Vengeance: Roll & Fight – Episode 2 Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Overview
• Setup
• A Round of Play
• Preparation Phase
• Rolling Phase
  • Basic Dice Abilities
• Fighting Phase
• Objectives
• Resolution Phase
• Final Scoring
• Solo Challenge
• Credits

Components

• 4 Player boards
• 4 Dual-sided Den boards
• 3 Preparation dice
• 46 Fighting dice
• 4 Boss cards
• 1 Preparation card
• 4 Character Trait cards
• 4 Hero pieces
• 32 Ability tiles
• 16 Item tiles
• 4 Player aid cards
• 4 Erasable pens

Overview

The goal of the game is to SCORE THE MOST POINTS. You score points by:

• Damaging the boss
• Killing the boss
• Fulfilling objectives
• Collecting loot
• Training yourself

You will play as a Character with their unique Trait (a negative ability), and a set of Ability and Item tiles, custom to their fighting style.

Your Character board shows your Basic Abilities, your Health Track, your Loot Track, your Experience Track and has slots for your Items and Abilities.

The Den board is composed of rooms and shows the Damage track of the Boss you're facing. Your Hero piece will be in a Room at any given time indicating your position. Rooms are connected via doors, any two rooms directly connected are considered adjacent. Each room has a Visited space, to track whether you've been there or not before - rooms where this space is crossed off are referred to as visited. Some rooms have Objectives, which require you to fulfill additional challenges, to score more points. Rooms are populated by Enemies. Enemies fall into two categories: the Boss, and the Minions. Minions come in 5 types: Grunts, Tough Guys, Blockers, Henchmen, and Gunmen.

You will be using an erasable pen to indicate things on both the Character board, and your Den board.

• Marking a space or an enemy means "draw the edge" of it, or "draw a circle around it", whichever is applicable.
• Crossing out a space or an enemy means "put an x through it".
• Clear a space means "remove any x from it". It does not remove a mark around it if present.

Setup

1. Place 24/35/46 Fighting dice (for 2/3/4 players) in the middle of the table within reach of all players.
2. Each player takes a pen, a Character board and a random Den board.
3. Each player picks a Character to play: collect the 8 ability tiles, the 4 item tiles, the Character Trait card, and the hero piece of the matching Character. They place the Trait card on the indicated space of their Character board, and the tiles besides their board.
4. Place an item tile on each item slot on your Character Sheet.
5. Shuffle the Boss cards, and deal one to each player. They place it besides their Den board.
6. Then each player must pick one of the sides of their Den board. Each player must mark a number of circles on the Boss Track equal to the health shown on the Boss card.
7. Each player places the Hero piece into the entry Room marker.
8. Place the 3 Preparation dice to the side, with the Preparation card.
9. The game is ready to begin.

A Round of Play

Each round is composed of 4 phases:

• Preparation phase — Performed simultaneously by all players
• Rolling phase — Performed in real-time, simultaneously by all players
• Fighting phase — Performed simultaneously by all players
• Resolution phase — Performed simultaneously by all players, immediately following their Fighting Phase.

Once the last phase is completed by all players, proceed to the next round. After the 4th round the game ends, proceed to final scoring.

Your Character's Trait or your Boss' Special Effect might affect either the Preparation Phase or the Fighting Phase, or add an extra step to setup. Observe this, and if a Trait or a Special Effect conflicts with a rule stated in this rulebook, the Trait or Special Effect takes precedence.

Preparation Phase

First, all players take exactly 4 Fighting dice from the pool and place them to the side.

Then, one of the players rolls the 3 Preparation dice, and puts them on the indicated spaces of the Preparation card for all to see. Simultaneously each player may perform these Preparation actions depending on the icons shown on the rolled dice.

