The goal of Scoundrel is simple yet punishing: Clear the entire dungeon deck without letting your health drop to zero. It requires careful resource management and risk assessment, much like a digital roguelike game, but played entirely with a physical deck of cards.
Game Setup
- Deck: Start with a standard 52-card deck plus two Jokers.
- Remove Cards: Before shuffling, remove all red face cards (King, Queen, Jack) and red Aces from the Hearts and Diamonds suits.
- Health: Your starting health is 20.
- The Dungeon: Shuffle the remaining cards to form the dungeon deck.
- The Room: Draw the top 4 cards from the deck to form the first "room". A room will always be refilled to 4 cards as long as the deck has cards.
Card Types & Values
Monsters (Clubs ♣ & Spades ♠)
These are enemies you must fight.
- Number cards: Worth their face value (2-10).
- Jack: 11
- Queen: 12
- King: 13
- Ace: 14
Weapons (Diamonds ♦)
Used to reduce the damage you take from monsters.
- Value: Number cards are worth their face value (2-10).
- You can only have one weapon equipped at a time. Equipping a new one discards the old one.
Potions (Hearts ♥)
Drinking a potion restores health equal to its value.
- Value: Number cards are worth their face value (2-10).
- Your health cannot exceed the maximum of 20.
Merchants (Jokers)
Merchants allow you to sell your currently equipped weapon in exchange for health.
- If the weapon has not been used to fight a monster, you gain health equal to its value.
- If the weapon has been used, you gain health equal to the value of the smallest monster it has defeated.
Gameplay Actions
Fighting Monsters
- Barehanded: You take damage equal to the monster's full value.
- With a Weapon: The damage you take is the monster's value minus your weapon's value.
Important Weapon Rule
After you defeat a monster with a weapon, that weapon can only be used on monsters with a value strictly smaller than the one you just defeated.
Other Actions
- Equipping a Weapon: Select a weapon from the room to equip it.
- Drinking a Potion: Select a potion from the room to gain health.
- Selling to a Merchant: If you have a weapon equipped, you can sell it based on the merchant rules above.
Running from a Room
You can choose to "run" from the current room. All
cards in the room are shuffled and placed at the
bottom of the deck. A new room is then drawn.
Constraint: You cannot run from two rooms
in a row.