Patrick Rothfuss Name of the Wind Pairs Game Faen Deck NIS art by Nate Taylor

Description

This PAIRS game is themed after the Patrick Rothfuss novel The Name of the Wind. Multiple art themes were done from that theme and this is the 'Faen Deck' with art by Nate Taylor.  I WANT to say they were exclusive to conventions or even to GenCon specifically when Patrick was a guest, but they may not have been but that is for sure where I got my hands on a couple of the decks!
This deck us unopened but the shrink is starting to come up a bit just from being moved around the game shelves a lot. Otherwise the box is in fine shape! Fairly sure the coupon card that was wrapped inside is no longer valid though unfortunately. Its been 6+ years since that GenCon!
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Pairs
is the name of the game, and pairs of cards are what players want to avoid.
The game uses a 55-card deck that contains one 1, two 2s, three 3s, and so on up to ten 10s. At the start of the game, shuffle the deck, then remove five cards from play unseen. Deal one card face-up to each player.
Whoever has the lowest card is the first active player. She decides whether to "hit" — that is, be dealt another card — or forfeit the round. If she hits and is dealt a card that
doesn't
match a card she already has in front of her, then the next player clockwise becomes the active player; if the card does match, then the round ends, she keeps one of these matching cards as penalty points, then everyone else discards their cards and a new round begins with each player being dealt a card.
If the active player forfeits, the round ends and she takes the lowest-valued card visible on the table as penalty points, then a new round begins. Penalty cards remain set aside, even if the deck is shuffled to continue play. If a player acquires more penalty points than the predetermined threshold, then the game ends and this player loses. (Alternatively, players can use coins to track scores between games, with the loser paying everyone one coin, paying her score in coins to the player with the lowest score, etc.)
There are many versions of
Pairs
from Cheapass Games. The base game play is identical, but the artwork (and artist) vary across the versions. Some include special game rules relevant to the theme of the deck. In general, you can find new/experimental/user-submitted rules at the Cheapass website, and many non-English versions of
Pairs
also include rules for additional games to play with this deck.