• Training: Mark two experience spaces on your training track.
• Purchase: Mark one of the squares above an Item of your choice to acquire one "charge" of that item.
• Healing: Mark an additional health space OR Clear two spaces wounds from your health track.
• Recon: Cross out one recon space on one of your basic abilities or purchased Ability tiles. Note that Charge and all your Bought Ability tiles show a double-recon icon, this means you need two Recon actions (in the same Preparation phase) to be able to cross them out. You may cross out a total of one recon ability and one double-recon ability per Preparation Phase. Some Abilities require no dice to activate, thus cannot be reconned.
• Loot: Cross out the left-most available space of the Loot track, OR perform any other action.

Then, as indicated on the Preparation card, you may take one more Training, Purchase, Healing or Recon action of your choice.

Whenever you cannot perform any of the above actions, you may take any other action of your choice except for Loot.

During the Preparation phase, you can also cross out any number of experience spaces on the training track to purchase any number of Ability tiles. Abilities' costs are reflected on the top left of the experience space. You may not have more than four Abilities.

Once every player finishes their four Preparation actions, put the Preparation dice aside, and proceed to the Rolling Phase.

Rolling Phase

All players start rolling the four Fighting dice in their personal pool simultaneously. You may choose to roll some or all of your dice in your personal pool, and you can do so as fast, and as many times as you want. The only rule you need to remember is YOU MAY NOT REROLL WOUND FACES.

You can assign dice to your Basic Abilities and to any special Abilities you've already placed on your board, by taking all of the required dice from your personal pool (after rolling the required faces) and placing them near the edge of the player board closest to the Ability. When you do, you may pick up to reroll one Wound face from your pool (along with any other faces).

You may assign any number of sets of dice to your BASIC ABILITIES and most Ability tiles, but some Ability tiles show a "1x" icon - these tiles can only be used once. They can only be assigned dice once per Rolling Phase. If you marked their recon space during the Preparation phase, you may not assign any dice to them. Some abilities show an infinity icon. These tiles are never assigned dice, they have a passive ability instead. You may never assign dice to Ability tiles not currently on your player board.

In addition to assigning dice to abilities, you can assign one Fighting die showing a Wound face on an available space of your Health track, in the same way as when assigning to an Ability. When you do, you may pick up the (other) Wound faces from your pool and reroll them. You would usually do this if you roll two or more Wound icons and otherwise have no way of rolling enough dice to activate more Abilities.

Dice assigned to (and around) your player board cannot be rerolled, moved, or changed in any way for the rest of the round. Anytime you have less than 4 dice in your pool, you can take dice from the supply in the middle of the table until you have 4 dice again, and continue rolling. If the central supply has less dice then needed, take as many as you can. This will happen whenever you assign dice to abilities or to the Health track.

Once all players voluntarily stop rolling, or their personal pool is too small to activate any more abilities after the shared pool has emptied, the Rolling Phase is over. Return any dice remaining in the players' personal pool to the shared pool. NOTE: left-over Wound in your pool are NOT placed on the Health track.

Basic Dice Abilities

DASH Basic Ability requires 2 move-icon dice and will give you one Move action in the Fighting Phase.

PUNCH Basic Ability requires 3 hit-icon dice, and will give you one Hit action in the Fighting Phase. If at least one of the dice used is a hit-icon-plus die, it will give you another Hit action (for a total of 2).

FIRE Basic Ability requires 2 shot-icon dice and a die with either a move-icon or hit-icon-plus icon, and will give you one Shot action in the Fighting Phase.

CHARGE Basic Ability requires 1 move-icon, 2 hit-icon dice, and a die with either a move-icon or shot-icon. In the Fighting Phase it will give you a Move action, then a Hit action (in this order).

ABILITY TILES will require various combinations of dice, and will give you a varying combination of actions: Move, Hit, Shot, Heal, Wound, Evade, Jump, and Kill. These actions will be explained in the Fighting Phase.

For all purposes, a hit-icon-plus die can be used as a hit-icon die, but not vice versa.

