How to play Saboteur: the Dark Cave

0:00 something about the way you just told that giant rat to attack me suggests you might not be on my side hi it's Ryan from knights are on a table here's how you play Saboteur the dark cave you and your friends played dwarfs trying to escape a cave system with your pockets loaded full of loot you'll either be on the yellow team or the blue team but unbeknownst to you some of the members of your own dwarf Clan May secretly be in cahoots with the Rival dwarves and have sworn to help the other team escape with the most gold you'll build out the passages of the dark cave towards the four gold tiles only one of which hides the exit blocking paths and peaking at cards and sicking monsters on each other with the hope of ferreting out the saboteurs to help your team make it out alive with the most money Saboteur the dark cave supports from two to eight players and you set it up differently depending on your player count in a two-player game one person is a blue dwarf and the other person is a yellow dwarf and you just duke it out against each other there are no secret roles in a three to four player game you just pick a single Clan color yellow or blue well let's say we pick the blue team of dwarfs on the backs of the cards you have three loyal blue dwarf images these dwarfs are true blue and they're trying to score the gold for their own team but two of these cards show disloyal Graphics these represent blue dwarfs who are playing for the other side and they want to hand the gold over to the other team saboteurs so for three

1:32 to four players you'll get rid of one of these loyal dwarf cards Shuffle up the rest and deal them out to the players who look at their cards but keep them secret from everybody else that means you're guaranteed to have at least one Saboteur in a three-player game with possibly two and in a four player game two of the players will definitely be saboteurs in a five to eight player game you use all the clan cards of both colors but remove one Saboteur card from each Clan Shuffle up the cards and deal them all out so once again everybody might be loyal to their own side in a five to eight player game but you could have up to two saboteurs messing things up set the remaining Clan cards aside nobody's allowed to peek at them because well that would give stuff away from there everyone grabs a dwarf standee and a matching character card the standee goes on the starting card in the middle of the cave and everyone gets three gold on their character card to escape the cave with well do try not to lose any gold before you reach the exit won't you there are three different decks of cave cards labeled one two and three shuffle them up individually and shuck off five cards from each stack into the box that's to keep anyone who might have memorized the deck from guessing what's available in a two to four player game deal everyone five level one cards for five to six players everyone gets four level one cards and one level two card and in a seven to eight player game give everybody three level one cards and two level two cards then stack the level 2 cards on the level three cards and the level one

3:03 cards on top to form the deck the cave isn't built yet but you're trying to reach these goal cards to get out of there and only one of the four gold cards has the exodonic the other three gold cards have a ladder a dark hole and a gold vein Shuffle the goals and put them on the corners of the cave where are the corners of the cave well in a six to eight player game you have to imagine a seven by seven grid of cards and the gold cards go in those corners for a two to five player game the cave grid will be nine by nine so that's four cards out from the starting card in all orthogonal directions you're not limited to that grid as you build the cave you're allowed to have cards go outside the grid the grid just tells you how far away to put the four goal cards your turn on your turn you can either play a card from your hand or discard one or two cards from your hand if you don't like the cards you've got or if you're unable to play any of them doing something with your cards is mandatory you're either playing one of them or you're getting rid of one or two of them many of the cards in your hand will be path cards you play them to the cave next to any face up card that's already there you have to play a path card in portrait orientation either like this or rotated 180 degrees like this but you can't play a car at all sideways you have to make sure that all the edges of the card you play match the edges of the other cards in the cave so this is no good because these edges don't match and this one can't go here because these edges don't match and you can't play a

4:33 card that doesn't extend an existing path like this kind of thing you don't have to play a card next to the starting card or next to your dwarf but you can't just stick it out in the middle of nowhere if you play a card and it connects a face down gold card to the rest of the cave that gold card stays face down until someone moves the dwarf onto it so that's the next thing you can do on your turn optionally move your dwarf up to three spaces through the cave you count one movement Point whenever your dwarf moves from one card to another or across one of these dotted blue lines the level one cards don't have any dotted blue lines so to move from here to here costs one movement point but as you get to the level two and three cards the cave starts filling up with water which slows down your movement these cards are split into two and three different sections respectively so to go from here to here you have to move your dwarf one two three spaces some of the cards in your hand don't have cave pass on them at all they're action cards that can do a variety of things instead of playing a path card you can play one action card on your turn and we'll look at what all the action cards do in a sec after playing an action card you can move your dwarf up to three spaces just like you would if you played a path card if you can't legally play any of your cards or you just don't want to you have to get rid of one or two of them put them face down into the discard pile then you can move your dwarf up to three spaces as usual at the end of your turn

