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:
- Minecart Town
- Battle Pages: Year-Long Pre-order (Includes Core Set)
- Battle Pages: Month-Long Pre-order (Includes Core Set)
- Battle Pages Core Set Pre-order
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GRIMLORE Profane Truths - Case File #12: Upton Sinclair, Journalist
- Power Creep: Tank, East ‘Burg 2099
- Dangerous Space; P2-777, Quarantine Mission
https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
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. Add in an expert variant you can give to any/all players as a sort of added layer of complexity, plus solo mode, and there’s a lot packed into this little game. If you enjoy building a tableau and making sure things connect properly, this is going to be right up your alley.
Battle Pages: Year-Long Pre-order (Includes Core Set)
Wave after wave of enemies move across the land. You will roll Evil Dice to see where they spawn and then Good Dice to both mine gems, and build units to protect your kingdom. After six waves the Boss will emerge anywhere on the map. Defeat the boss and protect your kingdom.
A new game with familiar core mechanics but completely different style of gameplay! If you enjoy Dungeon Pages, Dangerous Space, and/or Power Creep, you’ll find a lot of familiar fingerprints on this game’s system, but it is treading into a whole new genre of solo gaming. Like the previous games, this one will have weekly releases, and at the end you’ll have 12 unique kingdoms, each with 4 different variations of enemy formations that can all be interchanged to maximize your replay value in one simple, easy-to-print-and-play package. If you want to try your hand at recruiting armies and managing their firepower to overcome waves of enemies, then you’ll certainly want to check this one out.
Battle Pages: Month-Long Pre-order (Includes Core Set)
Same as above but without the 4 different versions of enemy formations. You’ll get a new sheet each month, with 12 unique Kingdoms in the end.
Battle Pages Core Set Pre-order
If you’re looking to get in at a lower entry price, this is a great option for you as you’ll get one Kingdom, containing a unique enemy army, and get 4 variations of the sheet with new enemy battle formations on each sheet. The benefit here is the mix-and-match style of this game, allowing you to blend things in unique ways. If you’re not sure you want the commitment of weekly content being released, this is the ideal level to try it out and see what all the buzz is about in the solo community.
GRIMLORE Profane Truths - Case File #12: Upton Sinclair, Journalist
Upton Sinclair, an investigative journalist, is famed for his relentless exposes of corruption and exploitation in the early 20th century. A muckraker in the truest sense, Sinclair has long used his pen as a weapon against systemic rot, delving into the shadows where others fear to look. In the early 1900s, the secluded Chateau des Amereux becomes the focus of sinister rumors involving occult rituals and disappearances. Upton Sinclair is drawn to investigate these unsettling claims. As he delves deeper into the chateau’s history, Sinclair uncovers evidence of a clandestine cult, the “Mothers of Darkness,” allegedly performing arcane ceremonies within the chateau’s hidden chambers. His research leads him to a confrontation with forces beyond his comprehension. This might be his greatest story, yet.
Oof, this series of threats has a synergy that Upton is going to struggle to overcome. The Archivist is his biggie threat, and he does an extra damage so long as the daughter in his location is still alive. Then the Veil Daughters being alive in a location cause the Groundkeepers in a location to trigger on a lower number AND do extra damage. This is a sinister set of enemies to encounter, and hopefully Upton can manage with with things like his Hall of 1,000 Lights to take them down quickly.
Power Creep: Tank, East ‘Burg 2099
The Radiation hasn’t dissipated as fast as some predicted. This forces many settlers to hole up in their shelters.
We come around to a new character this week in Power Creep, and Tank has some interesting things going for him in the year 2099. First of all, these enemies are sinister, causing you to flip your lowest evil dice each round. That’ll teach you to mess with those angry squatters! As if that wasn’t enough, you also have a new event along the Creep track: Weapons Ban. This makes you lose access to both the Bomb and the Shotgun crafts if you haven’t already crafted them. So plan well, friends, if you want access to one or both of them.
Dangerous Space; P2-777, Quarantine Mission
P2-777 no longer endures the old nicknames the humans gave him. He’s earned his preferred moniker of Pete.
An interesting mission to tackle for P22-777, who appears to have a decent toolset to handle the challenge. With quarantine missions, you are looking to make sure you have at least a 1 in each room’s path when moving into the next room. Well, thanks to one of the enemies, you reduce dice by 1 when holding an unused booster so that seems like an automatic choice to grab and just not use one of those. He also has quite the movement range that can be upgraded, allowing him to make short work of the map when possible.
Game of the Week: Rube on sale for just $2!
Reuben “Rube” Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor, remembered today for his cartoons depicting needlessly elaborate contraptions that perform simple tasks. These intricate collections of springs, marbles, pulleys, and countless other components are at once pointless and fascinating, silly and inspiring.
A favorite thing of mine in 2-player gaming is when you have multi-use cards and are facing the tough decision of how to use them most effectively. This somewhat has it, with a 9-card game where you take turns adding a card to the 3x3 grid. The catch? The orientation that the card is played determines who uses the action of the card and who scores the points on the card. That has to be as delightful of a decision as it sounds, with quick gameplay to rival other Button Shy 2-player greats such as Circle the Wagons for passing that small window of time together.
Check out Game of the Week here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/game-of-the-week
Mysticana: Element of Surprise Expansion
Within a realm shattered by war, shrewd nobles back opposing factions to secure their place in the future. Lend your support at the right time to wrest control of the realm from your rivals.
An interesting game of slowly deploying cards, and then staking a claim on one of the elements in the hopes that you have the stronger force to score points. But that’s not all - each turn you only play one of two cards you draw, leaving you with layers of decisions along the way. From the leftovers in your hand, you are choosing one to be your herald for the element you want to represent - but it also needs to be high enough in case you both choose the same element. And then two other cards from the hand go into the Shadows, where all but the lowest card in each element will get eliminated to create your multiplier for your element. It all is layer upon layer of decisions, which makes this a surprisingly rich expansion to grab for this game.
Check out the new Button Shy releases here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
See you next week with more information on our newest print and play games!