[dropcap size=big]W[/dropcap]hen you first open the box for Stumped you’ll be greeted by something unusual for a deck building game: 2 pounds of real wood. Your goal is to turn that pile of wood into your own physical 10 leaf tree before your neighbors do. A seemingly easy task, until you realize how cutthroat the world of arborists can be.
Each game players must find a balance between building up their own tree using growth and defensive based cards, and hacking down the competition using offensive cards. The perils your burgeoning tree might face range from flash floods and drought, to lawn-mowers and nuclear waste.
Created by brothers Seth and Nathan Richardson, Stumped began life as a very different game called Plant Punt. The goal was to simply punt your opponents plant across the room, but the sapling of an idea kept growing. From there they began adding mechanics that could help grow your plant as well as serve as a kind of monetary system. Plant Punt did live on as an action card that when played allows the player to:
“1. Laugh maliciously 2. Flick opponent’s plant once”.
Stumped can currently be pre-ordered for the early bird price of $26 from their Kickstarter page.