Fighting Phase

First, return all dice showing Wound on your Health track to the shared pool, and cross off the spaces on the Health track you took the dice from. In later Rolling phases, you will be unable to assign a die showing Wound on crossed off spaces, until that space is cleared (see Healing, pg. 4)

In the Fighting Phase you perform actions, as allowed by:

• Abilities you assigned dice to in the Rolling Phase,
• Abilities where you marked their recon or double-recon space,
• Items you've purchased.

You may use your Abilities or Items in any order you choose, but you must perform every effect generated by one Ability or Item before beginning to resolve effects of a different Ability or Item. Actions of a particular Ability or Item must be resolved in exactly the order indicated on the tile. If you cannot perform any effect on an Ability or Item, that Ability or Item immediately ends - you may not perform the rest of it.

Once you have resolved an Ability, return the dice assigned to that Ability to the shared pool OR clear its recon space. Passive Abilities (with infinity icon) require no dice (and have no recon space), and their effect can be applied whenever applicable.

Some Abilities or Items are marked START OF FIGHTING. Their effect must be resolved before anything else in the Fighting phase (including removing dice assigned to the Health track).

Some Abilities or Items are marked RESOLUTION. These Abilities do not resolve during Fighting Phase, so ignore them for now.

All abilities will generate some combination of these 8 effects:

• MOVE: Move your Hero piece into an adjacent room.

  • You may not resolve this effect if there is an active Blocker in your current room.
  • If you haven't before, cross out your new room's Visited space.

• HIT: Deal one damage to an enemy in your current room.

  Most minions are crossed off immediately when damaged, whereas the Tough Guys require two damage - so if you only deal one damage, mark it with a dot (erase it at the end of the Fighting Phase if you still haven't killed it), and then cross the Tough Guy out when a later action deals another damage.

  • You can only deal damage to a Boss, if there are no Grunts in the same room as the Boss. When you damage a Boss, cross off the leftmost marked space on the Boss' Wounds track. Ignore any damage that would require you to cross off an unmarked space. When there are no more marked spaces available on the track, the Boss is dead. Cross the Boss off on the Den.
  • You can deal damage to a marked (evaded) minion, as normal.

• SHOT: Deal one damage to an enemy in an adjacent room. Note that it may not be used to deal damage to an enemy in your current room.

  • All rules of dealing damage described under Hit still apply.
  • Multiple Shots generated by the same Ability/Item can be split between different adjacent rooms.

• WOUND: Cross off one space on your Health track.

• HEAL: Clear one space on your Health track, effectively recovering one Wound.

• JUMP +1: Move your Hero piece into an adjacent intermediary room, then immediately to another room adjacent to that.

  • The intermediary room does not count as Visited: If you haven't before, do not cross out the Visited space of the room you're moving through, nor can you complete an Objective (see later) in that room at this time. Additionally, ignore any active Blockers in the intermediary room.
  • Some Abilities/Items might grant a Jump +2 action instead, in this case you may move through up to 2 intermediary rooms (using the same rules) before arriving at your destination room.

• EVADE: Mark (not cross off) one minion in your current room or an adjacent one. Marked enemies are considered not active. Their abilities do not activate, and you may collect Loot tokens as though the room is Cleared during the Resolution Phase.

• KILL: Rarely, an Ability/Item will grant you one or more Kill actions. Immediately cross off one minion per Kill action, regardless of its type or any other modifiers (for example Boss special effects).

Items will provide additional effects when you expend them. You expend them by crossing off the square you previously marked, when you purchased the Item in the Preparation Phase. You may not expend an item you have not marked, and since each item can only be unlocked a maximum number of times, each of these effects can also only be used a limited number of times across the whole game. If you have them unlocked multiple times, you may expend multiple instances of the same item during the same Fighting Phase, even in succession if desired.

Some Items will generate effects like the Abilities do, while some will modify Abilities, effects or actions immediately after you expend them.

Objectives

As mentioned earlier, some rooms show Objectives. As long as your Hero piece is in the room and you meet the requirement shown on the Objective, you may mark the Objective. Each Objective may only be marked once, and you have to be present to do so.

