Review: Dungeoneer Card Game
Dungeoneer is a dungeon-exploration card game published by Citizen Games. In the game you control a character - there are a variety of characters to choose from and each expansion comes with a few more. You explore the dungeon as it unfolds from the deck trying to complete quests. Along the way you collect treasure and boons - boons are special abilities. And as you enter each new section of the dungeon you collect Glory points and Peril points. Glory points are used to activate special abilites or powers from treasures. The treasures generally enhance your combat prowess in some way. Here’s the flip side. The other half of your turn you act as the Dungeon Overlord. Those peril points you collect during your exploration - those get used against you. As the Overlord you spend other players Peril points to send Encounters, like monsters and traps, against the other heroes as well as Banes, cards of misfortune.
The game plays fairly easily once you get the hang of the rules and the play sequence. You start off with a couple personal Quests, which are up to you to complete, and one global Quest in play, in which anyone can complete. You win the game by completing three quests - or finishing off the other heroes. Everyone begins on the “Entrance” card . Play proceeds with each player taking turns first as Overlord, then doing some exploration (drawing a map card and playing it down), then moving your hero around the map trying to complete quests. The turn ends with a discard/draw phase.
During the Overlord phase you get to spend peril points the other players collect. Activating Encounter or Bane cards requires the expenditure of Peril points. Play as many as you can or hold some back for a strategic move. If you play a monster Encounter, and the monster survives, it can remain in your hand or go in your pack - a special inventory space on the table. You can play monsters from your pack each turn. In an Encounter, if the hero is defeated she gains another Peril point but if she wins she gains a Glory point.
Next is the Exploration phase. You simply draw a map card from the deck and place it - connecting it to other map cards already in play. The placement of the cards can also play in some strategy but� more often it seems there is a good amount of luck here. The quests are ties to map locations so the sooner your map card gets out in play the faster you can complete your quests. The map areas offer some special rules and challenges of their own - such as being trapped, or one of the passages from the map location could be locked. These must be overcome by the heroes who enter the areas.
Next is the Hero’s phase. The heroes all have three basic stats, Melee, Magic, and Speed. These are used in combat and to avoid Threats, like traps. Speed also indicates how fast you move about the map. They also each have six wound points and some sort of special ability. So during this phase you can move your character around, spend Glory points to play cards from your hand into your inventory, and try to complete Quests. The Quests come in a few varieties - like escorts and searches. Usually they involve finding a particular location and defeating a monster, or overcoming a threat, or taking something to another location. The rewards for the Quests usually include advancing a level, where your basic abilities increase, or gaining an artifact which usually greatly enhances one of your abilities.
Finally you have to get rid of a card and draw your hand up to five cards.
I thought the game was very entertaining. In some respects it reminded me of Munchkin where you try to advance yourself as well as hinder your opponent. But the nice artwork of the cards and the interesting scenes they depict add a good RPG feel to the game. The good variety of Quests and characters appears to offer plenty of replayability. You can also combine the different decks to create a large dungeon which could be lots of fun with a big group although very time consuming.
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