Guess Which Cards You're Playing, and Escort Visitors to Safety

Suppose

Daniel Newman of New Mill Industries is taking pre-orders for two titles for release in Q4 2026, one of which is a new edition of Akinori Hagiwara's Suppose, which they originally self-published in 2023.

In each round of this 3-4 player trick-taking game, you first arrange the hand of your left-hand neighbor with cards in each suit going from low to high and with the suits in the order of your choice. You place one or two bets on how many tricks that player will win, but they'll be playing most of their cards blind as only the leftmost, rightmost, and middle card will face them!

You score 1 point for each trick you win, but you don't have to follow suit, which is good since you don't always know which card you're playing. That said, you can guess what each card facing away from you is before you play it, winning a half-point chip if you guess correctly.

Welcome Demons

Welcome Demons is a three-player-only climbing and shedding game from Daniel Newman himself. Here's the background for why demons are welcome here:

Noboribetsu, a popular onsen town in the south of Hokkaido, has a special relationship with Oni. Often depicted as malevolent demons, the Oni of Noboribetsu are instead protectors of this town built around a hot spring known as Jigokudani, or Hell Valley. They are tasked with warding off evil spirits from the medicinal baths and are even said to keep foolhardy visitors from falling into the naturally occuring boiling hot water that brings prosperity to the town.

Your job in this game is to rescue as many visitors as possible with the oni you've been dealt. Each player has their own visitor deck, with five cards at random face up in front of them and with each half of a visitor card showing grey, white, or one of the oni colors: red, blue, or green.

The lead player in a round chooses one visitor from their display and plays it along with an appropriate oni from their hand on each half of the visitor. With the visitor above, you'd play any blue oni on the left and any green oni on the right.

The next player either passes or plays a combination that beats this arrangement, that is, a combination with the same number of visitors and with onis that collectively have a higher sum than the current play OR a combination with one more visitor and with onis that collectively have a lower sum. While doing this, you must re-use one oni from the current play. Refill your visitor pool to five cards after each play.

In case this is hard to picture, the rulebook gives this example:

Wrap your head around that! If two players pass in succession, the last player to lay down a combination clears the board and leads. Except for when you lead, you play the same number of oni and visitor cards each turn. The game ends when someone has rescued all of their visitors, run out of oni, or cannot lead, at which point the player with the most visitors remaining loses. Into Hell Valley with you!

Flounder

Canadian publisher KTBG has announced a new card game that will debut at Gen Con 2027. Yes! Gen Con 2027! Start your want list! Envision the dizzying carpet awaiting you at the Indiana Convention Center!

Flounder is a card game for 2-5 players from Jon Gilmour-Long and David Gordon that the publisher notes is inspired by hand shedding and trick taking. Here's its short description:

Follow suit and form schools of the same type of fish to help shed cards or play a new suit larger than the biggest fish to swallow up the entire school for points. Empty your hand to collect valuable flounder cards. They'll give you a boost in points, too, but you won’t know how big a boost until the end of the game.

5Pairs

Croatian publisher Ummaramma debuted in 2024 with the card game Speculaas from Danijel Pošta, who has also designed its second release: 5Pairs, a light card game for 2-4 players. German publisher Brettspielloesung will release the game at SPIEL Essen 26, while Ummaramma is releasing a Croatian/English edition.

The deck contains 60 cards numbered 3-7 in six colors, with each player having two cards in hand and a display starting with cards equal to the number of players. On a turn, either draw two cards, then discard one to the display, or make a pair by combining a card from your hand with one from the display, with those cards matching in color, number, or both. Each pair is worth points equal to the sum of its values, with those points doubling if the cards are identical. Claim a pair of 3s, and you play again immediately.

Whoever claims four pairs first claims a bonus token, with the round ending after someone claims a fifth pair, possibly stealing that bonus token in the process. Play multiple rounds until a player's score tops 200 points.