6:04 you draw back up to the number of cards you had at the start of your turn so if you played one card you draw one card if you discarded one card you draw one card and if you discarded two cards oh you draw two cards then it's the next player's turn going clockwise around the table action cards some of the cards you play will be action cards that do different things here's a rundown this spy glass lets you peek at a card you can look at one of the face down goal cards to find out what's on it remember you're looking for the exit but it can help to know where the exit isn't especially if you're one of the saboteurs or if you're trying to figure out who's sabotaging the mission or instead of peeking out a goal card you can peek at any other player's Clan card so you'll know for sure whose side that player is on you can keep that information to yourself of course or you can tell everybody at the table what you just saw and like in any good hidden roll game you can lie about it this swap cards action lets you trade your entire hand with another player at the end of your turn that player draws a card instead of you to bring that hand up to its original size you play a spider web card face up in front of you and then you find the spiderweb token with the matching shape and put it with the number two side face off on any connection point between two cards or on any open-ended exit path on a card the two means the spiderweb lasts two rounds when it's your turn again later you flip it to its one side and

7:35 when play comes back around to you again you remove the spider web from the cave and discard the card spider webs prevent dwarfs and creatures from moving past them you can't put a second or third spider web on a connection point that already has a spider web on it if you play a Rock fall card you can remove a card from the cave as long as it doesn't have a dwarf or a creature on it if you remove a card with a spider web on it you get rid of the spiderweb too likewise you can get rid of the gold sitting on a gold vein card you're not allowed to get rid of the start card or any of the four goal cards two types of action cards in the game are tools that you can play in front of you can play this pair of boots to get an extra movement point for your dwarf it's one pair of boots per player though you only have two feet if you played the Dwarven battle ax in front of you at the beginning of your turn or on a previous turn and you've walked your dwarf up to a spider web you can discard your ax to hack that spider web down to one or if it's already out one you can knock it off the map completely and we haven't talked much about creatures yet but if you move into a space with a creature or it moves into a space with a u you can discard your battle ax to tickle that creature until it runs away and then when it's back is turned you kill it whichever player was controlling that creature discards its card creatures the last few action cards have three different creatures on them rats goblins and linworms if you play a creature card

9:08 in front of yourself on your turn you summon that creature to one of the dark holes of your choice if there aren't any dark holes in the cave system yet you can't summon the creature once it's summoned you move the creature through the cave system to attack unsuspecting dwarves rats can move up to three spaces lindworms can move up to four spaces and goblins can travel up to five if at any time during its movement a creature enters the same space as one or more dwarfs the creature stops moving loses the rest of its movement points and attacks all those dwarfs simultaneously if one of the attack dwarfs discards a pre-played battle ax everyone is safe otherwise their creature does something bad depending on what type of creature it is a rat will make a dwarf lose a card the player to the left of the attack dwarf draws a card from that dwarf's hand at random and now that dwarf has to play with fewer cards for the rest of the game the lindworm paralyzes a dwarf by knocking it over when play Circles back around to that player's turn stand to the player's dwarf back up but then move on to the next player going clockwise the paralyzed player has lost a turn and the Goblin commits possibly the worst offense of all it steals one piece of gold from every dwarf it attacks the gold goes back to the supply if you don't have any gold for the goblin to steal the goblin gets nothing creatures stay in the cave after you're

10:39 done with them until play comes back around to you at that point remove the creature and discard its card if you want to play a creature card on your turn and that type of creature is already in the cave the player who originally attracted the creature discards that creature's card and you take up the mantle by playing the card and moving the Creature from the space it's currently standing on up to its full range of movement creatures are allowed to double back so if someone conjured this Goblin and moved it here to attack this dwarf you could play a goblin card on your turn to move the goblin here and back to re-attack that dwarf and put him in the poor house movement rules certain path cards have little features on them that modify how you move through the cave system ladder cards are like warp tunnels spend one movement point to move from one space with a ladder on it to any other space with a ladder on it if you cross a bridge you have to randomly lose one card from your hand reducing your hand size for the rest of the game just like if you were attacked by a rat the top part of the bridge is a completely different path from The Underpass so if you were here and you moved here you couldn't move here next but you could keep traveling under the bridge to this card likewise you couldn't hop down to the lower path from the upper path and traveling under the bridge is free you wouldn't lose a card by doing that so what happens if you cross enough Bridges or get bit by enough rats that you reduce your hand size to zero cards well you won't be able to move anywhere

