Professor Pugnacious Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Rules
  • Set up and Game Summary
  • Turn Summary
  • Play Phase
  • Buy Phase
  • Combat Phase
  • Recovery Phase
• Full Rules
  • Set Up
  • Turn Order
    • Play Phase
    • Buy Phase
    • Combat Phase
    • Recovery Phase
  • Additional Rules
• FAQ
• Glossary

Rules

Professor Pugnacious is a deck-building game, which means that each player starts with an identical deck of cards, and then acquires new cards which you use to improve your deck as the game goes on. Cards give Skill, which you use to acquire more cards; Fight, which you use to defeat enemies; Failure, which you use to make other players lose their combats; and a host of other abilities. The game ends when someone defeats the Finale, or when the Main or Enemy deck runs out.

The winner of the game is the player with the most Experience Points (XP) at the end of the game.

Set up and Game Summary

Everyone starts with the same starting deck. Each player has 5 cards in front of them, their Card Queue, that they can buy from - collectively, these make up the Card Ring. You buy cards from your Card Queue to add them to your deck, and at the end of every turn the Card Ring rotates to the left, so you get one new card in your Card Queue from the opponent to your right's Card Queue, and give one to the opponent to your left. There are 5 creatures available to fight, 3 of whom are replaced regularly. You defeat monsters to gain Experience Points, and when the game ends the player with the most Experience wins. The game ends when the Main Deck or the Enemy Deck runs out of cards, or when someone defeats the Finale.

Turn Summary

The turn consists of 4 phases, played in order. Everyone takes their turn simultaneously. If there is ever a dispute as to what order two players may act in, such as who plays a movement card first or who gets to buy the last Greater Fight, then the player with the lowest XP gets to pick the order. If there's still a tie, have the disputing players have engage in a duel to the death. The now deceased loser, in compensation for having lost, shall decide the order of play. Alternatively, play Rock Paper Scissors or flip a coin. When everyone is done with one phase, they agree to move on to the next phase.

Play Phase

Play as many cards as you want from your hand. You do not have to play a card if you do not want to. Over the course of the game, you will likely play cards that give you Skill, Fight, Failure, Draw, and other special abilities. You do not have a limited number of actions: if you have a card in your hand, you can play it, if you choose to.

Buy Phase

You can buy any cards that you have sufficient Skill to afford. You can buy as many cards as you want, as long as you have enough Skill to afford the sum of their costs.

Combat Phase

You pick one monster to fight: either of the three visible Enemies, the Training Dummy, or the Finale. Everyone simultaneously chooses their targets, and then distributes their Failure among their opponents. Everyone who has a Total Fight of their Fight minus the Failure assigned to them that is greater than or equal to the Combat Value of the enemy they chose to fight wins, everyone who has less, loses. You do not have to fight anything if you don't want to. Certain monsters, called Traps, are defeated with Total Skill = Unspent Skill – Failure.

Recovery Phase

Your Skill and Fight reset to 0. Discard any cards left in your hand and all cards you played this turn. You draw a new hand of 5 cards, and gain any benefits from winning (or suffer any penalties for losing) against the opponent you fought in the Combat Phase, such as gaining Experience Points. The Card Ring rotates one: the leftmost card in your Card Queue becomes the rightmost card in the Card Queue of the player to your left, and in turn you gain the leftmost card of the player to your right.

YOU WIN if you have the most Experience Points (XP) at the end of the turn when the Finale is defeated or the Main or Enemy decks run out.

