New Games for June 1st, 2023 - Gift of the Insurgent Wrestling Warrior

It's New Game Friday (on a Thursday!) David Wiley (Cardboard Clash) is here to tell us about the new games.

Here’s what is new this week:

• Aurora Strike Wrestling Group: Dark Match
• Insurgent
• Dungeon Pages: Gloria, Night Warrior in The Coils

https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games

Aurora Strike Wrestling Group: Dark Match

Step into the thrilling world of wrestling with ASWG: Dark Match! With 26 stunningly illustrated cards showcasing larger-than-life wrestlers and their electrifying moves, this game brings the excitement of the ring right to your tabletop. Easy to learn and quick to play, unleash your inner champion as you outwit and outmaneuver your opponent. Let the wrestling showdown begin!

A lightning-fast game that you can set up and start playing in just minutes, which is hard to find these days. Compete with your opponent in trying to continually one-up their last card played until one side can no longer do so and wins a card. Be the first to secure 3 cards and you’re the winner - but the game also comes with several variants to spice up the way to play. If you’re looking for a perfect coffee shop game to take along and play a few rounds with someone, this looks like it’d be a nice fit for something like that with few components, fewer rules, and furiously fast gameplay.

Insurgent

In the hardened hearts of the downtrodden, a fire sparks. Heroes are not born. They are forged in the crucible of oppression, cast into the anvil of struggle. From the ashes of tyranny, your group of rebels emerges. Your mission? To land a decisive blow against an oppressive regime that will ignite the flame of freedom. You are the maestros of mayhem, not merely fighters but artists of the battlefield, executing daring maneuvers with the grace of a ballet and the impact of a tempest. How far will you go to tip the scales? What will you risk to strike the heart of the beast? It’s not just about winning, it’s about making sure they’ll never forget. It’s about being the underdog who strikes back, the phoenix rising from the ashes, the flash of steel in the moonlight. Insurgent. It’s about toppling tyrants, rewriting destiny, and looking damn good while doing it.

Another interesting role-playing system that opts for a leaderless campaign approach, allowing everyone to play together rather than having one to do the crafting of the story and guiding things forward. This is handled with a dice-driven Oracle system, which can be used to attempt things and affects your dice pool based on how vague or specific you are with what you are wanting to accomplish. The other key thing is, of course, a collective agreement on the story and how things unfold and making sure that all players at the table are comfortable in the midst of this sort of environment and narrative arc. If you’re curious about role-playing, whether alone or in a small group, this is certainly a great place to begin and see how well the story develops amongst your table.

Dungeon Pages: Gloria, Night Warrior in The Coils

The Elders heard whispers of Gloria’s masked exploits as an avatar of justice within her community. Tales of righting wrongs. Though she was older than most students, they saw in her the type of metal that could be forged into a tempered weapon.

Explore the inner corruption within The Coils, a new location that is going to inspire your greed as much as it does the dastardly residents. The Magistrate gains a boost to every damage for each unmarked coin in the dungeon, while the Corrupt Guards boost their die for each damaged but undefeated Guard you faced. Thankfully Gloria has a few tricks of her own up her sleeve, including a handy Moon Medallion which gives you boosts for completing columns. You’ll probably need all the help you can get in this week’s installment (because I know that I’ll need it!)

Game of the Week: Gift of Tulips on sale for just $4!

In Gift of Tulips, tulip enthusiasts explore Amsterdam’s Tulip Festival to build colorful bouquets and give tulips to their friends.

Don’t let the floral theme fool you, there’s some room for some really interesting gameplay inside of this little card game. You’ll take two actions each turn, and you can’t do the same action twice. You have three options to choose from, so you’ll see a lot of the same actions occurring - some of them will score you points now and others will score points later. However, there’s also ways to adjust what points will be scored for each type at the end of the game - and since you can add cards toward that end scoring criteria...and choose to play it face-down - you can really mess with someone’s plans while furthering your own agenda.  This promises to be fast and entertaining fun - something that comes as little surprise to me considering the publisher of this one.