What, it’s about wizards again? Yes, it’s another upcoming game with the ‘magic + witchcraft’ formula. But what makes The Big Book of Madness different from Abracada…What? is that, instead of defeating your opponents, you will have to cooperate with other players, a.k.a. your fellow magic students.

It all started when you’re bored enough to touch this Big Book in the school library (we all know that curiosity means trouble). With a huge monster unleashed to destroy the world on each page, it is you and your friends’ task to build a nice deck, use cards to buff each other, and cast powerful spells to dispel the creatures – above all else, don’t forget to put Fluffy back to sleep.

The Big Book of Madness plays 2 to 5 players in 90 minutes, and is expected to be released in July 2015.

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I didn’t count them myself but Iello’s Matt Bonin told me that the company released 20 games since last Gen Con!

Among the newest making their appearance at this year’s show, the most anticipated had to be King of New York. I expect it would have made a bigger splash if Iello had more than just 200 available to sell.

Also designed by Richard Garfield, King of New York borrows a lot from its predecessor, King of Tokyo, yet presents players with a few more interesting choices and alternate strategies. For example, in the new game players must not only consider the risks and rewards of entering Manhattan (which replaces Tokyo) but also a location from among New York’s other four boroughs while outside the city center. In each borough, destroying buildings (achieved with certain dice results) earns a player benefits like victory points, energy, and health, but turns those building tokens in to military units, which may later attack the monsters.

King of New York should be available at retail outlets in September for $50.

Night of the Grand Octopus ($40, available October), which we previewed at Toy Fair, is a bluffing and negotiation game with a Cthulhu-like theme. Players move their cultist figures simultaneously around the board trying to collect ingredients for a summoning. Whenever two or more cultists end up in the same location, the players must agree on who will get the ingredient or all suffer a penalty.

The latest in Iello’s Tales & Games series, The Hare & the Tortoise ($30, available now) has players wagering on the result of a race among five animals. In general, card play advances the animals, but not always in a simple relationship. Depending on the talents of a particular animal too many cards could freeze it (when ahead, the hare may decide to take a nap) or it may move forward even if no cards are played (the tortoise is a slow but steady racer).

Friday the 13th is a new version of Reiner Knizia’s weird trick-taking card game, Poison. The game includes three suits: mirrors, black cats, and ladders. Collected cards are negative points, except for the player with the most of each suit, for whom that suit counts as nothing.

Looking forward, Iello will be distributing in English several games from French publisher Serious Poulp: Steam Torpedo, a two-player game of tactical submarine combat, 8 Masters’ Revenge, a card game of Kung Fu fighting, and 7th Continent, a solo or cooperative game of adventure and exploration.

Also planned for 2015 are The World of Yo-Ho, a board game about animal pirates that uses smartphones as playing pieces, and a game without a title yet, which features cooperative play, deck building, and fighting monsters.

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King of New York, the follow up of the imensly popular King of Tokyo, will be flooding the news sites soon as details are released about the game. Until then we’ve got an exclusive card preview for the upcoming game. Behold, Phoenix Blood!

King of New York will add new mechanics to those familiar with King of Tokyo, adding things like building destruction, monster fame, and multiple control points on a larger board. There will be 6 new monsters, but you’ll also be able to use the monsters already released in this new game.

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For a relatively new company in the American market, Iello’s presence at Toy Fair was pretty impressive (a large end-cap booth upstairs). In terms of Iello’s new games, ones that we haven’t reported on before were a small but diverse set.

Piña Pirata ($20), from designer Donald X. Vaccarino, is a card game of anthropomorphic pirates and, at least at the beginning, simple rules. In turn, players attempt to lay down cards with matching pirates but draw cards if they can’t. The first to empty his hand of cards wins the round. The winner of the round then draws two treasure map tiles. One is retained for scoring—four tiles, forming an “x”, marks the game winner—and one is selected for the rule on its reverse, which is added to and changes the game going forward.

Think Again ($16), by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc, is a party trivia game with very easy questions. The trick is that the proper answer is sometimes the correct one and sometimes an incorrect one, depending on which of various symbols is displayed on the back of the next card.

The Night of the Giant Octopus (rough translation from the French prototype) is a satirical take on a Lovecraft game (but unlicensed, so it includes no specific Cthulhu references). In addition to some beautiful art, the game has going for it a focus on deception and negotiation reminiscent of Cosmic Encounter. Each player moves one cult figure and one monster figure around the board (representing a university for young sorcerers) trying to collect a set of items necessary for a summoning. Whenever two or more players’ cultists end up in the same room, those players must agree on which one gets to collect the item. They can make any sort of deal but if they can’t agree, both of their cults lose a strength point. A player who’s cult loses all five points is out of the game.