Full Rules

This is a deck building game, which means that all players start with identical starting decks, acquire cards to improve their decks, and then use those cards for a variety of purposes. The object of the game is to kill the monsters and acquire the most experience points by the end of the game. Cards give 4 basic kinds of bonus: Draw (which lets you draw more cards from your personal deck), Fight (which increases your Total Fight, letting you defeat larger monsters), Failure (which you spend on an opponent to decrease their Total Fight), Skill (which you use to purchase cards and bypass Traps), and assorted other effects. For instance, take the card Royal Bounty (5) +1 Fight. If you win a combat this turn, +1 Exp. This card costs 5 Skill to purchase, gives you a +1 bonus to your Fight this round, and has a miscellaneous effect - if you defeat your target monster, you get an additional 1 experience point beyond what you normally would receive for beating that monster. Many cards contradict what the rules say here. If a card contradicts what the rules say, then go with what the card says. If you "discard" a card, then it goes into your Discard Pile and will eventually be shuffled back into your Draw Pile: it remains in your deck. If you "trash" a card, then it is permanently removed from the game - you will never draw it again.

Set Up

Each player starts with a starting deck consisting of seven Minor Skill (+1 Skill) cards and three Minor Fight (+1 Fight) cards. Shuffle your personal deck and draw a hand of 5 cards. There are two main areas of the play space to pay attention to: the Card Ring, made up of the Card Queues of each player, and the Combat Zone. Your Card Queue determines what cards you have available to buy. Each player starts with 5 cards available to them dealt out of the Main Deck. Buying cards is explained in the Turn Order: Buying section of the rules. In addition, there is an inexhaustible supply of these two cards, available to everyone for purchase: Greater Skill (Cost 3) +2 Skill. Greater Combat (Cost 3) +2 Fight. The Combat Zone contains the monsters you have available to fight this turn. The Training Dummy (combat 2, win: Trash a card in your hand or graveyard, lose: nothing) is always available (you can always keep training), as is the Finale. There are also three creatures from the Enemy Deck available each turn - either Adversaries or Traps. Combat will be explained in the Turn Order: Combat section. And that's all there is for the setup! Let's get started playing.

Turn Order

Turns are taken simultaneously. All players play cards in the Play Cards phase, then once everyone agrees they are done playing cards, all players move on to the Buy Cards phase, and then once everyone agrees that they are done purchasing new cards, all players move on to the Combat phase. Once everyone agrees that the Combat phase is over, the Recovery Phase happens, and then the next turn begins, and everyone begins the Play Cards phase simultaneously. Your hand is hidden from other players, but the cards you have played are not. For instance, if asked how much Failure you have showing, you must answer honestly.

Play Phase

In this phase you play as many cards as you want from your hand, immediately gaining their benefits. There is no limit to the number of actions you have: if you have it in your hand, you can play it. You do not need to play all the cards in your hand if you do not want to, cards you do not play will simply be discarded at the end of the turn. If you do play a card, you must do all of the actions printed on the card unless it says "you may". Most cards that you play will be discarded at the end of your turn, but there are some that remain in play, giving you their bonus each turn and not counting towards your hand size. There are also some cards that have Turn 1: and Turn 2: printed on them. These cards remain in play for one turn after they have been played. The turn they are played, you gain the effects listed under Turn 1:, and the next turn, you gain the effects listed under Turn 2:, and then they are discarded in the second turn's recovery phase.

Buy Phase

You've played some cards that give you Skill, now it's time to use that Skill to acquire new cards. Each player has 5 Card Spaces in their Card Queue, with one card from the Main Deck in each card space. They can purchase as many of these as they can afford; there is no limit to the number of cards you can buy in a turn as long as you have enough Skill remaining to afford them. For instance, with 5 Skill available, you could buy something worth 2 and something worth 3, something worth 5, etc. You need not spend all your Skill; there is no penalty for ending the turn with unspent skill, though it does not carry over from turn to turn. You do not need to buy anything if you do not want to. Cards that you buy go into your discard pile, they do not go into play immediately. When a card is bought, slide your remaining cards that are to the right of the Card Space that is now unoccupied one space to the left to fill the empty Card Space, then draw a new card from the Main Deck to fill the now empty rightmost Card Space. So for instance, if your cards look like this and you buy card C: ABCDE it will look like AB_DE. Slide to the left, ABDE_ and draw a new card. ABDEF. There should always be 5 cards in everyone's Card Queue. If at any time there aren't, slide the cards that are to the right of the empty space(s) to the left and fill the now rightmost empty space(s) with cards from the Main Deck.

