New games for November 20, 2020 - The Stump of Dead Thieves

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

But first! Make sure you check back next Friday for our Black Friday through Cyber Monday sales and promotions! It's always fun here during that weekend.

Here’s what is new this week:

• Escape of the Dead 2
• The Stump of Elemental Evil
• Thieves Den

This week's new games are all available at https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games

Four Against Darkness: Stump of Elemental Evil

Play as a regular 4AD dungeon. Instead of rolling on tables, draw cards, using the content in the appropriate text boxes. Delve into the cave under an enormous rotting stump and slay the Tentacle Worm that has been kidnapping villagers. The party will be paid 100 GP if they get rid of the monster.

Well, those fans of Four Against Darkness can rejoice at even more content. Always wanted to try Four Against Darkness but been intimidated (or simply turned off) by all that reading and the rolling on charts and tables? This adventure is designed for you, friends, as any party level 1-4 can undertake this self-contained adventure. The cards tell you the shapes the draw for rooms, results of exploration, encounters, and more. Not to worry, each step of reveal into the new room draws a new card, making it so you gain strong variety even within the 12 cards of this adventure. Now’s your chance to jump in and try this immense game!

Escape of the Dead 2

Escape of the Dead 2 is a game for 1 player where the player plays as a survivor heading to the Hospital seeking help in a zombie-infested city. Roll dice and strategically decide your fate: Will you drive as fast as possible? Or will you defend your health endlessly? Whatever you do, you always need to Survive!

Drive along the path, warding back zombies and conserving health and fuel in order to reach the Hospital. Imagine yourself as a case member of the Walking Dead, or as an adventurer in The Last of Us, and give this quick solo game a shot as you try to survive. While dice-dependent games can be luck-driven in the extreme, there appear to be plenty of things to consider and ways to spread the dice regardless of value - giving this game a little more depth and strategy than meets the eye to begin with.

Thieves’ Den

Our boss got pinched in a cunning ruse put on by the city magistrate. Now, it’s up to all of you, the Master Thieves, to see who can gain the most prestige and become the new boss. You’ll need to send out hirelings to nab treasures, sell ill-gotten gains to underworld fences, and even deal with that terrible witch to increase your reputation. Certain treasures can also be bartered to Alazar, the wizard, for special powers.

A fun little game of worker placement of a sort, as you are trying to gain and sell treasures to be the best of the thieves. It has an interesting drafting mechanic for locations each round, so you’ll never know what locations might be available - and if an opponent has a location they’ll get a bonus if you send your thieves to that location. The perfect amount of player interaction present on a game that is certain to be one of your larger builds - if you need a project to keep you busy over the holidays, why not work on building your arsenal of thieves and underworld folks of importance?

Check out all of the new games here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games

In Seasons of Rice, Corry Damey’s 18-card tribute to his Cambodian heritage, players are farmers puzzling together paddy cards to expand their family’s “landscape” of rice paddies and ensure the most bountiful of harvests.

Players will be drafting cards and placing them into their expanding landscape area to close off paddies in order to score the most points by the end of the game.

Do yourself a favor: if you haven’t played this, grab the game. It is an outstanding 2-player game with an interesting blend of drafting, terrain building, and leveraging unique player powers/scoring to build the best rice paddies. This one surprised my wife and I this year, becoming (and remaining) one of our most-played games in 2020. There’s a good amount of depth, variety, and interaction all wrapped up in a relatively short playtime. It might not dethrone Circle the Wagons as our favorite to play together from the Button Shy line, but it certainly comes close!

Check out Game of the Week here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/game-of-the-week

See you next week with more information on our newest print and play games!