12:11 and when it comes to your turn you'll just get skipped for the rest of the game so try not to let that happen there are actually three spaces on this double Bend card you could scoot along like this or from here down to here or you could spend a movement point to go from one of the bends into this tunnel but if you do that you'll lose one piece of gold and remember you're a dwarf so gold is everything speaking of gold if you place a card with a gold vein into the cave system you put a piece of gold on it from the supply any dwarf who reaches that space gets to take the gold but that dwarf also has to flip over their Clan card for all to see for the rest of the game if you enter a space with a creature on it the creature automatically attacks you and if you don't have a battle ax to discard the creature's attack is successful by the way creatures can use cave features just like you can they can cross Bridges and use ladders and pass through tunnels the only thing they can't do is bypass spider webs and if a creature reaches a gold card it can't reveal that card but you can just be sure to orient the flipped gold card so that it matches what's going on along the neighboring edges if you can't get the edges to match then at the very least you have to make sure the gold card's path connects to the path your dwarf is coming from end game if you move your dwarf to the gold card with the exit on it you successfully escape the dark cave with whatever nuggets of gold you're still carrying

13:42 you put your dwarf standing in front of you and flip your clan card so that everyone can see which team yellow or blue you were working for and after the shouting dies down the game keeps going you still get to play and draw cards on your turn to influence which other dwarfs get to escape you just don't have to worry about moving your own dwarf around anymore if all of the dwarfs working for the same side escape the cave well that ends the game but how will you know when that's happened well in a two-player game that's easy one of you escaped and one of you didn't and the game's over in a game with three or more players the first player to escape the cave gets to look at the clan cards that you set aside at the beginning of the game and based on that you should be able to tell whether one team is one or not so let's say it's a three player game you grabbed all the yellow Clan cards removed a loyal yellow dwarf card and shuffled up the rest of the cards so that deck has two loyal yellows and two saboteurs who are working for the blues you deal the cards out to the three players and you set the fourth card aside you know you've either got two loyal yellows and a saboteur or one loyal yellow and two saboteurs the first person to escape flips his own card he was a loyal yellow well did the yellow team win well take a look at the card that didn't get dealt to anybody if it's a saboteur you know that there's still one loyal yellow and one Saboteur inside the cave so you'll have to wait until one of them escapes to see who's won but if the card that got set aside is a loyal yellow then you know the two

15:13 dwarfs in the cave are both blue saboteurs the lone yellow player wins the game for the yellow team let's look at a more complex example with five players there are five Clan cards for each team the Blue Deck has two saboteurs and the yellow deck has two saboteurs for the setup rules you removed one Saboteur card from each team shuffled the cards up dealt them out that means there were three cards left over which you set aside the way the deal shook out four players got blue Clan cards and one player got a yellow Clan card the first player to escape the cave has a blue Clan card she flips it to reveal she was a saboteur now it's entirely possible that the game is over but she won't know until she checks the cards that were set aside if all three of those cards are loyal yellow that means that this yellow Clan member is the other Saboteur working for blue and the rest of the players are all loyal blue so yes if that's the case then the game is over because there's only one yellow team member the blue Clan Saboteur and everybody else is blue and they're all still in the cave if however she flips the set-aside cards and finds the blue Saboteur card is in the mix that's both saboteurs accounted for so she knows that all three of these blue clan members are just loyal blue and that this yellow Clan member is loyal yellow since there's still a mix of yellow and blue clan members remaining in the cave well the game's not over yet but it will be if this loyal yellow dwarf escapes the cave before the other dwarfs do another way the game can end is if the

16:43 draw deck is empty and everyone's played through all the cards in their hands the game mentions that if you can look ahead and see that no one left in the cave can really reach the exit based on how things are arranged you can end the game early instead of going through the motions if dwarfs on both teams escaped with some of their gold you have to count it up to see which side won when the game ends any dwarfs who are still stuck in the cave lose all their gold and it doesn't count towards final scoring those players all flip their Clan cards so you can see what you're dealing with sort the dwarfs according to the teams they were playing for so saboteurs go with the other team's side count up the gold your team escaped with and multiply it by the number of dwarfs playing for the other side so team yellow ended the game with five gold times three blue dwarfs for a score of 15. team blue end of the game with four gold times three yellow dwarfs for a total score of 12. in this example team yellow wins the game now it's time to take that gold and go shopping in the upcoming Saboteur Mall Madness not a real game and now you're ready to play Saboteur the dark cave did you just watch that whole thing oh hey to 100 this video click the badge to subscribe and then click the Bell to get notifications when I've got new stuff

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