Combat Phase

Now it's time to put those cards to use! You've probably played some cards that have Fight values on them, and may have played some cards that have Failure values on them. Count up your Fight values, decide which monster you want to attack - the Training Dummy, any one of the three current face up Enemies, the Finale, or no one - and declare your target.

You will need a few tokens for this phase. Each player has five combat tokens - Training Dummy, Finale, 1, 2, and 3. There is also a pile of Failure tokens, and you should take one of them for each point of Failure you have to distribute.

You secretly choose the target you wish to fight, select the appropriate token, and place it face down, so the ? is showing. Once all players have made their selections, simultaneously reveal them. Once you have selected a target in this manner, you cannot change your decision.

After selections have been made, then the players who played cards with Failure values decide who to assign their Failure points to. These can be split up: for instance, if you have Curses, Foiled Again! (6) 3 Failure. If an opponent loses a fight this turn, they must discard a card, in addition to the Losing penalty you may assign 2 Failure to one opponent and 1 to another, and all players other than you must discard an extra card if they lose, even if you did not give them any Failure. You assign Failure by handing your Failure tokens to the appropriate player. Now is the time when backstabbing and betrayal begins in earnest.

Your Total Fight is calculated as follows: Sum of Fight from cards you played - Sum of Failure opponents assigned to you = Total Fight. If your Total Fight is greater than or equal to the Fight Value of your target, you defeat it and gain the benefit listed after Win. If your Total Fight is less than the Fight Value of the opponent, you do not defeat it and you must suffer the penalty listed after Lose. If an Enemy is defeated by even one player, then during the Recovery Phase it will be discarded and replaced with a new Enemy. The Training Dummy and Finale are never discarded. The Finale has two special traits: if you defeat it, the game ends, and if you lose to it, you cannot be the next person to fight it. More precisely, if you lose to the Finale during a turn where at least one other person did not fight it, then you cannot target it until after a turn where someone other than you targets it.

Note: there are two types of Enemies: Adversaries and Traps. All Traps are labeled as such, and all non-Trap Enemies are Adversaries. Certain cards affect only Traps and certain cards affect only Adversaries. Traps are defeated by Total Skill = Sum of your unspent Skill - Failure assigned to you, not by Total Fight.

Recovery Phase

Your Skill, Fight, and Failure reset to 0. Discard all cards you played this turn and any cards remaining in your hand, draw a new hand of 5 cards and suffer any losing penalties or gain any winning benefits from your most recent combat, then retrieve your combat token. In some cases you will be affected by more than one Win or Lose condition, such as if two opponents each defeat a Pondering Poison Trap (Win: 2 Exp and opponents Discard 1) then the effects stack: in the example, you would Draw 5 like normal, and then Discard 2.

Discard any defeated Adversaries or Traps and draw a new card from the Enemy Deck so that there remain 3 Enemies in play. Check to see if the game ends. The game can end in one of three ways: the final Enemy card is discarded, the Main Deck runs out of cards, or the Finale is defeated. Every player slides all of the cards in their Card Queue one space to the left, and their leftmost card becomes the rightmost card of the opponent sitting on their left. So if Alice and Bob end a turn with their Card Queues looking like this: Alice ABCDE Bob FGHIJ then they begin the next turn with their Card Queues looking like Alice BCDEF Bob GHIJA

And then the next turn begins in the Play Cards phase.

Additional Rules

You now know everything you need to play the basic game. But if you have any of the expansions, you need to know a few more things. There are three new card types introduced in Treachery and Locomotion: Classes, Events, and Locations, as well as a new card trait, Stealth.

If you are playing with Classes, then before the game begins, all players should have an opportunity to examine all the classes and decide on one to play as that game. You begin with your Class in play with the Level 1 side face up. You may use the Level 1 ability once per turn during the Play Cards phase. During any Play Cards phase when you have at least 5 XP, you may sacrifice 5 XP to Level Up. You immediately gain the Level Up bonus this turn, and you flip your card over so that the Level 2 side is visible. You may now use both the Level 1 and Level 2 abilities, each one once per turn.

