Dungeon Decorators Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Overview
• Setup
• The Tiles
  • Placing Decoration Tiles
  • Placing Dungeon Tiles
• Boss Goals
• Decoration Goals
• Shape Goals
• Playing a Round
  • 1. Draft a Tile
  • 2. Resolve Assistant Icon
  • 3. Build
  • 4. Score
  • 5. Refill Hand
• Game End and Final Scoring
  • Boss Goals Notes

Components

• 2 Bags, blue and red (not shown)
• 4 Player Pawns
• 4 Score Tracking Cubes
• Draft Board
• 120 Dungeon Tiles with decorations on one side and a room or hallway on the other
• 10 Generic Dungeon Tiles with a room on one side and a straight hallway on the other
• 4 Player Boards
• 4 Starting Tiles
• 3 Hourglass Tiles
• 36 Shape Goal Cards
• 36 Decoration Goal Cards
• 4 Rules Reminder Cards
• 10 Arcane Architect Tokens
• 10 Decorative Mimic Tokens
• 18 Boss Goal Cards in two decks, yellow (A) and blue (B)
• 8 "50 point" Chits
• Score Track

Overview

During a round, each player will draft a tile and either place it in their dungeon or place it in storage for later in the game. After this, they may play goal cards from their hand to score victory points. This process continues until the three hourglass tiles are drawn, at which point the game ends and proceeds to final scoring. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins!

Setup

Each player chooses a color and takes the pawn, scoring cube and player board of that color. Each player puts their score cube on the compass rose space on the scoring track and their player board in front of them with the side with two squares facing up. Each player takes a starting tile and places it in front of them with plenty of space around it to build.

Randomly place the player pawns into the circular spots along one side of the draft board, starting with the spot marked "1" and proceeding down the line. This determines the turn order for the first round.

Shuffle the 120 dungeon tiles. Put 20 of them back in the box - they won't be used in this game. Put 50 tiles into the blue first half bag, and 50 into the red second half bag. Then put the three hourglass tiles into the red second half bag. Shuffle the contents of each bag.

Shuffle the two Boss Goal decks separately and reveal one card from each. These two Boss Goals will determine two ways to score bonus points during final scoring. Put the unused Boss Goals back in the box.

Shuffle the Shape Goals deck and the Decoration Goals deck separately. Each player draws three cards from each deck, then discards any two cards from their hand. (You do not need to discard 1 of each card type - you may discard 2 of the same.) All discards are face down, but be sure to keep them separate from the decks!

During drafting, tiles are placed on the draft board with their decoration side up, because this side tells you everything you need to know about both sides of the tile. If an edge of a decoration tile has a white icon on it, that corresponds to a passageway on the other side. If an edge of a decoration tile has a green wild icon or no icon, it corresponds to a wall on the other side.

If the bottom right of the decoration side has a colored texture or a star icon, that means that the dungeon side has that color paint on the floor, or a star. By reading all of the elements on the decoration side, players will have full information about both sides of the tile without needing to flip any tiles over.

These rules and the cards often refer to a "room" vs. a "hallway". This refers to two different kinds of dungeon tiles. A room is a dungeon tile with only a single passageway (with a door) and three walls.

A hallway is any other kind of dungeon tile. Hallways can have two, three, or four passageways. (Note that your starting tile counts as a Hallway!)

Rooms and dungeons can each potentially have a colored floor or a star icon. These can give you extra points at the end of the game.

The Tiles

Over the course of the game, you will be building a dungeon by drafting tiles and building them out from your starting tile. When placing tiles in your dungeon, you may rotate or flip them however you like. In general, once a tile is placed in your dungeon, it can no longer be moved, rotated or flipped over. (Although the Arcane Architect allows you to bend this rule slightly!)

Each tile has decorations on one side and a room or hallway on the other.

Placing Decoration Tiles

To place a tile as a decoration tile, simply place it so that at least one of its decorations is adjacent to a wall in your dungeon. However, you may not place a decoration tile that causes a passageway to dead-end into a decoration tile.

Example 1: Placing tile 210 like this as a decoration tile means that you are putting a tasteful table next to this wall of your dungeon. In addition, there are other decorations on this tile, so if you happen to build your dungeon around the corners later in the game, you could gain the benefit of more decorations, like so: now, in addition to the table, there are keys hanging on both of the nearby walls!

Example 2: Placing decoration tile 156 like this is illegal, because it causes a passageway to dead-end into a decoration tile. Note that whether or not there is a decoration on the side of the dead-ending tile doesn't matter, so this placement is also illegal.

Placing Dungeon Tiles

To place a tile as a dungeon tile, place it adjacent to another dungeon tile, subject to the following restrictions:

1. You may not place a tile that causes a passageway to dead-end into a decoration tile,
2. You must be able to trace a connected path from your newly-placed tile back to your starting tile, and
3. Your dungeon must always have at least one open passageway leading to empty, unbuilt space.