Example Objective requirements shown on Den boards include:

• Players must kill that many enemies of the shown type.
• Players must entirely clear that room in one round.
• Players must upgrade up to six health spaces on their health track.
• Players must visit all adjacent rooms.
• Players must hit the boss at least once.
• Players must visit that many rooms.
• Players must kill all enemies of the displayed type(s) in adjacent rooms.

Resolution Phase

Once all the players have resolved their Fighting Phases, proceed to Resolution.

1. Clear any unused recon or double-recon marks. Their effect is lost.
2. Each visited and cleared room with loot icons shown on it immediately grants you a Loot Preparation action.
   • This means you can cross a space off on your Loot track, or perform any other action.
   • Cross off the loot icons to indicate that you have collected them.
   • You do not have to be currently present in the Room to collect it, it merely needs to be visited and cleared. Remember, marked (evaded) minions make the room count as cleared for any given round.
3. Receive one Wound for each Henchmen or the Boss located in your current room, and one for each Gunmen located in your current room or adjacent to your current one. If you would receive more than your available Health spaces, ignore the excess.
4. If you have any available Items or Abilities specifically marked "Resolution", you may use them now. You may not use any other Items or Abilities.
5. If your Health track is full of Wounds (i.e. the initial 3 spaces and every marked extra health space is crossed off) take a Beating: Clear every wound from your Health track, reset your Health track back to 3 spaces long by also clearing any marked health spaces, and cross off the left-most available space on the Beating track.
   • After one Beating, the limit of dice in your personal pool is permanently reduced to 3. This means you can never activate Abilities requiring 4 dice. This is shown on the now left-most available space of your Beating track.
   • After your second Beating, you're dead. You've lost. In the extremely unlikely scenario of this happening before the 4th round, you do not participate in the remaining rounds.
6. Clear any marks around previously evaded minions. They return to the fight next round.

Final Scoring

After the Fighting Phase of the 4th round, proceed to Final Scoring. In the game, everything you can score is marked with a scoring icon. Score points for the following:

• The value in the left-most available (not crossed out) space of your Loot track (if any).
• The value in the left-most unmarked (not circled) experience space of your Training track (if any).
• The value in the left-most available (not crossed out) space of the Boss' Wound track on your Den board (if any).
• +5 Points, if the Boss is crossed out.
• The value shown in each marked Objective on your Den board.
• Draw a path from your current room to the Den entrance. Lose 1 point for each Room with an enemy in the way (including your current room).

Each player tallies up their own score, and the player with the most points wins. More available Health spaces break ties, if still tied, the tied players brawl for the victory (or share it).

Solo Challenge

• Select a difficulty level: Easy, Medium, or Hard. Put 20/16/12 dice into the pool depending on the difficulty level (easy/medium/hard).
• Play 4 complete rounds (Preparation Phase, Rolling Phase, Fighting Phase, Resolution Phase) as described with the multiplayer rules, but during the Rolling Phase use a timer (on your smartphone or other device) to measure 45/30/30 seconds (easy/medium/hard), and start running it when you start rolling the dice. Once the timer beeps, you may not take more dice from the supply, but you may continue rolling dice already in your personal pool.
• You win the challenge if during the 4 rounds you either:
  • Collected every loot icon from the Den, OR
  • The Boss and at least half of the minions are dead (crossed off).
• If you win, you can compare your score against the following levels of self-worth, and then try to beat it in a later game.

Credits

• Game Design: Dávid Turczi, Noralie Lubbers and Gordon Calleja
• Lead Developer: Johnathan Harrington
• Additional Development: Jace Ravensburg
• Graphic Design: Fleur Sciortino
• Art: Axel Torvenius, Robert Sammelin
• Playtesters: Frank de Jong, Sanne Landman, Paul van Amstel, Harry Apartoglou, Eveline Foubert

Special thanks to Evangelos Foskolos and Stelious Kourtis, for inspiring the speed rolling mechanism by their work on Mystic ScRolls.