If you are playing with Events, then shuffle the Events you are playing with into the Main Deck. Whenever an Event is drawn from the Main Deck, the player who drew it should announce that they have done so, read it, and then all players should implement the effects - it affects everyone. It should be set aside where everyone can see it easily, and it remains in play and affects the game until the next Event is drawn.

If you are playing with Locations, then shuffle the Locations you are playing with into the Enemy Deck. Whenever a Location is drawn, put it into the appropriate Enemy spot, and draw a new Enemy and put it on top of the Location - for instance, if the Enemy in 2 was defeated and you drew Stragglers, it would be put in spot 2, and you would then draw a new Enemy card and put it on top of Stragglers. If you would put a Location atop a Location, instead shuffle the second Location into the Enemy Deck and draw again. When the Enemy at a given location is defeated, discard the Location as well as the Enemy.

Locations have two affects: they alter the Combat Value of the enemy placed on them, and they provide an additional affect to the Win or Lose conditions of that Enemy. Note that all of these are in addition to what the Enemy naturally has, not in place of.

There is also a new card trait: Stealth. Cards with Stealth are played face down and are revealed during the Combat Phase, after combat targets have been declared. Thus, if asked how much Failure you have showing, you do not need to reveal any Failure due to Stealthed cards.

FAQ

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FINALE AND THE MECHANICAL ABOMINATION?

The Mechanical Abomination is the only Finale in the core set, but the expansions Treachery or Locomotion, and the promo sets Mythos Monstrosities, Great Detectives, and Armies of the Undead each come with a new Finale.

CAN I USE TRAVIS' 10 TON TREBUCHET TO DEFEAT THE FINALE?

No. The Trebuchet can only target Adversaries, so you cannot use it to defeat the Finale, Training Dummy, or a Trap. An Adversary is any Enemy (from the Enemy Deck) that is not a Trap, or, if you are playing with expansions, a Location.

IF I LOSE TO THE MECHANICAL ABOMINATION OR ROGUE AGENT, DO I REALLY GAIN EXP?

Yes. Note that if you lose to the Finale you cannot target it again until the turn after someone else does, so you cannot just fight it and lose to it every round, always gaining 4 Exp. Nice try, though.

IF SOMETHING SAYS I CANNOT FIGHT THIS TURN, CAN I ATTEMPT A TRAP OR USE TRAVIS' 10 TON TREBUCHET?

No.

IF SOMETHING ENDS THE GAME, DO WE FINISH THE TURN?

Yes. If anything would end the game, such as buying a card when the Main Deck is empty, or the Super Scientist using the level 2 ability, the game continues until the end of that turn's Recovery Phase.

WHEN DO CLASS ABILITIES HAPPEN, OR WHEN CAN I USE THEM?

All Class abilities that must be activated can only be used during the Play Cards phase of the turn, and can only be used once per turn. Think of it as always having one card with that ability in your hand.

WAIT, WHAT'S A CLASS? THERE AREN'T CLASS CARDS IN HERE.

Classes are a new kind of card introduced in the expansion Treachery. For convenience of keeping them all in one place and since the expansions are printed without rulebooks, the rules addressing them are in here. There are Classes in Treachery and the promo sets Great Detectives and Age of Industry. An up-to-date FAQ and any errata can be found at sixpencegames.com/professorpFAQ

Glossary

FINALE - The creature that, if you defeat it, the game ends. If you lose to the Finale, you cannot target it again until the turn after someone else loses to it. In the core set of Professor Pugnacious the only Finale is the Mechanical Abomination.

TRAP - Cards from the Enemy deck that are labeled Trap, and are defeated with Total Skill instead of Total Fight.

ADVERSARY - Any card from the Enemy deck that you can target that is not a Trap (so if you are playing with expansions, also not a Location).

CARD QUEUE - The five cards you have in front of you available to buy.

CARD RING - The set of everyone's Card Queues.