Note that you may place a dungeon tile that causes a passageway to dead-end into a wall on another dungeon tile. You just may not have it dead-end into a decoration tile.

Example 3: Placing this orange tile next to your starting tile is perfectly legal. It does not cause a passageway to dead-end into a decoration tile, it is trivially easy to trace a connected path back to your starting tile, and your dungeon still has many passages leading to unbuilt space.

Example 4: This placement of the orange tile is illegal, since you can't trace a connected path from the orange tile back to your starting tile.

Example 5: Placing the orange tile here is legal. A passageway may dead-end into a wall - it just may never dead-end into a decoration tile. Note that you can trace a connected path from the newly-placed orange tile back to your starting tile.

Example 6: This placement of the orange tile is illegal, since it causes a passageway to dead-end into a decoration tile.

Example 7: Placing the blue room here is illegal, since it would completely close off your dungeon, leaving you with no passageways leading to unbuilt empty space.

Boss Goals

Two Boss Goal cards are revealed at the beginning of the game and give bonus points during final scoring. Be sure to pay attention to these goals - they will inform your strategy during the game!

Example 8: M'alice, Fiendish Fae gives 3 bonus points at the end of the game for each room in your dungeon, while Stacy the Spider Queen gives points at the end of the game to whoever has the most spiderwebs decorating the walls of their dungeon.

Decoration Goals

Decoration Goal cards give you points for having certain decorations in a room or hallway.

Decoration Goals have the number of points they are worth in the star in the upper left. Decoration Goals come in two types: Room and Hallway, indicated in the upper right. To score a Room Decoration Goal, you must have the indicated decorations on the walls of a single room in your dungeon. So the Sharp Pointy Object Storage goal may be scored with tiles like this: the swords and the spikes are both decorating walls in a single room, so with this configuration of tiles, you may play Sharp Pointy Object Storage from your hand during your Score Phase to receive 10 points.

Hallway Decoration Goals are a little different. They score if you have the indicated symbols attached to walls anywhere in your hallway. (Note that, due to dungeon tile placement rules, your dungeon can have multiple rooms, but will only ever have one large connected hallway!)

So the following example dungeon allows you to score the Chic Skulls on Swanky Spikes: the walls of this long branching hallway include a skull and two spikes, so you can score 9 points by playing the card. (Note that the hallway also includes a table and a coffin which may come in handy for other goal cards!)

Shape Goals

Shape Goal cards give you points if you make a certain shape with the tiles in your dungeon.

Here is a symbol key for Shape Goal cards:

• Any hallway (it may have a color or a star or nothing at all)
• Any room (again, with or without a color or star)
• A hallway with a star on it
• A hallway of the indicated color
• A hallway/room of any color (but not the neutral gray color)
• A hallway with at least X decorations attached to the walls of that specific hallway tile (Note that a green wild decoration does not count as a decoration until it is activated by a Decorative Mimic Token!)
• A room with at least X decorations attached to its walls (As above, a green wild decoration doesn't count unless activated by a Decorative Mimic!)
• A room with some color of paint on its floor and at least two decorations attached to its walls

When scoring a Shape Goal card, you must have the indicated shape anywhere in your dungeon. That shape may be rotated or even reflected relative to how it appears on the card.

Example 9: This dungeon configuration can score the Eye-Catching Monument for 8 points. Note that the five tiles that are part of the required shape do not need to connect directly to one another! Any hallways in the right positions will suffice, as long as they meet the tile placement restrictions described above.

Example 10: This configuration meets the requirements for the Offices of Doom, even though the shape is both rotated and reflected. The rooms and hallways are in the right positions relative to each other, and the rooms each have at least two decorations on them.

Playing a Round

In each round, players set up the draft board, then, in turn order, each player plays their complete 5-phase turn. After all players have taken a turn, the next round begins.

Round Setup: If any tiles are left on the draft board from the previous round, put them into the box. Draw 4 new tiles from the current bag and place them, in low-to-high numerical order, decoration side up, onto the four spots on the draft board.

If the blue bag runs out during this process, continue drawing from the red bag. If you draw an hourglass tile during this process, set it aside and continue filling the draft board. If you draw the third hourglass tile, the game ends immediately. Proceed to final scoring.

Example 11: During setup, the players draw tiles 171, 282, 30, and 111 from the blue first half bag. They place tile 30 onto spot 1, tile 111 onto spot 2, tile 171 onto spot 3 and tile 282 onto spot 4.

Then players proceed to their turns.

