Darkest Doom - How to Play Board Game - Many Ways to Victory!

hi everyone it's taft and stella here from maple university thanks for joining us today we'll be teaching you how to play darkest doom hopefully after this video you'll be ready to play the game stay tuned let's learn to play darkest doom game by mario zartini and published by game start studio if you find value from this video later please hit the like button subscribe to us hit the bell and leave your feedback in the comments for others to find for now let's get to this table in darkest doom players are anthropomorphic animals attempting to make their way in the land of beetle players will head out attempting to complete quests and defeat enemies in order to gain fame and increase their skills this in turn will let them ally with citadels in order to gain access to greater abilities and bank their fame meanwhile the forces of darkness will be working against the players adding dark filaments to the citadels and blood temples on the board the game plays over a maximum of nine rounds and at the end of that time whoever has the most fame wins unless someone brings an early end to the game by defeating the darkness in the high priestess freeze mosh the shadow shaman at the monolith or if all buildings on the board are enveloped by darkness in which case all players will lose except for one who is now aligned with the dark whichever way it goes the first to meet a victory condition wins the game [Music] i won't take you through the rules for setting up this game but this is what the board will look like once you're done you'll have several decks of cards shuffled and ready for use and note that these three decks the equipment spells and traps with the same back will be sorted based on this icon on the front of the card each player's mini begins on its matching coloured blood temple and note that each player also has a matching coloured citadel each player takes a player board and one of the characters which shows your starting statistics and your special ability set clear cubes on your starting statistics melee health witchcraft and wisdom set your harm counter to match your current health and your mana petals to match your current witchcraft these two values represent your maximum in each of these tracks and what you'll return to when you restore it you'll take a citadel actions and rights of the blood temple card these are the same for all players putting them here and placing your three coloured citadel domes here you'll also take your quest marker your two traps and two coins of destiny you can hold a maximum of five at any time finally draw your starting quest and before you look at it you must place two more clear cubes one on one of these three spaces which represents which of the game's three relics you want to gain when you complete that quest and the other on one of your four statistics and this will represent the statistic you wish to improve when you complete this quest you can now look at your quest but keep it secret from the other players at the start of the first round you will randomly choose the starting turn order and you're ready to play [Music] darkest doom is played in nine rounds and each round is played in two phases first the dawn phase and then the nightfall phase each dawn phase players will restock with citadel supplies cards and then take one turn each in turn order in the nightfall phase players will replenish their mana pedals then the darkest doom will take a turn which will add creatures and darkness and other things to the board which will work against the players and then each player once again takes one turn in turn order through each round players will take actions which will result in gaining or losing daily fame which is tracked on this red track here at the end of each round whoever has the most daily fame will gain daily fame reward cards before the turn order and daily fame track are reset if the game reaches the end of the ninth round then the player who has the most combined total fame which is both daily fame and fame bonuses from citadel alliances will win the game but if a player meets one of the other end game conditions first then the player who does that will be the winner [Music] the first step of each dawn phase is to replenish citizen supply cards firstly if you don't like your hand you may choose to discard it at a cost of one daily fame then either way draw cards from the citizens supply decks choosing from whichever decks you wish until you have a number of cards in your hand equaling your current wisdom statistic if you ever end up with cards above your wisdom limit you must discard down next check for quests you may if you don't like your quest discard it whether it's face up or face down once again at the cost of a daily fame then draw one new quest card face down from the deck any time you draw a new quest card for any reason you must choose a new relic and a new statistic to improve with this quest and so you will do this by moving the cubes not being able to move them until your next quest and not being able to look at the quest before making your choice you can only discard your hand or your quest once each at the start of each dawn phase then it's time for players to take turns on your turn you'll have three action points to spend many of the actions in the game will cost action points while there are also several free actions and you can take as many actions as you can afford on your turn once you've finished taking all of your actions play will go to the next player in turn order while taking your action you may need to take one of two types of die rolls a fate roll with the d10 or a crimson fate roll with the d6s a fate roll is a single roll of the d10 trying to roll above or below a target number depending on the test after the roll you can always spend coins of destiny from your supply to increase or decrease the result by one per coin except if you roll a moon which is an instant and unmodifiable failure to make a crimson fate roll you'll roll a number of the crimson fate dice and each side shows a different symbol after the initial roll you must move the darkest doom token a number of spaces around the darkest tune track equal to the number of moons you rolled you'll then resolve the symbol that this marker lands on a number of times equal to the number of moons you rolled some of these icons are helpful while others are harmful in particular this icon here causes harm to the player equal to the number of moons so if it were to have landed here the player would lose one harm these four resolve effects which normally occur on the darkest doom turn and so we'll introduce those later in the video while these three are helpful and relevant now crimson fate rolls are