Jason Greeno here to drop a note about Battle Pages—It’s launch day!
We’re so excited to finally be able to share Battle Pages with you. Today the Core Set (Kingdom of Phariad) and the first kingdom from our monthly and Yearly Battles Set are now available.
Join us for launch day conversations and a place to share your battles on our Discord channel: https://discord.gg/8JBpm2A2un
It's New Game Friday David Wiley (Cardboard Clash) is here to tell us about the new games.
Here’s what is new this week:
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Bahamut Dispute
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Munch Mime
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FIXER
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GRIMLORE Case File #16: Selene Luthra, Archaeologist
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Power Creep: Charlemagne, Uptown 2100
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Dangerous Space: Arthur, Quarantine Mission
https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Bahamut Dispute
You are the greatest wizard of your kingdom. On a day like any other, you learn that your archrival from the neighboring kingdom is plotting an invasion by summoning the Baleful Bahamut. With no time to spare, you prepare for the counter ritual. Which of the almighty wizards will summon the Baleful Bahamut and lead their kingdom to victory? The decisive battle is upon you!
This one sounds like a promising 2-player dueling game. You’re trying to deplete the life of your opponent, which sounds like pretty standard fare, playing 2 cards each turn. What makes this one interesting is that each player has a pair of (essentially) counter tokens that can be used to either cancel the effect of a card or, at a high cost, to reactivate a cancelled card. Timing on those is everything, as you’re fighting to avoid running out of time before you can emerge victorious.
Munch Mime
In Munch Mime, you will either pretend to eat the food listed on your mime card or try to guess the food another player is pretending to eat.
An interesting little game of pretending to eat foods from your three cards, hoping another player will guess successfully so that you can keep the card and they’ll get the matching card, helping you both get closer to serving up a victory. If you wanted a food-based charades, there’s no better place to turn than this one - at the very least you’ll know what the food options are and it’ll be up to you to try and decipher which item they are eating. Fun to play with kids and adults, this is sure to be a household hit.
FIXER
Fixer is a trick-taking card game in which players pit their cards against each other in 1-on-1 conflicts, with the stronger card winning the conflict. However, the losing player can tip the scales in their favor by receiving the winner’s card. Judge each situation carefully before committing - deliberately losing some conflicts could win you the game!
An interesting game that can play up to four players, and you’re not resolving a single card against everyone, but rather playing a specific card against a specific player, assuming there’s still a conflict marker in that area. Like many trick-taking games, there’s a lot of comparing values, but there’s also a stronger and weaker suit for each of the four suits, allowing players to take advantage of a low card being used at the right time. If you enjoy trick-taking games, you won’t want to pass over this one.
GRIMLORE Case File #16: Selene Luthra, Archaeologist
Selene Luthra is an independent scientist, adept in deciphering ancient scripts and skeptic turned investigator. Growing up in Alexandria among texts of wisdom, her life took a dark turn after a failed excavation revealed traces of non-human origin. In the desolation of the Rub’ al Khali desert, Selene Luthra seeks the truth behind the Nameless City, a legendary ruin predating human history. Rumors speak of a strange architect race that sculpted unnatural geometries. Driven by the texts of forbidden books, Selene ventures into the shifting sands but her expedition falters when dreams of reptilian forms and alien voices haunt her. The ruins stir something ancient, awakening a force that could shatter the boundary between man and the unknown.
Selene has some interesting challenges this week in GRIMLORE. The Mutant Raptor has a really unique ability, triggering on a lower number if no letter was placed in its arrow lane on the previous turn. Your health will want you to try and juggle that threat as often as you can. But don’t forget the Eidolon, who is immune to Armor and could force you to erase the last letter you placed when it triggers. Oof. Hopefully you can take two steps forward for every one step back, and not the reverse of that in this one…
Power Creep: Charlemagne, Uptown 2100
So many years into the new world, with water rising in some locations and fires burning in others.
A new character comes along this week, and there’s a lot to chat about here. Of course, the threats SUUUUUCK this week, as they will discard your good dice if you roll higher than the Evil Dice sum. You’re going to hate these Dire Wolves. The interesting new danger on the Creep track will cause you to cross out a completed structure, losing the unused items from that structure. Hope you plan well around that, because it could hurt a lot if you don’t pay close attention. Next week we’ll talk about his unique blueprint and what that can bring to the game for you!
Dangerous Space: Arthur, Quarantine Mission
Arthur would prefer his fellow divers measure him by his record and prowess, instead of his lineage as heir to the moon Khiro.
Arthur is an interesting character here, having some really impressive skills that deal with threats and dangerous spaces. And he’ll certainly need both of those skills to overcome his threats, which force you to lose odd dice in your pool or boost their defence if you mark a low number next to their space. And the latter trigger is a brutal one, given that Quanantine has you check for a 1 in attached corridors in order to avoid adding extra Evil Dice into the pool. Arthur has some tools needed to handle the mission but, depending on how things play out, there might be plenty of challenge to get it accomplished.
Game of the Week: Skulls of Sedlec on sale for just $2!
The Black Plague and Hussite Wars have overcrowded the graveyard. Help the Bone Collector, a half-blind monk, by exhuming graves and arranging the skulls inside the crypt.
You are novice monks, competing to create the best arrangement of skulls. Dig up graves from the graveyard to reveal cards, take cards into your hand to collect skulls, and arrange the cards from your hand into a stack. Whoever better honors the deceased’s last wishes will score more points. The Bone Collector will then declare one player's stack as the most exceptional.
This one I can speak to the fun inside the game’s package. You’re making a pyramid with the cards, each card having a top skull and a bottom skull, and different skull types have varied scoring conditions that center around things such as adjacency in relation to other skulls. For instance, the Lovers’ skull scores when two are adjacent to each other - wherefore art thou, Romeo? Dig up graves, assemble some skulls, and have a ton of fun in 15-20 minutes with 1-2 other players.
Check out Game of the Week here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/game-of-the-week
Skulls of Sedlec: Plague Doctors Expansion
Overwhelmed doctors struggle to treat plague-ridden communities.
This one adds two new skulls into the fray, each providing an interesting way of scoring things. Plague Doctors score a hefty 5 points if you have an equal number of Infected skulls in your feature. With only 3 of each in the expansion, that might be easy to do once but the more you try to grab, the harder it might become. The infected are interesting, as each one can choose a skull type and get a point for each adjacent skull of that type. Because this expansion is so easy to mix in, there’s little downside to grabbing it if you already love Skulls of Sedlec!
Check out the new Button Shy releases here:
https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games