Pyramid Review: Nodwick - The Card Game

Pyramid Pick

Nodwick: The Card Game

Published by Jolly Roger Games

Designed by Frank Branham

Artwork and Graphic Design by Aaron Williams

105 full-color playing cards, sand timer, comic booklet; $18.00

This industry is becoming thick with game-based cartoon strips -- Dork Tower, PvP, Knights of the Dinner Table -- and the trade reciprocates the attention by turning all of them into games. Aaron Williams' strip Nodwick, about a beleaguered henchman continually being killed and resurrected by a less-than-canny group of fantasy fortune-hunters, now gets the nod in a fast-paced card game from Jolly Roger Games.

Unlike some license-based games, Nodwick: The Card Game is dead-on (so to speak) in linking the game to its source material. It's the annual Hench Games (inside the box the game is called Nodwick: Henchgames for those fans of the strip), and adventuring groups from all over gather to match wits and skills in various contests that invariably end in the death of one or more henchmen. So Piffany, the tireless party cleric, whips out her trusty duct tape and goes about trying to stick Nodwick and his put-upon guild pals together again.

Alas, kind-hearted though she may be, Piffany isn't all that particular about reassembling the pieces. So long as each henchman has six parts -- arms, legs, torso, head, spleen, and spirit -- she's happy. They don't even have to be the right six parts from a single lackey.

The object of the game is to be the first . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: January 3, 2003

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