When you want a relaxing strategy game, you pull out Tokaido. Tokaido is a game about enjoying yourself -- whether you're an orphan begging for meals or a stately traveler. In Tokaido, players are challenged with experiencing Japan, having the most fun, buying the most souvenirs, and seeing the best sights. With a unique grouping and turn order mechanic, Tokaido actually becomes a game about reading other player's motives. Not only do you need to figure out your own strategy, but you need to maneuver around the strategies of others.

Temporal Odyssey is a drafting card game with a twist: you're drafting from the past, present, and future. Two to four players will select a character and battle it out, dealing damage to each other, healing, and building up their roster. All the while, they'll be recruiting from different time lines with the ultimate goal of destroying each other -- you know, for reasons Temporal Odyssey plays in less than 30 minutes once players have learned the game, and it has a fair bit of replay value.

When was the last time you read a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure? House of Danger is a cooperative, narrative card game based on a 1982 Choose-Your-Own-Adventure by R.A. Montgomery. In House of Danger, players control a psychic detective, with the goal of navigating through the five chapters that comprise the entire story. But House of Danger isn't just a collection of CYOA passages; it's a system that's designed to make exploration fun, rewarding, and dangerous.

Initially released as Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer, the Ascension Deckbuilding Game has since become an iOS, PlayStation Vita, and Android App. A straight-forward, fast-paced, deck-building card game developed by a professional Magic: The Gathering player, Ascension is very much the synthesis of everything that a deck-builder generally will be. At the same time, the core game is generic enough that one feels they aren't missing out on a lot by not playing the game.

In the running for the longest game name ever, Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt Skullzfyre is a set collection spell-casting battle royale card game played in multiple rounds. With a quirky art style ripped from an Adult Swim special, Epic Spell Wars is a casual, unpredictable game that really doesn't have a lot of strategy to it. Damage comes fast and hard, and there are a number of interesting and unique spell combinations with which to battle your foes.

Firelight is a cooperative adventure for 2 to 4 players, with one player acting as the gamemaster. Players select their characters and are then thrust into one of 20 unique quests, which they'll need to resolve through skill checks, battles, and good old-fashioned roleplaying. Firelight promises to be a "questing card game," and while that much is true, it feels as though it's answering a question that no one ever asked. That question is: How do you play a roleplaying game without actually playing a roleplaying game?

Have you ever played a game that was so difficult that you wondered whether you were even playing it correctly? Dragonfire -- a cooperative D&D deckbuilder -- is precisely this sort of game. Not only is the game itself a challenge, but many of its directions are just vague enough that you might wonder whether you're truly failing or whether you've done something terribly wrong. Occasionally, you may discover that the thing that you were doing wrong actually made it easier for you. In this situation, you may be doubly dead -- but at least you tried.

Tsuro is easily one of my favorite filler games. It plays a large group, goes by fast, and requires nearly no explanation. Its art is both simplistic and attractive, it can be genuinely challenging, and it has a level of randomness that never feels unfair.

It's also not a complex game and, for the most part, you will know what the "right" move is during your turn. Still, every game plays out a little differently, and there's a surprising amount of social interaction involved that keeps it fresh.