Player Turns: After round setup is complete, players take turns in the order in which their pawns are lined up on the draft board. The player whose pawn is closest to space "1" goes first, then next closest, etc. On a player's turn, they do the following steps in order:

1. Draft a Tile
2. Resolve Assistant Icon
3. Build
4. Score
5. Refill Hand

1. Draft a Tile

To draft a tile, place your pawn on the opposite side of the draft board, in the spot corresponding to the tile you wish to take. Take that tile and place it in front of you (but don't place it in your dungeon just yet).

Example 12: The red player acts first, since she is in the #1 spot on the draft board. She wants that 297 tile with its Goblin Sappers assistant icon, so she moves her pawn to the rightmost spot on the opposite side of the board and takes the 297 tile, placing it in front of her. She gets a strong tile, but since she is now far from the #1 spot, she will be drafting last next round!

Draw/Exchange Spot: In the middle of the draft board is the Draw/Exchange action. If you place your pawn on the draft spot next to this icon, you do not draft one of the tiles on the board. Instead, you draw a tile at random from the current bag as your draft and place it in front of you. Then, draw a card from either the Shape Goals deck or the Decoration Goals deck, then discard one card from your hand, face down.

Only one player may take the Draw/Exchange spot in each round.

If you draw an hourglass tile while resolving the Draw/Exchange spot, set it aside and draw again. If the hourglass tile you replaced was the third hourglass tile, the game will end after all players have taken their turn this round.

2. Resolve Assistant Icon

If the tile you drafted has a colored icon in the center of the tile, you've recruited an assistant! Immediately resolve the assistant's ability:

Goblin Sapper: take one of the generic room/hallway tiles and place it in front of you. You must add that tile to your dungeon or put it in storage during your Build Phase. (The generic room/hallway tiles have a lighter gray background to distinguish them from the numbered tiles. Be sure to separate them out when putting the game away!)

Burrow Bro: take two additional tiles from the current bag (if the blue bag runs out, continue drawing from the red bag). Then choose one tile from among the three in front of you: the Burrow Bro tile plus the two drawn from the bag. Keep the chosen tile in front of you and place the other two into the box. If the tile you selected has an assistant icon other than a Burrow Bro on it, resolve that assistant icon.

If you draw an hourglass tile while resolving a Burrow Bro, set it aside and draw again. If the hourglass tile you replaced was the third hourglass tile, the game will end after all players have taken their turn this round. (In the unlikely event that the red bag runs out of tiles completely while a player is resolving a Burrow Bro, no further tiles are drawn.)

If you take the Draw/Exchange action and draw a Burrow Bro tile from the bag, first complete the Draw/Exchange action by drawing a goal card and discarding a goal from your hand, then draw two more tiles from the bag to resolve the Burrow Bro.

Arcane Architect: take an Arcane Architect Token. You may spend this token in the Build Phase of any of your turns to move or rotate a tile that is already in your dungeon.

Decorative Mimic: take a Decorative Mimic Token. You may spend this token in the Score Phase of any of your turns to temporarily turn a green wild decoration icon into any decoration for the purpose of scoring a single goal card. Alternatively, you may spend this token during final scoring to turn a green wild decoration icon into any decoration for the purpose of scoring a single Boss Goal card.

3. Build

During your Build Phase, you must place any newly-acquired tiles into either storage or your dungeon.

Storage: You may store up to two tiles on your player board. These may be placed into your dungeon on any of your later Build Phases. Tiles in storage may be flipped freely to either side until they are placed into your dungeon.

Dungeon: To place a tile into your dungeon, place them as either dungeon tiles or decoration tiles, following the tile placement rules described above.

You must either place or store all your newly-acquired tiles. In the unlikely event that your new tiles make it so that your storage is full and you have no legal places to play any of your tiles, then discard tiles into the box from your newly-acquired tiles or from your storage until you have no excess tiles.

Using Arcane Architects: At any time during your Build Phase, you may use an Arcane Architect Token to rearrange your dungeon slightly. To do this, discard a token, then rotate and/or move one tile in your dungeon. It may be a dungeon tile or a decoration tile. If you wish, you may both rotate and move that tile, but you may not flip it over to its other side.

Using an Arcane Architect Token allows you to change one tile in your dungeon. If you wish to rearrange multiple tiles, you must use multiple Arcane Architect Tokens. In particular, if you wish to swap two tiles in your dungeon, you must use two Arcane Architects.

If you use one or more Arcane Architects and are also placing tiles that you drafted or previously had in storage, then you may temporarily "disconnect" your dungeon while using Arcane Architects and fill the resulting spaces with newly-drafted tiles or tiles from storage. However, your resulting dungeon at the end of your Build Phase must be completely legal. No passageway may dead-end into a decoration tile, all dungeon tiles must be able to trace a path back to your starting tile, there must be at least one passageway leading to empty, unbuilt space, and all decoration tiles must have at least one icon decorating a wall.

