It's Alive! - The designer's daughter was visiting here from Israel and she brought this for us. Rather nifty and tense set collection where you have to collect all the body parts from cemeteries to make your own Frankenstein's monster. Every card you draw, you weigh auctioning for a body part as opposed to buying it. Sometimes the mob pops up, so you have to keep a junk card until another one comes along. This was originally Hanukkah-themed where you have to collect eight candles...I think I would have dug that, too, if it featured a lot of Hebrew history.
Istanbul - Like the city, this game has some luxurious-lookin' components. Travel around a randomly generated board and, uh, do stuff. Get some stuff! Sell that stuff! Gamble a little! But aha, don't be fooled. This is really an abstract game where you leave a little bit of yourself on every space you move. If you want to pull off collecting all the rubies, you'll need to plan out your moves in advance.
Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar - Ugh, my head. Don't play this after a tense workweek. The moving gears mean you have to think about what other players want to do and beat them to it...that is, if you know what your own strategy even is, which might get sidelined by the expansion's Prophecy track. I wasn't at my best that evening, either, so maybe I'm grumpier than I should be. One more play should do it.
Terra Mystica - Hmm...I was somewhat underwhelmed after hearing so much praise. Sure, the Catan-like blockage with buildings and terraforming is sorta cool, but there wasn't much else going on. The power and cult mechanics don't really add a lot to what boils down to "do I build this building or that building". It's not something I would mind playing, but for a box with so many components, I would have expected a bit more going on under the hood.