One Deck Dungeon - Overview

Last week I mentioned that I picked up a couple of quick play dungeon crawl games. My wife and I played both of them over the weekend and enjoyed both of them. This morning I played another run-through of One Deck Dungeon by Asmadi Games.

One Deck Dungeon (ODD) is a dungeon crawl game for 1 to 2 players. It uses cards to build the dungeon and dice (lots of dice) to adjudicate encounters.

Below is a photo of the play area. There is a deck of cards with encounters listed on them. As your character explores the dungeon, the rooms are revealed (a maximum of 4 is laid out at any one time).

Here is a hero card. One can play as a warrior, mage, paladin, rogue, or archer. The icons on the left represent attributes and items. For example, the warrior starts with 3 strength, 1 agility, and 4 health. Strength, agility, and magic (none for the warrior) translate to dice that are rolled to overcome encounters. Health works like standard hit points; don't fall to 0!

 Here is a combat encounter card. To defeat the goblin swarm, the player rolls their dice pool (which can also include black "heroic" dice that act as wild cards) and tries to fill in the boxes on the encounter card. Boxes are color coded - yellow requires strength; pink = agility, and blue = magic. The numbers represent what needs to be rolled. For example, to fill the bottom right box requires a roll of 5 on a strength die.

Once the dice are rolled, allocate them to the boxes (note that you can use multiple dice to fill in the larger, rectangular boxes). In this case, I failed to fill a pink box, thus I must take damage (red heart icon) and lose time (yellow hourglass).

So that's the basic mechanic - roll dice and cover boxes. I kind of think of it as yahtzee, in a dungeon. Hey, that's not a bad thing - I like yahtzee. If you are looking for a more traditional dungeon crawl (roll dice to hit, record damage, rinse and repeat), this isn't it. Nevertheless, the core mechanic allows you to breeze through encounters very quickly. ODD also requires a lot of decisions, which makes the game interesting. Decisions include:

• How to allocate dice during combat
• Whether to enter or flee a room
• What kind of loot to take (there are multiple options per encounter - more on that in a moment)

There are different dungeons, each with a unique main boss. I played the Dragon's Cave. Depending on the dungeon and floor, you'll have additional boxes you need to fill. For example, on the first floor of the Dragon's Cave, you need an additional 3 strength per combat encounter (you also need to fill the yellow box)

You don't need to cover all the boxes to succeed in an encounter; you just need to survive. If you do, you keep the encounter card as loot. There are 3 possible types of loot (you can choose). The icons on the left represent additional items that boost your abilities. For example, you can use the goblin card to boost strength by 1 die. The bottom box represents either a skill (shown) or a potion that provides beneficial effects. Finally, you can apply the encounter to experience (icons on top). Gain enough experience to level up, which allows you to apply more items or skills to your character.

Here is the warrior with an additional item (left) and skill (bottom). Your loot is kept under the character card, with the relevant info peeking out.

(Note: You may notice that the warrior in this photo has more dice than the picture above. That's because I started my solo game using the 2-player side. The 1-player side gives you more dice)

There are also perils (e.g. traps). You will always have 2 options to deal with the peril. For example, you can use strength to climb around the pit of spikes or use agility to jump it. I used strength, and boy did I roll poorly!

Once you get through the floors of the dungeon, you come to the main boss. Here is the dragon!

Boss battles proceed over multiple rounds. Fill in the boxes with the skull icon to inflict damage on the boss. But first you must get past its defenses (fill in the boxes with the green shields). If you inflict damage equal to the number in the bottom box (6 for the dragon) then you kill the boss and complete the dungeon!

So that's an overview of how to play ODD. For more info, I recommend checking out some of the walk-throughs on YouTube.

What are my thoughts on this game? I'm going to do another post with my thoughts.