Robot Viking

Here are two more exclusive preview cards for upcoming CCG Dungeon Crawler. Until now, we’ve focused on Dungeon Crawler’s solitaire aspect, but today we’ll talk a bit about how these cards work in the competitive version.

Bodyguard is a Crawler card which you’ll draw and use to assist your adventurers. Like Phase, it has an additional Boost ability that you can access if you have an active adventurer of the appropriate class. This guy is pretty good to have around — even unboosted, he ramps up your adventurers’ ability to deal with the dungeon, and lets a stronger adventurer “take the arrow” for someone else. This could save a wounded adventurer from death.

With the boost ability, the Bodyguard can potentially double your stamina, which should make it a lot easier to mop up whatever monsters the dungeon has thrown at you.

Moving Search is something they teach adventurers at pre-season rookie camp. If you don’t know how to find and negate traps, you won’t last long in any dungeon. Many traps in the dungeon deck have the downward pointing arrow symbol. This is a trigger, and indicates some effect that takes place as soon as the trap comes into play. They can seriously screw up your adventurers’ plans and make it difficult to deal with the rest of the encounter, so the basic Moving Search ability to counters trap triggers is crucial. Alternately, you can use it to remove a trap (if you have some other way to avoid or deal with the trigger) or remove stealth from a Character (i.e., monster) in the encounter. Stealth is a pain, because it prevents you from targeting that Character, so this option is handy as well.

Boosted, Moving Search is even better. You don’t have to pay the “Activate Adventurer” cost, and you get to do two out of three options instead of just one. Negate a trigger, then remove someone’s Stealth. That’s how you were trained to search!

So, how do these fit into the multi-player competitive version of Dungeon Crawler. The two-player game is symmetrical — each player builds a Dungeon deck and a Crawler deck. On the first turn, you “attack” your opponent by drawing an encounter from your Dungeon deck, which he or she then has to deal with. On the next turn, you’ll be on the receiving end. The two cards previewed today work exactly the same in multi-player as they do in solitaire. You’ll draw them from your Crawler deck and use them to deal with your opponent’s Dungeon.

Some Crawler cards, however, have a separate red box only playable in a competitive game. This is a disruption ability, and it lets you mess with your opponent in unexpected ways. You might put the top card of her Dungeon deck on the bottom of the deck, avoiding a nasty trap, or you might heal one of the monsters from your own Dungeon deck.

Dungeon cards have multi-player effects as well. These are called draft cards, and have a purple box. When one of these is drawn from the Dungeon deck, you can put it into your hand instead of into the encounter, to be played later (at the most inopportune moment possible for your opponent).

The competitive game is still a race to complete quests and get through the dungeon, but now you’re racing against another player. Plus, there’s a time limit, with games decided based on a scoring system. You get points for defeating encounters, completing quests, and wounding or killing your opponent’s adventurers.

If you’re intrigued by Dungeon Crawler, the official site has a lot more info, including a rules tutorial, a gallery of the cards and more. They’ll be at GenCon this year to show off the game, so keep an eye out for them.

Related posts:

1. Dungeon Crawler Creator Starts Mini Line
2. Dungeon Crawler: Unbound Update
3. Dungeon Crawler: Unbound Starter is a Deluxe Gamer Gift
4. Dungeon Crawler Preview Cards — Jungle Troglodyte and Phase
5. Dungeon Crawler CCG Lets You Explore Solo