all about matching icons and now you've got an opportunity to adjust these dice to the icons you want for each moon roll if you land on one of these three helpful spaces you may change one of the dice to an icon that is showing on that space so here for example gaining a sword you can also discard citadel supply cards from your hand in order to change one die into the icon showing in the top left corner any new moon symbols that you create as a result of changing your dice do not trigger further movements on the darker stone track now we'll talk about all of the game's different actions starting with move moving costs one action point and allows you to move your mini from one zone to an adjacent zone the exceptions are you're not allowed to move into a zone containing a blood temple these serve as starting locations only if you are moving into a mountain zone or a citadel zone where the citadel has three dark filaments around it then this costs two action points instead of one and if you are leaving a mountain zone then you can move up to two zones instead of one for a single action point as long as you don't go into another mountain or a contaminated citadel once you've finished moving there are three potential impediments that you must overcome before you can take any further actions in that zone firstly if there is a creature or another player present you must battle that character then if there is a dark pool in the zone you must resolve the dark pool and finally if there is a trap in the zone which will be owned by another player then you must resolve the trap having resolved those three things in that order you can now do the immediate actions for that zone and then take any further zone actions you wish to take but let's first take a look at how to resolve battles and dark pools and traps a battle occurs automatically when too many share a space and the mini that entered the space is the attacker with the other the defender starting with the player who has the higher current witchcraft value players have the opportunity to play spell cards from their hand into the battle spells have a cost as shown here let's go back and forward casting spells until both players have passed in sequence simultaneously each player then makes a crimson fate roll equal to current melee value and the red and white dice are identical from the point of view of the symbols players adjust the darkest dune track for moons and can discard cards to change the symbols on the dice as described before now count up hits and blocks swords and priestess symbols are always hits the dawn symbol hits in the dawn phase the night symbol hits in the nightfall phase and the moon does nothing each player then suffers harm equal to the number of hits dealt minus the number blocked so here this player would lose two harm this player would lose none if neither player died in the battle then the attacker moves the defender's mini to an adjacent zone if a player does die in the battle then that player's turn ends if they are the active player the player's mini is returned to its blood temple the player loses three daily fame mana petals are returned to the current witchcraft harm is returned to the current health unless the player's blood temple has three dark filaments in which case harm is restored only to one and the player gains a white moth onto their rights of the blood temple card finally your opponent in the battle gains three daily fame and this can occur for any death that occurs during the battle it doesn't have to be caused by the opponent's hit you'll do this full sequence for each player that dies and so if both players die the daily fame gains and losses will offset the player's half of a battle against a creature is resolved in the same way but the creature's half is resolved with a card draw instead of a die roll there are four types of creatures in the game lightless beaters lightless hunters the leader of the hunt and the high priestess for all creatures start the battle by drawing a creature attack card and if you've reached at least the nightfall phase of round 5 making this symbol visible then resolve this top effect now you can play spells and do your crimson fate roll as usual while the creature's role result is shown by the numbers in the column corresponding to that creature here for example the level one lightless beta would generate three hits and have one health to make the creature die you have to exceed its drawn health level it doesn't carry over hits from battle to battle if nobody died the attacker once again moves the defender and if the player is the defender then the player moves towards their own blood temple if the creature dies the player gains three daily fame for a level one beta four for a level two hunter or five for a level three leader of the hunt before flipping a second creature attack card and resolving the special creature death effect at the bottom of its column this could involve gaining coins of destiny but will otherwise cause some darkest doom actions to occur and like the icons we haven't spoken about on the darkest doom track these will be explained later in the video after finishing battles you'll resolve any dark pools then traps on your space and these two are resolved the same way but will have different consequences first draw a dark contamination card and check the round track for the highest visible trap number here it's four but it could be as high as five you're now going to try to match that many symbols from the left in a crimson fate roll rolling dice equal to your current wisdom if you are successful then you gain daily fame equal to the number of symbols you are trying to match even if you matched more if you failed then you still gain one daily fame but you'll flip over and then suffer the consequences shown on the bottom of the dark pool before discarding it also discard the dark contamination card used in the test a trap is resolved in exactly the same way in that you'll draw a dark contamination card and do a crimson fate roll to try to match the symbols but you gain no daily fame for success and if you fail you'll flip over the trap card in the matching numbered trap slot on that player's player board and resolve its negative effect before discarding it once you're done with battles dark pools and traps you can now take any other actions that you wish in that zone first we'll look at completing quests which costs no action points each quest shows the map and all of its buildings with one highlighted zone that you're trying to reach when you reach that zone you've now completed the quest first you'll attempt a fate roll trying to roll either over or under your current value on the statistic you're trying to increase so here it would be trying to roll over a 3.

