The nerds over at American Mensa have come out with their 2014 list of new tabletop games that they find fun, challenging, and a good value. It’s their Mensa Select list of games.

• Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension (Cryptozoic Entertainment, cryptozoic.com) – Your starship has been sucked through a wormhole, you’re being sucked toward a black hole, and you’re out of fuel. With some quick mining of nearby astroids you’re able to get some kind of fuel, but it doesn’t work the way you’d expect it to… Gravwell is a race game, so it’s all about getting to the finish line first. The unique part is how ships move. Your movement is based on proximity to other ships on the board where you either want to move toward or away from the closest ship, but since moves are reveled simultaneously, and cards have a set priority, ships may not be where you expect them to be when you start moving.
• Qwixx (Gamewright, gamewright.com) – Do you like Yatzee? If so, then this may be another dice game for you. It’s stupidly simple, roll some dice and cross some numbers off on your score pad. The trick is picking which numbers to cross off and how your dice luck will favor you in crossing more off. 

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  Pyramix (Gamewright, gamewright.com) – There’s a pyramid of cubes (like dice, but with Egyptian symbols on the sides) and the goal is to get points by collecting these cubes from the pyramid. The cool mechanic is the way cubes slide as ones below it are pulled out. The strategic element is for the big score, you want to have the most of a certain color and that’s worth what’s left of that color on the base. So focus too much on the color, and there won’t be much left, or focus too little and someone else will take those points.
• The Duke (Catalyst Game Labs, catalystgamelabs.com) – Think of chess, but each piece is a tile. Then realize you only start with the king (The Duke) and 2 pawns (Footmen). Each turn you can move (or activate with some special pieces) these tiles or you can pull a new random tile from your reserves and add it to your team next to The Duke. To add to the interesting strategy, each tile is labeled with how it moves, and that’s because after you move, the tile is flipped and it shows some slightly different movement. It’s only a 2-player game (like chess) but seems to be a good abstract strategy game for when that’s what you’re looking for. Also, if you want to try it out, Catalyst Game Labs has a free print and play version of the game on their website.

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  Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia (Stonemaier Games, stonemaiergames.com) – “You find yourself in a dystopian cityscape with a few workers at your disposal to make your mark on the world. Like most people in dystopian fiction, your workers are oblivious to their situation. This world is all they’ve ever known. You may use them at your whim.” This is a pretty heavy worker-placement game. The like most games of this type is to use your workers to get what you need done to take over. Some of the interesting things that Euphoria does, is that workers are dice and every time you pull them off of the board, you roll them. Add up the values of the dice, and if it’s too high (their intelligence), one of them leaves (she figured you out and doesn’t want part of your schemes). Also each player gets specific people cards who can slightly help them with certain factions that control parts of the board.

Qwixx seems pretty stupid for this list, I guess I need to give it a go, and see why it’s on the list.