New from FoxMind is a small bluffing game of alchemy called The Potion. Players start with a number of ingredient tokens, mushrooms, vials, and beetles. Every round, a set of dice are rolled to define which ingredients are required for the potion. They secretly select one token each from their stash and if all-together their ingredients exactly match a die, then those who contributed give up their tokens. The first to narrow their stash to a single ingredient type is the winner.

The Potion comes in a small medicinal style bottle and retails for $12.

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Headlining FoxMind’s new crop of games is Manhattan ($40 retail, available now), a 1994 Spiel des Jahres winner that the company is bringing back to the North American market. The new version is brightly colored with translucent building pieces but plays exactly the same as the original. That is, a hand of cards gives players options for where they can place their buildings. Control of the nine spaces in each of the six cities goes to the player who’s stacked the most building levels there. And points are awarded for controlling the tallest building in each city, the most spaces in each city, and every individual space.

Even older but now with a new board, bigger marbles, and a better box insert is Abalone ($33, now). In this game players use lines of their own marbles to push their opponent’s marbles off the board. Two marbles can push one; three marbles can push two or one.

EyeDentify ($15, June) is a quick-play, spotting game. As each card is turned over, players want to be the first to find something in the displayed picture that matches the shape or color on the back on the next card.

In The Potion ($10, July), players start with two each of three ingredient tokens. Then the dice are rolled for a potion recipe and each player secretly holds out one of the tokens. If when the tokens are revealed the number matches the recipe exactly, then those players can put their tokens in the bottle. The first player able to discard down to one ingredient token is the winner.

Quirkies ($15, June) is a kind-of pattern matching game with cute monster cards. There are nine monsters in a 3 x 3 grid. On each of their turns players must put down a card on a matching monster and if that placement creates three-in-a-row of the same background color or symbol, they score a point. The first to five points is the winner.

Finally, following on last year’s baseball game, FoxMind is releasing this year Sports Dice Football ($12) with similarly simple dice-based gameplay.

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