted Kingdom. It adds "40 Power cards; 10 Enchantment cards; 12 Special Ability tokens; 16 Energy tokens; 2 'Raven' tokens 1 'First Player' token; 2 'Bespelled Grimoire' energy reserve expansions for individual game boards; 7 'Decreased energy reserve' tokens." And it should be ready by Origins!

Finally, though Cryptozoic Entertainment hasn't announced it yet, a couple of retailers seem to have outed a standalone expansion: Heroes Unite. A description on the site says, "Play as Shazam!, Hawkman, Red Tornado, Nightwing, Black Canary, Batgirl, or Booster Gold in Heroes Unite, the first standalone expansion for the DC Comics Deckbuilding Game! Unlock special abilities, like Force Field or the Helmet of Fate, and unleash devastating card combos against your opponents! Craft your hero deck into a well-oiled machine to take on the most vile villains in the DC Universe in your quest for Victory (Points)! Mix the cards from Heroes Unite with the core DC Comics Deckbuilding Game set to wage the ultimate showdown!"

Check out our Double-Take Review of the DC-Comics Deck-Building Game.

Thanks for reading!