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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Slide Hero
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Battle Pages: Kingdom of Therax, Marching Order 2
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Power Creep: Earlene, East ‘Burg 2111
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Dangerous Space: Dekkar, Repair Mission
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GRIMLORE Case File #25: Brenda Ashpool, Actress
https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Slide Hero
The peaceful kingdom of Pteros is now plagued with a host of terrors. Many believe this to be the work of the wretched King Luthiss. The rightful ruler of the land, Queen Estra, has called upon your oath to defend the land.
Master an interesting mechanic with using the Action Slide to gain access to weapons, items, and resources to power yourself up. Vanquish a series of enemies leading up to a showdown with a boss enemy, which is selected based on the previous enemies defeated leading up to that showdown. If you enjoy a puzzly action-selection game to manage resources and deal out efficient damage, you won’t want to miss out on Slide Hero. This one looks very promising to be a relatively fast and fun solo game to break out over a lunch break for a play or three.
Battle Pages: Kingdom of Therax, Marching Order 2
Masters of crystal magic. It’s no wonder that their home is under attack from plunderers.
This week we will talk about the big baddie facing down the Kingdom of Terax: King Kestar. Let’s start with a bad-enough aspect of him: he targets all adjacent units. This means that surrounding him can be extremely costly to your kingdom’s defenses. And maybe you’ll be lucky and that’s all the effect you’re going to have to balance against in this one. However, when he spawns on a grass tile, he damages everything in his region as well as the Kingdom. Oof. You’re going to want to make lots of use from Petros’ hero ability to help offset this baddie.
Power Creep: Earlene, East ‘Burg 2111
Disturbing reports from other regions tell of settlements completely engulfed by darkness - someone has to do something.
Earlene is back this week and is ready to dazzle us all with her custom Blueprint ability. When you mark off an item, you can circle three identical numbers to collect a Gear instead of the item collected. That might not sound like much, but consider that four of the five items you can craft requires a gear as part of its recipe. That’s a pretty nice thing to do! Especially when the threats this week do a ton of damage, adding an additional +1 damage per attack for each 6 you roll on a good die. Of course, you can choose to NOT roll those good dice, but that’s not a very appealing idea…
Dangerous Space: Dekkar, Repair Mission
Dekkar was trained by a secretive sect of martial warriors whose code devotes each to a life of daring missions and quests.
Dekkar has some good tools at his disposal to help with this mission, which costs movement or attack value depending on the room. However, let’s remind you about his baddies that he challenges. The Plotting Bots are immune to being attacked until you collect their checkpoint in the room, meaning sometimes you’re going to absorb extra damage. That’s all fine, until you realize the Clever Hunter prevents you from using Defend Gear when they trigger on a 6. Not only that, they also damage you if you mark a space diagonal to them - meaning you’re going to be hurting fast on this mission! What a great time to be slower or weaker, right?
GRIMLORE Case File #25: Brenda Ashpool, Actress
Brenda Ashpool still dreams of Kingsport - the icy winds, the gaslit streets, the faceless choir singing under Aldebaran. She left her ancestral home changed, marked by whispers no one else heard. So when reports of strange winter rites surface in the Austrian Alps - rites older than Christmas, older than Bethlehem - Brenda knows this isn’t just folklore. It’s her kind of problem. The scans on her wrist still ache on cold nights; the silver ward hidden in her coat hums faintly. Whatever awaits in those mountains, she’s no longer the woman who ran.
You’re going to love, or hate, this week’s GRIMLORE. I love how there are spaces that can heal her just by putting letters in them, opening up a chance to recover prior to facing down Veylthar, Herald of Dread. However, that same baddy can cause you to erase letters from a Harbinger lane and can resurrect said Harbingers. You don’t want that. You really don’t want that. So I suppose there will need to be a little extra luck on your side to help ensure you don’t get steamrolled by a host of resurrected foes…
Check out Game of the Week here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/game-of-the-week
Mysticana: Unnatural Beasts Expansion
The veil between realms has torn, unleashing unimaginable horrors. Two champions are called to kill or banish these monsters using primal energies. Show your strength and defeat the most beasts to secure your place in history.
An interesting expansion that adds a 2-player game to the Mysticana universe. This game has players competing to be the first to capture 3 beasts, and each beast card has a level 1 side, and a more complex level 2 side, bringing a lot of variety into the mix. You are working to either kill or banish the beast as you work your way through positioning the right cards and capturing some of the played cards in order to align things in your favor first and claim the beast. If you enjoy interactive back-and-forth gameplay, you’ll delight in this expansion.
Check out the new Button Shy releases here:
https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Game of the Week: Jelly Jelly Bundles
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!
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.
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. 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 where 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.
Minecart Town
Your settlers have arrived in a promising new land, searching for a prosperous safe haven. Surrounded by nothing other than raw resources, can you lead them toward developing a pleasant and profitable town?
A fun tile-laying game that sounds simple on the surface - pay resources and play tiles, gathering resources either upon placement or round-to-round in the production phase. But here you have the added element of tracks to lay, which you use to connect those production sites to ones that will score points at the end for having resources on them.
YUBIBO
Connecting hands via fingers and sticks? A whole new kind of balance game!
An interesting little game where you are balancing sticks and balls between players’ hands. With a deck of cards that indicates a color (player) and a finger the stick attaches to, you are working together to get all of your sticks in the air using just one of each players’ hands (keeping the other free to draw cards, etc.) and without having sticks supporting other sticks, etc. I
Charge & Spark
The location? Neo Cyber Setagaya City. The year? 20XX. Humanity has perished and Earth has succumbed to android control. Analog games have become a favorite pastime for androids, offering an opportunity to simulate proxy battles in a controlled environment. Assume the role of an android controlling their very own robot in this imaginary world, and seize glorious victory!
An interesting little game where you are trying to either defeat the opponent, or move to the end of your track first. Damage is fairly simple, with the higher attack dealing the difference between attacks if both people do an attack of some fashion in the same turn. There’s some chance that comes from moving along the track.
Check out Game of the Week here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/game-of-the-week