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:
- Greatest Beach Vacation
- ROVE: Tourist Trap Expansion
- Four Against Darkness Adventure Deck - The Good, the Bad, and the Troll
- Four Against Darkness Zine: Deadly Competition
- Four Against Darkness Zine: The Monster Mask
- Dangerous Space: Geida, Eliminate Mission
https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Greatest Beach Vacation
You and your friends are going on a trip. See who can have the best game vacation by scoring the highest from a combination of six unique vacation activities.
Coming in just a few short days, there’s going to be a Kickstarter launching for the Greatest Vacation series of roll-and-writes, with 12 unique vacation themes to eventually be released for the system. For instance, the Beach Vacation has six unique activities: Jet Ski, Snorkeling, Gift Shop, Surfing, Sand Castle, and Volleyball. Each of these uses dice in different ways, and each round you get 6 dice to allocate across the activities as you see fit. At the end of 5 days, your game is over and you get to tally up the points, providing a nice, fast-playing game that is easy to take with you on your next vacation!
Follow along the campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jasongreeno/greatest-vacation-roll-and-write-game-series
ROVE: Tourist Trap Expansion
A ROVE”s exploratory nature causes no end of trouble. These curious little bots are suckers for even the most humdrum attractions. With a near-infinite number of alien worlds to visit, every ROVE is guaranteed to get stuck in a tourist trap eventually!
A small little expansion that makes some interesting changes to the execution of a turn in ROVE…but only when one of these six cards is next in the pile to resolve. It gives a set number of moves to make, rather than depending on matching patterns to earn extra points of movement. However, it requires you to move a specific module first before you can use the additional points, which can wreck all of your plans if it shows up at the wrong time. As always, if you love easy-to-integrate expansions then you won’t want to miss out on this trap.
Four Against Darkness Adventure Deck - The Good, the Bad, and the Troll
In the dust bowls of An-Nur, you come across a small town named Liberty. Once a bustling Dwarven mining town, it’s since been taken over by the Black Hat Gang, halflings led by a fearsome troll. Clean up the town, and try to make it through alive. Map out the town and play out each area.
An exciting way to explore your Four Against Darkness adventures, as this deck contains everything you could need to play this adventure. Most of the cards contain die rolls, pieces of the map, what you find when searching, specials, traps, combat, and treasure. Not only that, but there are a pair of bosses to take down, and a pair of magic items to earn. One of those items is particularly interesting, giving you a 10% discount on all purchases, but all Bosses and Weird Monsters get +1 level when attacking…and it cannot be unequipped once you equip the item!
Four Against Darkness Zine: Deadly Competition
Sometimes, your party is not the first to enter the dungeon. Another party of adventurers is determined to reach the Final Boss first. This is not a situation of cooperation. This is competition. Deadly competition.
Okay, this is a fun adventure idea here! Another party is in the same dungeon, hunting the boss as well. And guess what? When you reach that boss, you’ll face the party of 4 adventurers - and can make them as elaborate in their personalities and backstories as you’d like. There’s tables to generate each of the 4 character classes, and even a new class for your future parties: The Shadow. They come with Adventuring Spell Scrolls, which can be really useful finds for the party. If you want a slightly different story arc for your 4AD game, you won’t want to miss this one!
Four Against Darkness Zine: The Monster Mask
You are walking on a forest path. It is late afternoon, and you plan to set up camp soon, when a girl in a lilac gown, her long brown hair flowing and adorned with a ribbon, appears on your path. Her arms and legs bear deep scratches, and she is breathing heavily. In her hands, she holds a monstrous mask made of thick red paper. As she sees you, she halts, her eyes filled with hope. She reaches out, asking for help.The monster mask she fashioned out of paper and glue, she explains, helped her to pass as one of the monsters, so she was not attacked. You suppress a chuckle at the notion that such a child’s toy could repel monsters, and agree to help her.
A fascinating little adventure, complete with passages to read and, based on decisions made, they will lead you to new passages to read. Attempt to complete the objective and destroy the unique monsters within the quest in order to secure victory. This offers a nice, small, enjoyable adventure that can be played by any group of adventurers, and should be quick enough to wrap up in most sessions of play. If you enjoy some narrative exploration, or just want more things to scratch that 4AD itch, then don’t miss out on the Monster Mask!
Dangerous Space: Geida, Eliminate Mission
Geida was always the sidekick until her entire team got ‘wiped’ in a faulty training exercise. Now she goes solo on all missions.
Well, this is quite the slate of new things to discuss! Geida has some fun things in her arsenal, but this week we’ll focus on her slate of foes within The Hammerhead. The Plotting Brawler is going to frustrate her frequently, as they remove the ability to attack at range 2+ if there’s an uncollected flag in their room. The Vigilant Titan deals extra damage on its first attack, and could get a bump to their defense if you happen to use a 6 when triggering them. But the Vicious Pirate boss might be the most devastating of all, as they negate your Defend Gear if the attack trigger is a 6, and eliminates uncollected items when you get damaged by it. What a fun set of threats!
https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Game of the Week: Four Against Darkness on sale for $6!
Four Against Darkness is a solitaire dungeon-delving game. No miniatures are needed. All you need is the book, a pencil, two six-sided dice, and grid paper.
You choose four character types from the classic classes (warrior, wizard, rogue, halfling, dwarf, barbarian, cleric, elf), equip them, and start adventuring in dungeons created by dice rolls and your choices. When you enter a room, you generate its content on a series of random tables. You will meet monsters, fight them, hopefully defeat them (or decide that discretion is the better part of valor!), you’ll manage your resources (healing, spells, life points, equipment), grab treasure, dodge traps, find clues, and even accept quests from the monsters you meet. Your characters can level up and become better at what they do, but it will not be easy.
Here it is, folks. The base game for Four Against Darkness. If you’ve been holding off on trying this one, now is the time to sharpen your swords..or pencils, and dive into the dungeon for some solitaire adventure. While you might question if an elf is a class or a race, the game itself has enough fans to be certified as a solitaire must-try and is unlike most games you might experience out there. Plus, if you get hooked, there’s only about a bajillion supplements out there. So while your wallet won’t thank you for getting hooked, you can enter the world of 4AD knowing there’s tons of adventure and new classes out there to discover after the core experience.
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!