4. Score

If your dungeon fulfills the conditions for one or more cards in your hand, you may play those cards. For each card, play it face up, show where it exists on your dungeon, and score the indicated number of points in the upper left of the card by moving your cube along the scoring track. Then place the card face down next to your player board. (The number of cards of each type that you have scored is public information.)

If you pass 50 points, take one of the "50 point" chits and continue counting your score from the start of the scoring track.

Once you score a goal card, the points are locked in. You do not lose points for an achieved goal if you later use an Arcane Architect Token in a way that causes your dungeon to no longer achieve that goal.

Using Decorative Mimics: You may spend a Decorative Mimic Token during your Score Phase to turn a green wild decoration icon into any decoration for the purposes of scoring one goal card. A green wild decoration icon does not count as a decoration at all otherwise!

5. Refill Hand

If you have fewer than four cards in your hand, draw cards from either the Shape Goals deck or the Decoration Goals deck until you have four cards in hand. If you must draw more than one card, you may draw them from different decks, and you may draw one card before deciding from which deck to draw the next.

If you draw a card for which your dungeon already fulfills the scoring conditions, you will need to wait until your next Score Phase to score it!

If a goal deck runs out during this process, shuffle the discards of that type and use it as the new deck. If there are no discards to reshuffle, then players may no longer draw that type of goal card.

After you refill your hand, the next player in draft order proceeds to their Draft a Tile Phase.

Game End and Final Scoring

The game ends when the third hourglass tile is drawn from the red bag. If this happens during Round Setup, the game ends immediately - do not play the round. If, on the other hand, the third hourglass tile is drawn during player turns (either via the Draw/Exchange action or the Burrow Bro assistant), continue playing the current round until each player has completed their turn.

Each player then adds the following to their score:

Stars: For each star in your dungeon, score 3 points. Note that this only counts stars on the dungeon side of tiles in your dungeon. Stars on your decoration tiles do not count - they are simply there to tell you during drafting that there is a star on the other side. Stars on tiles that are in storage on your player board also do not count.

Different Colors: Count the number of different colors in your dungeon.

• 0-1 colors: 0 points
• 2 colors: 2 points
• 3 colors: 4 points
• 4 colors: 7 points
• 5 colors: 11 points
• 6 colors: 16 points

As with stars, colors on your decoration tiles do not count, and colors on tiles that are in storage on your player board do not count.

Most Common Color: Count the number of tiles in your single most common color. If multiple colors are tied for your most common color, just pick one of those colors to count.

• 0-1 tile: 0 points
• 2 tiles: 2 points
• 3 tiles: 6 points
• 4 tiles: 11 points
• 5 tiles: 17 points
• 6 tiles: 24 points

Once again, colors on decoration tiles don't count, nor do stored tiles.

Boss Points: score your bonus points as specified on the two Boss Goal cards that were revealed at the start of the game. You may use any Decorative Mimic Tokens you may have at the end of the game to turn green wild decoration icons into any type for the purpose of scoring a single Boss Goal card.

The blue Boss Goal cards give 10 points to whoever has the most of something and 4 points to whoever has the second most. If two or more players are tied for the most, divide 14 points by the number of tied players, rounded down, and no points are awarded for second most. If two or more players are tied for second most, divide 4 points by the number of tied players, rounded down.

Boss Goals Notes

Adan the Ascetic: A tile only needs one undecorated wall in order to count. Partial walls such as the four "corner walls" on a four-way intersection tile do not count, since they cannot be decorated.

The Ambulatrix: For each pair of rooms in your dungeon, find the shortest possible path between them via your dungeon's hallways. The longest such direct path in your dungeon is what you compare to the other players here. You may not artificially extend a direct path by using loops or other unnecessary detours.

Coilimus Maximus: For consistency in scoring, your starting tile counts as a 4-way hallway.

Curio George: Find the most common decoration attached to the walls of your dungeon. If there is a tie, just pick one of those decorations to count. If you have 2 copies of that decoration, you get 5 points. If you have 3 copies, you get 10 points, and if you have 4 or more, you get 15 points.

Daphne the Doppelganger: You do not need to activate the green wild icons for this goal. You simply count the wild icons themselves.

Diana, Creepy Doll: This boss gives 3 additional points for each star, so each star tile will be worth 6 instead of 3.

Lois the Lavamancer: Rooms and hallways both count, as long as they are red or orange.

Morris the Moist: Rooms and hallways both count, as long as they are blue or purple.

Oozymandias, King of the Slimes: Rooms and hallways both count, as long as they are green or yellow.

Pa'am the Prospector: Each individual passageway counts, so a tile can potentially have multiple such passageways.

Winner: The player with the most points wins. In the case of a tie, the player who scored the most Shape Goal cards wins (total cards, not total points from those cards). If still tied, the player who scored the most Decoration Goal cards wins.