Porcus : A Dungeon Adventure - How to Play. Complete, Concise, Clear Board Game Tutorial

Sabotage your fellow pig heroes, grab the loot, and out-oink every monster in the dungeon in Porkus. And today we'll be teaching you how to play Porkus: A Dungeon Adventure, [music] game designed by Oscar Martin Cuesta, Rubén Ramírez Domínguez, and Iván García Márquez, and published by Three Headed Meeple.

And check out the link to the project page in the video description below. >> And hey everyone, it's Stella. And Tarrant, and welcome to Meeple University. And hey, if you enjoyed this video after watching, like, subscribe, and comment. You know what to do. Now let's get to the classroom. In Porkus, players are pig adventurers delving together into the dungeon to take on the enemies of the mighty wizard Zeromat.

Enemy by enemy, players will individually decide how strong they're going to go into this particular fight before revealing together to work out collectively whether or not the enemy is slain. But cooperative this isn't, as the spoils of battle distributed unequally, and players need to try to look out to gain the most benefits themselves.

Whether you win or lose against the enemies is less important than the gold you yourself collect, and whoever has the most gold after eight enemies will be the winner. We'll take you first through the basic mode of play, so set aside any of the advanced mode cards which will show this hat or some of the other special mechanisms that we'll show you at the end of the video.

Each player picks a character and takes its deck of cards. In the basic mode, all of these decks are the same with one card each in each strength ranking from one to eight. Hold all of your cards face down in hand. Shuffle each of the monster deck and treasure deck face down, and then each player draws two cards from the top of the treasure deck, looks at them, and chooses one card to add to hand, placing the other face down on the table into their loot pile.

Your loot pile is where you'll be gathering cards for their gold, and any face down treasures in that pile are considered cursed chests worth -2 gold. So, bad luck, everyone's starting the game on negative points. Choose one player to be the leader in the first round, and that player takes the torch card.

You're now ready to play. In Porkus, your pig adventurers will face a total of eight battles against the wizard Zeromat's minions. >> So, let's have a look at how a battle unfolds so you can learn the tactics that will really save your bacon. To begin a battle, the team draws the top card from the monster deck and reveals it face up in the center of the table.

There's a lot of information on this card which we'll learn about shortly, but the first thing to look at is the health. A monster's health will equal its base health multiplied by the number of players. This right here is a health 20 monster. Next, each player simultaneously looks through the cards in their hand and chooses one of their eight attack cards that they'll play this round.

This is done simultaneously and secretly, so players play the cards face down on the table. You may freely discuss, bluff, or lie as you do this, but ultimately your choice is sacred. Once all players have chosen, reveal simultaneously. Then each player has three opportunity to play treasure cards from their hands to manipulate the battle or the attack cards that were chosen.

You can play treasures on your own cards or on another player's, or depending on the effect, the card may influence the entire battle. There is no turn order for playing treasures, and players may play multiple treasures on the same battle if they wish. Any played treasures must come from your hand, never from your loot pile.

Exactly what all the treasures do I'll explain a little later, but once all players have either played or not played treasures, you'll resolve the attack. Add up the attack strengths on all cards and compare it with the monster's health. Here it's a strength of 19 with a health of 20. If strength is less than health, then the team has lost.

Discard all of the attack cards that were used. These will not go into your loot piles and therefore not score their gold. Resolve any defeat effects shown in red on the monster's card and discard it. If the attack strength is equal or higher, then the team has won. Players take their played attack cards into their loot piles, where it will be worth its gold value at the end of the game, and where it may have an immediate effect, such as drawing treasure to hand.

Be aware that while all your high attack cards are worth two gold, your low ones are worth much more, and you'll really try to get these into winning attacks. Then resolve any winning effects shown in green on the monster's card. This will involve some distribution of spoils and always includes one character capturing the monster into their personal loot pile, and finally set up for the next battle.

If any treasures had been played during the previous battle, they get discarded. They do not go to any hands or loot piles, and the torch is rotated one player clockwise. Draw a new monster and resolve the new battle using the smaller number of cards you have left in your hand. Whether it's added to loot through victory or discarded through defeat, you'll always have one fewer card to choose from on each subsequent battle.

