Two new editions of Time's Up, my favorite party game, are scheduled to be available later this year. According to a report on BoardGameNews.com, Time's Up Deluxe and Time's Up: Title Recall should be available in June.

Time's Up Deluxe will combine 500 names from the original game and expansions with 500 all-new names. It will also include an electronic timer and rules for a fourth round. Time's Up: Title Recall will replace names with 864 titles culled from books, movies, songs and more.

Time's Up is also my favorite game for family gatherings and is on my list of the Top 10 Must-Have Games.

^{Image courtesy of R&R Games}

The first HeroScape expansion under the direction of Wizards of the Coast is now scheduled to be available in June. According to a post on GamingReport.com, the 19-figure Defenders of Kinsland expansion will be available on June 13, along with the Ticalla Jungle and Aquilla's Alliance expansions. Many of these figures were displayed at Gen Con last summer. Previews of several stat cards are available at the fan site Heroscapers.com.

Previous HeroScape expansions were published by Milton Bradley. Both Milton Bradley and Wizards of the Coast are owned by Hasbro.

What would the perfect game room look like? Mary Dimercurio Prasad has some excellent ideas in a recent article for BoardGameNews.com, Game Room Accessories and Snackage. Her tips on game-safe foods, shelving, tables and other game-room needs are right on.

• How to Start a Game Collection
• How to Store Games
• How to Handle Games
• How to Clean Games

On a recent flight to Portland, Oregon, presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama played the party game Taboo with his staff and members of the press. For the answer "California," one of the press gave this clue: "This is where Senator Obama said his 'bitter' comments." Ouch. Read more about the game in these reports from Fox News and ABC News.

More Party Games:

• Best Party Games
• Best Drawing and Sculpting Games
• Party Games Index

^{Image courtesy of Hasbro}

At this year's World Boardgaming Championships in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Jason Matthews and I will lead a discussion about election games ("Put Your Hand Up For Election Games") on Saturday, Aug. 9, at 3:00 p.m. Jason, who co-designed the terrific 1960: The Making of the President (my pick as the best board game published in 2007), works for a Democratic United States senator; I work for a Republican state senator in Pennsylvania -- so, if nothing else, it should be a balanced discussion! If you go to WBC, please plan to stop by and say hello.

^{Image courtesy of Z-Man Games}

Ray Li, a 16-year-old high school student, recently posted this note in the About.com Board/Card Games Discussion Forum: "For a class in Critical Thinking, we are required to complete a semester-long, independent-study project. For my project, I chose to finish and market a board game which I have been working on for a while. The game is called Lineage. It is a two-player, abstract strategy game." You can see Ray's work at the web site he created for Lineage. It looks like a deep strategy game.

Bonhams in London, one of the world's oldest and largest auctioneers, will hold its first-ever sale of items related to Chess and other board games on Tuesday, May 13. According to a press release, "Chess sets from almost every continent will be offered for sale by Bonhams, including an extremely rare ivory inlaid Backgammon and Chess board from Northern Italy and dated to circa 1500 -- the time of the Italian Renaissance." Its value is estimated at £8,000 to £12,000, or about $15,750 to $23,750.

Also on the list of items to be sold, according to the release, are:

• A circa 1830 Chinese Export Gaming Table from Canton mounted on a tripod base, richly inlaid with mother of pearl and delicately carved with dragons’ heads (£4,000 to £6,000, or $7,900 to $11,800).
• A circa 1900 Belgian Congo Tribal Chess Set in ebony and ivory, highly stylised with the king as a chieftan, bishops as witch doctors, and pawns as tribal elders (£800 to £1,200, or $1,575 to $2,375).
• A circa 1920 silver Chess set from Ecuador depicting Inca folklore figures (£700 to £900, or $1,375 to $1,775).
• A circa 1950 large Eskimo sperm whale ivory chess set in which knights are represented by dolphins, rooks by arctic hares, and the queen looks like Pierrot the clown with a ruff around her neck (£1,200 to £1,600, or $2,375 to $3,150).

The sale also will include a variety of other games, such as Mah-Jongg and Backgammon, rare playing cards and books. A complete listing of items to be sold is available online. It is possible to bid on items through the Bonhams web site.

The most recsent issue of The New Yorker includes an article about Le Jeu de la Guerre, which writer Ben McGrath describes as "a kind of modernist take on chess conceived in 1977 by the Marxist philosopher and filmmaker Guy Debord, with inspiration from the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz." A rare edition of the game (with metal tokens) was featured in the recent "Form as Strategy" exhibit at Columbia University's Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. The article, which discusses both the game displayed at the exhibition and efforts by Debord's widow to have an online implementation shut down, is interesting on several levels.

Upper Deck Entertainment has announced the fall 2008 release of the Call of Duty Real-Time Card Game. According to the Upper Deck web site, there are no turns in this game. "Based on the immensely popular video-game franchise, the Call of Duty Real-Time Card Game is all about moving as quickly as possible to take down your opponents -- and survive. Players who have honed their skills playing the video game will find that the same skills apply to the new Upper Deck real-time card game, which has all the strategy of other card games, plus requires the quick reaction time that defines the Call of Duty franchise."

Although there will be eight squad decks available (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia and the United States) and a "deluxe set," there will not be any booster packs -- meaning that the Call of Duty Real-Time Card Game is not a traditional collectible card game. Gameplay will be fast, with each game taking about 10 minutes.

The International Abstract Games Organization (IAGO) is hosting a World Tour in 2008, with several events on the horizon. Upcoming tournaments include a No-Chance Backgammon Tournament at Gaziosmanpasa University in Turkey (May 3-5, 2008), the Bishop Games Two-Player Tournament in Birmingham, UK (May 30), the ConCarolinas Death Stacks Tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina (May 31), two online tournaments at Boardspace.net on June 1, and more.