While I may not have been able to model much, I did get to play a few new games at my friend's house. One of the new ones I tried was Hex Hex.
It's a quick party game that managed to get a group of fairly anti social strangers to have a blast within 5 minutes of reading the rules.
The basic jist of the game is basically a complicated version of Hot Potato once it's completely broken down to it's basic levels.
Everyone is a wizard and take turns casting a "hex" onto another player. That player must look at their hand of 5 cards and use one of them to redirect that Hex onto someone else. Eventually if no one else can redirect the hex, then the person the hex hit last loses a point and the last person to redirect the hex gains a point.
The turns go fast and furious as not only can you redirect hexes, but you may also boost them (an extra pt lost), split them into two different directions, force a hex to only go a certain direction, or take the hex only to reverse the point loss into a point gain.
The changes to a hex are cumulative. You can boost a hex, only to have your target triple the point loss, send them flying back at you, you counter with a card that splits that 3x hex onto your left and right. Now both players on either side of you have to deal with a triple loss hex, etc etc...
The first couple rounds went a little slow as everyone one read up on what cards did and how they interacted
with each other, but by the middle of the first game, everyone is tossing cards down, laughing as hexes are flying around everywhere only to all detonate on the player with the current high score.