New Games for June 9th, 2023 - Wild Martial Gardeners make Dungeons

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:

• Dungeon Maker Deluxe: Kickstarter Edition
• Dungeon Maker Deluxe: Base Game Only
• The River Wild: Wildscapes Expansion
• Dungeon Pages: Amador, Martial Cleric in Eldrin

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

Dungeon Maker Deluxe: Kickstarter Edition

You and your fellow wizards have a bad habit of pilfering each other’s dungeons. In this draft-and-write game, you’ll fortify your dungeon’s lairs, then crawl an opponent’s dungeon. The game ends for everyone when a player finishes clearing the opponent’s dungeon, or it ends for you if you run out of cards. Score the victory points for fortifying and capturing lairs. If you finish with the most points, you become the Dungeon Master!

If you ever wanted to add a little flip-and-write to your dungeon crawl experience, but also sprinkle in some competitiveness against others while designing the best dungeon you can - well, this is the game for you. There’s a little bit of something for most gamers here, as you’ll be trying to make the best use of your cards that you can, fitting polyhedron shapes into the various lairs within the dungeon to try and stop your rival, and then using the other side of your cards as spells to try and be the first to successfully traverse through a dungeon - or be the best at failing to succeed. With a small enough rules overhead, a ton of variety, and printer-friendly low-ink options, this is a game I’m excited to explore.

Dungeon Maker Deluxe: Base Game Only

You and your fellow wizards have a bad habit of pilfering each other’s dungeons. In this draft-and-write game, you’ll fortify your dungeon’s lairs, then crawl an opponent’s dungeon. The game ends for everyone when a player finishes clearing the opponent’s dungeon, or it ends for you if you run out of cards. Score the victory points for fortifying and capturing lairs. If you finish with the most points, you become the Dungeon Master!

The same game as the previous option, but with fewer things included. Not only are the rules a little shorter, leaving off things like Cantrips in the game, but there’s a fair amount less to print and choose from. Don’t like having to pick between 12 maps and 12 characters? Well, you can trim it down to 6 of each. Don’t want to craft a ton of cards for each player? This gets it down to just 18. You’ll still get plenty of epic Dungeon Maker experience in the package, just without all the extra chrome, so if you don’t suffer from severe FOMO, then you might find this is just right for you and your group.

The River Wild: Wildscapes Expansion

The land of Wild is full of surprises: new shores to explore, new relics to unearth, and new wonders to discover in each Protected Land. How far will your river flow?

A fun little expansion to an enjoyable solitaire game. This one gives you a new deck of 6 cards, and you flip one every time you make a Protected Land along the way. These cards are all different, ranging from additional scoring possibilities (some could be negative!), ways to make an unprotected land gain Protected status, get more animals, and more. This is sure to spice up the game a bit for those who already are enjoying The River Wild, and for the rest of you who might be trying it for the first time, this expansion is easy enough to integrate into the experience and can just as easily be pulled out if it ruins your experience. 

Dungeon Pages: Amador, Martial Cleric in Eldrin

The palm is for prayer. The fist is for trials. Both combine to create The Path. Walking the path brings us closer to the Light. Beware those who tempt you to leave the path. Use the palm to guide them back into the light and the fist if they endanger the path.

We’re seeing trickier dungeons coming our way, and this one is no exception. I love the setting of the location, but we will all dislike it when the dungeon messes with our plans. The Shifting Tile traps and the Linemen Scorpions all have you mark adjacent spaces with a 1 or take a damage if you cannot. The boss, Ruinous Statue, will burn your unused charges on Relics when you mark a space diagonal to it. You’ll need every bit of the Martial Cleric’s skills to overcome this dungeon, which does look like it’ll present a fun and interesting challenge this week.

Game of the Week: Gnomadic Gardeners

You are a head gardener at the community garden, with a team of gnomes. However, these free-spirited sprites often switch teams. By running a well-staffed team, fulfill tasks to supply the local food bank and score 77 bliss to win.

A quick little game for 1-2 players where you try and manage your hand of gnomes and assign them to complete tasks. However, your gnomes take time to do a task, and the more it takes the longer you’re probably going to need - and if your opponent’s gnomes do it faster, they get to mark it first. This gives you a lot of space for decisions, as there are three possible tasks to complete and, well, you’ll get to do only one of them and maybe not even the one you hope to accomplish. Oh, and those gnomes you played? They go to your opponent’s hand at the end of the round, providing yet another interesting decision space to consider.