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Counterfeit designer board games, a problem in the Chinese market, are now being marketed for export. According to Cédric Barbé, CEO of French game publisher, Iello:

In the past, the impact of counterfeits has been limited to sales in China, though that impact has been hard to measure with precision. We have experienced situations in which a Chinese publisher interested in one of our games has changed its mind after finding the game already on its market. Or finding that the game was being sold at such a low price as to be even cheaper than the cost of having it manufactured by our printers.

Purple Pawn, though, has confirmed listings of counterfeit games on the website of business-to-business export broker, DHgate.com, including King of Tokyo and Forbidden Island. The games are listed in case lots at wholesale rates, shipping overseas included. Some are pictured with unauthorized translations and expansions or modified packaging. One King of Tokyo listing, for example, includes a limited-release Brockenbar promotional monster and a never-released Ultraman monster.

Nevertheless, Jason Schneider, Director of Product Development and Marketing for Gamewright, says that so far, counterfeits have had minimal impact on sales:

As for the counterfeit Forbidden Island, we’re aware of it but haven’t taken any legal action against it up to this point. In all honesty, it’s just not worth the amount of time and money we’d have to invest to prosecute… It’s a shame that they’re out there, but until we see a significant dent in the sales of the official product, we probably won’t take action. In the mean time, we’ll stand flattered that our games are popular enough that someone would want to knock them off!

Though Purple Pawn was not able to confirm their status (counterfeit or legitimate) in time for this article, other games found on the same website, outside their normal distribution channels, are Cards Against Humanity, Bananagrams, Yu-Gi-Oh, Temple Run Danger Chase, Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow, and Blokus.

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It’ll be difficult for Iello to match King of Tokyo but it’s certainly trying. The company presented at Gen Con a variety of recent releases, hot-0ff-the-press games, and previews of future products.

Titanium Wars, out for a short time, is a card game of planetary conquest for 3-4 players. The goal is to be the first player to control a certain number of titanium resources. (Titanium, in this game, isn’t the metal alloy, but rather an energy source.) To accomplish this, players have to purchase fleets, equipment, and buildings; develop their technologies; and battle over planet cards. A certain degree of diplomacy is also required to do well.

A future expansion for Titanium Wars will allow the game to be played with two players.

The Phantom Society is a ghost hunting deduction game for 2-4 players in two teams—one plays the ghosts, the other the hunters. The game’s board represents a Scottish manor hotel and each space, with slots for hiding ghost tokens, a room. During play, the ghost-hunting team works to find all the ghosts before their rampage destroys the hotel.

With a fairy-tale theme and simple push-your-luck, dice-based play, The Three Little Pigs is a lite strategy title that I think will be popular with families. The goal of the game is to build houses of straw, wood, and bricks by rolling dice. Each die has door, window, and roof faces. With two of the same result, a player can build a straw section, three a wood section, or four a brick section. Some of the dice, though, can also be rolled for wolves. When that happens, the player is supposed to blow on the game’s spinner, which will show which type of section (straw, wood, or brick) an opponent will have to eliminate.

The Phantom Society and The Three Little Pigs were selling in limited quantities at the show. They should be available at retail shortly.

Two additional games demoed at Gen Con but scheduled for fall release were Guardian Chronicles and Heroes of Normandie. The former is a super-hero game that features teamwork among players as a central element, without being a fully cooperative game. The latter is a simple, two-player war game with comic-style art.

Meeting with Iello, I was also able to get an early look at a couple of games still in development. Steam Park is a fast, simultaneous dice-rolling game with a steampunk-fantasy, theme-park theme and three-dimensional pieces. Zombie 15′ is a game about zombies (obviously) that’s supposed to play real-time in 15 minutes. The idea is that the game should feel just as rushed as the teenaged apocalypse survivors would feel while trying to complete each of the 15 included scenarios. Another interesting aspect of Zombie 15′ is that whenever a player eliminates zombies with a weapon that’s marked as loud, those zombies go in to the horde box. Then, whenever a horde card is drawn, all the accumulated zombies attack at once.

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Iello got my attention last year in a big way with King of Tokyo by Richard Garfield. For 2013, Iello was showing another Garfield game, Ghooost!. Basically it’s a Crazy 8 variant with cute-horror style artwork.

The company’s Whizz Bing Bang game only asks players to play a card—any card—on their turn. Not messing that up, though, is going to be a serious challenge. Whizz cards keep play going, Bing cards switch the direction of play, and Bang cards skip players. On top of that, the card types do not use consistent colors! A person who plays out-of-turn takes a token from each other player. The first player to get rid of all their tokens wins.

Titanium Wars is more of a strategy game. Each player starts with a unique leader. Play involves collecting planets, adding improvements and buildings, and earning income. Planets also grant titanium, of which 20 something are needed to win. With 297 cards in the box (plus room for expansions), Iello plans to release Titanium Wars at Origins for a price of $40 $50.

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