Dungeon Mayhem Card Game: Rules for How to Play

Setup

Sort all of the cards by their color.
Each player chooses one of the characters. You will take all of the cards, hit point tracker, hit point token, and reference card that matches your chosen character.
Place your hit point token on the 10 spot on your hit point counter.
Shuffle all of your cards except for the reference card. Each player draws three cards from their deck and adds them to their hand.
The youngest player starts the game.

How to Play Dungeon Mayhem

You will begin each of your turns drawing one card and adding it to your hand. If your draw pile ever runs out of cards, you will shuffle your discard pile to form a new draw pile.

Next you will choose a card from your hand to play in front of you. You have to play a card even if you don’t want to play one. Some cards let you play additional cards. In these cases you can play multiple cards on your turn.

Playing a card — This player has decided to play their Head Butt card. They will take two actions corresponding to the symbols in the top left corner.

Once you play a card(s), you will take an action based on the symbol(s) printed on the card. For more details on what each symbol does, check out the Card Types section below.

If you play all of the cards from your hand, you immediately get to draw two more cards.

After you have taken the corresponding actions for the card(s) you played, you will add the card(s) you played to your personal discard pile. The one exception are cards that show the shield icon on them. These stay in front of you until they are destroyed by another player. Once they are destroyed, they are also moved to your discard pile.

Your turn then ends. Play passes to the player on your left.

Card Types

All of the cards in Dungeon Mayhem belong to a couple of different types. Each type of card has a different impact on the game.

Attack

Attack cards feature two swords on them. You will play these cards to attack your opponents.

When you play an Attack card, you will choose one player/Defense card that you want to attack. The Attack card does damage equal to the number of sword symbols pictured on the card. If the player you attack has a Defense card though, it will reduce the amount of damage you deal.

The player you attack reduces their hit point marker by the amount of damage you do to them.

Dealing damage to another player — The green player plays the Big Axe Is Best Axe card which has three attack symbols on it. They decide to attack the yellow player. The yellow player had a Defense card in front of themselves which blocks two of the damage. The Defense card will be discarded. As they weren’t able to block one of the damage, the yellow player reduces their hit points by one.

Defense

Defense cards are used to protect yourself. You will play the cards in front of yourself. The card stays in place until someone destroys the card. Each shield pictured on the card protects against one damage done to you.

When someone deals damage to you, you will place one damage token for each point of damage done to you on the Defense card. When the number of damage tokens on a Defense card equals the number of shields on the card, the Defense card is destroyed. You will place the card in your discard pile. If the other player did additional damage to you, it will be placed on another Defense card. If you have no other Defense cards left, the damage will take away your hit points.

Defend against an attack — The red player has decided to attack the purple player with a two attack card. The purple player’s Defense card takes the two damage. The Defense card can take one more damage before it is discarded.

Draw

Draw cards allow you to draw additional cards. When you play one of these cards, you will draw one card for each symbol on the card.

Healing

When you play a Healing card, you will recover some of the hit points you lost. For each Healing symbol shown on the card, you get to increase your hit points by one. Your hit points can never go past ten.

Play Again

These cards allow you to play additional cards on your turn. Count up how many symbols there are on the card. You can play one additional card on your turn for each Play Again symbol. If you end up playing additional Play Again cards, you will count up the symbols on those cards which add to the number of cards that you can play. Based on the card pictured above, the purple player will play two more cards.

Your turn does not end until you have played a card for each symbol on each of the Play Again cards that you played. If you play all of the cards from your hand and still have cards yet to play, you will draw two cards and continue playing cards.

This action is mandatory and not optional. You have to play a card for each Play Again symbol you played this turn.

Combinations

Some cards feature multiple different types of symbols on them. When you play one of these cards, you will take all of the actions corresponding to the symbols.

Mighty Powers

Each character has a couple special abilities not mentioned above. When you play a card that has one of these abilities, you will read the card and take the corresponding action. There are a couple special situations that have unique rules.

If you use Azzan’s mighty power to take a Defense card from another player and that player gets knocked out, you keep the Defense card until it is destroyed. The card then returns to the knocked out player.

Should you use Oriax’s mighty power to steal and play a card from another player’s deck, you will return the card to the discard pile of the player you stole it from after you have completed its action.

Knocked Out

To begin the game each player starts with 10 hit points. During the game players will play cards that damage you. Every time a player plays a card that deals damage above any shield you currently have, you will lose hit points. You will move your hit point marker down one for each hit point you lose.

Should your hit points ever reach zero, you are knocked out of the game.

Knocked out player — The purple player’s health has been reduced to zero. They have been knocked out of the game.

Winning Dungeon Mayhem

Dungeon Mayhem ends immediately once all but one player have been knocked out of the game. The last remaining player wins the game.

If all of the remaining players are eliminated at the same time, the game ends in a tie. To determine the winner, you have to play another game.

Components

4 28 Card Decks
4 Hit Point Trackers
4 Hit Point Tokens
16 Damage Tokens
4 Reference Cards
Instructions

Year: 2018 | Publisher: Wizards of the Coast | Designer: Jordan Comar, Roscoe Wetlaufer | Artist: Kyle Ferrin

Genres: Card, Take That

Ages: 8+ | Number of Players: 2-4 | Length of Game: 10-15 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light-Moderate | Luck: Moderate

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.