Those are the basic rules of battle. So, you see, pigs are good at karate. They mastered pork chop. But where the game gets really tactical is in the effects of the treasures and in the rewards or penalties of the monsters. You can find all the icons from your treasures and monsters on the player aid.

Each monster will have one or more victory effects showing on a green banner. They may have a defeat effect showing on a red banner, and they may have an instant effect on a beige banner. These effects will apply to one or more players based on the icon above the banner, and this could be highest, lowest, torch bearer, or everybody.

So, for example, if the team successfully defeated this monster, then the defeat effect is that the player who played the highest card into this combat wins this reward, which is to capture this monster into their loot pile. On the other hand, for this monster, it's whoever played the lowest valued attack card who gets to capture the monster to their loot pile, but whoever played highest gets to discard a cursed chest from their loot pile and draw a new treasure card into their hand.

Here on a victory, the highest played card would draw one treasure and capture the monster, while on defeat, the lowest played card would have to discard two treasures from hand if able. For this monster, on defeat, the lowest played card would have to gain two cursed treasures into their loot pile, and here on defeat, all players would have to discard three treasures from their hands if able.

Should there ever be a tie, it's the current torch bearer who decides how the tie is broken, whether they are in the tie or not. You're not allowed to exchange resources or cards as bribes to encourage the torch bearer to decide in your favor, although you could, if you wish, deal in non-binding promises.

Just note that you can't break a tie for both highest and lowest in your own favor on the same battle. In this two-player case, if blue decided they were going to break the tie in their favor for lowest, red would automatically gain highest. After the attack cards are revealed, treasures can be played to manipulate the battle, and often these will involve adding or subtracting strength to a player's card.

This impacts the strength both as it applies to whether or not the team defeats the monster, as well as to who is the highest or lowest for monster rewards. Many treasures are potions, which will add one or two strength, deduct one or two strength, or cancel another played potion. To play this spell, you would need to draw a new cursed chest to your loot pile, but would get to change out the monster.

Return the current monster to the deck, shuffle it, and draw a new one at random. You'll end up evaluating the cards already played as they apply to the new monster. Likewise, this treasure changes up an attack card. Take a cursed chest to your own loot pile and force any one player to return their attack card to hand, shuffle it, and play a new one at random.

There's also this treasure which lets you discard two cursed chests from your loot pile. Keep in mind that while you can only play treasure from your hand, at the end of the game, any treasure that you have not played will go into your loot pile and count for its gold. So, only play treasure if you think you can get more gold out of it than is printed on the card.

You'll see some of these effects similar to the treasures on the instant effects on the monsters. Here for this monster's battle, the torch bearer's strength would be minus one. While players would get to draw a treasure immediately when these monsters were drawn. The torch bearer only in this case, and all players in this case.

You can also get new treasures to hand by winning battles with your four or five, as this victory effect will occur immediately upon the victory. After resolving the eighth and final battle, players will be out of attack cards and the game is over. Resolve spoils from the final battle in the usual way, and add any leftover treasures from your hand to your loot pile.

Add up or subtract all gold, and the player with the most gold wins. And that's how to bring home the bacon of playing the basic game of Porkus. But, what if I want to charge headlong into a more dangerous and advanced dungeon? Well, there's a few extra rules for you to know. The advanced mode comes with some small extra decks of monsters and treasures.

Simply shuffle them in with the base ones and begin playing. There are some new effects. Magic keys, which let you open up cursed chests, picking them up from your loot area to your hand, or cursed locks, which do the reverse. There's also effects requiring you to discard a monster card or an attack card from your loot pile.

But, the major difference is that there is a symmetry between the characters in the advanced mode. When you set up, you'll have three special cards. And you swap those out with the attack cards with the same number to retain your hand of eight. This will give each character a different flavor of play.

Different numbers of points to chase on certain cards. The thieving rogue having more chances to gain treasure. The warrior having strength 10 to replace six and more. There's also one new character, the witch, who is playable only with the advanced mode and allows you to play the game at up to six players.

Thanks for watching. We are using prototype version of the game, so things are not final. And if you like this video, maybe you like to watch this next one. Have a great day. Bye.