if successful you gain one relic matching the relic type that you're currently hunting for and you can hold a maximum of three relics then regardless of the result of the fate roll increase your current stat by one step gain one coin of destiny and gain one daily fame next if there was a green book on the quest you completed and any of the game's six beetle chapter tokens remain then flip over quest cards one at a time until you find one showing the red beetle chapter icon find the zone it refers to on the map and place a beetle chapter on it then discard the completed quest and draw a new one resetting these cubes in the usual way as an automatic action in a zone with a beetle chapter a player can claim the beetle chapter the player gains two daily fame and then one of these three effects discarding a dark contamination card from hand healing to harm or discarding one white moth then remove the chapter from the game there will only ever be six each zone on the board has one or more specific zone actions you can take based on the type of zone it is at the forest you can spend two mana petals and no action points to either discard two cards from your hand and then draw two cards to replace them or move a bonus distance of up to two zones into a zone containing another character initiating battle from a mountain you can spend one action point and two coins of destiny to play a trap card from your hand and activate it on a player or creature anywhere on the board except for in one of the entrances to the winter mountain the victim resolves a trap check immediately while you're in the mountains you are immune to any ranged witchcraft or adjacent attack effects which we haven't spoken about yet these four spaces are entries to the black lodge and these are interconnected by tunnels allowing you to cross the board more quickly when here you can spend one action point to enter the lodge flip over an entry to the black lodge card and then attempt to fate check against your current value in the statistic you're trying to increase if you succeed ignore this effect otherwise resolve it then move to the black lodge entry of your choice in the planes you may discard three citadel supply cards from your hand in order to gain one coin of destiny if you're on the planes and you currently have a daily fame of three or higher then you can spend one coin to take one of the three citadel activities actions encounters relic alchemy or carriage and you can only do one of these from the planes action per phase for encounters you'll draw two encounter cards plus one for each citadel dome that you don't have on your card anymore choose one of them and then either spend an action point to play it immediately or place it into one of your trap slots and then come back later and spend an action point to play it these are all positive one-off effects for you and placing it here does not trigger placing a trap token it simply occupies one of these slots and you can choose to discard it at any time for relic alchemy discard any one relic and then gain three coins or remove one moth or remove any one dark filament from the board and gain two daily fame with carriage you can move to an empty plane zone up to two zones away the move is free but if you want to take any zone actions in that location you'll have to spend one action point when the normal cost is zero next we'll talk about the citadel zones and these are critical to the game because this is largely how you're going to be converting your daily fame into some permanent carryover points through citadel alliances as an automatic action when you enter a citadel zone or for one action point if you started your turn there check to see whether you are lie with that citadel if there is presently no ally and you have at least one daily fame then place your citadel dome one of the three that you have onto the citadel and then place one of your cubes onto the space matching your daily fame on that colored track for the citadel this has an orange outline so it's the orange citadel if a citadel already has an ally then check your current daily fame against the current fame value of that citadel and if you are equal or higher then you replace the player who currently has that allegiance setting up the markers as usual you have three domes and can have at most three alliances at once the first player to claim a citadel alliance with a daily fame of six or higher takes the acolyte from this space the player can still lose the citadel but can never lose the acolyte acolytes are placed on the rights of the blood temple card and can only be taken by players who have no white moths a player who reaches the maximum step on the daily fame track in any given round gets to automatically upgrade one allegiance to an incorruptible allegiance moving to the top of this track and taking the acolyte if available this citadel can now never be taken by another player as a free action in a citadel zone a player may take as many citadel activities actions as that player has alliances so here for example two actions the same of these actions may be taken multiple times finally in a citadel zone a player may lose one daily fame to discard the current quest card and draw a new one resetting the cubes in the usual way lake zones are primarily for healing as an automatic action the player heals one harm and can continue healing harm at a cost of one action point each up to max additionally in the lake a player may invoke the lake specter as long as no other player currently has done so placing its card in an equipment slot spend as many lanterns as you would like then place your mini inside that of the lake specter from now until the next time you die you'll have plus one hit and plus one shield on each battle for each lantern you spent on the cost and can attack enemies from adjacent zones but you can't go to citadels and can't have relics these two zones are entries to the winter mountain and this is how you get to each of the two locations where you can attempt to win the game early as an automatic negative effect you must draw one dark contamination card into your hand discarding down to wisdom if necessary this is one of several ways to gain dark contamination and for the most part all this does is choke up your hand with useless cards you need a special effect like a beetle chapter in order to get rid of them there is however one type of dark contamination card called leader of the hunt which can have an impact on the end game and we'll talk about that later finally we'll talk about the different actions which are not associated with a specific zone if you have the adjacent attack ability like the lake specter then you can attack an enemy in an adjacent zone this costs no action points and resolves exactly the same way as a melee battle except the attacker does not get to move the defender out of the zone if you are currently at least four zones away from the destination on your quest card then for one action point you can declare that quest playing it face up for all to see a declared quest is worth three daily fame instead of one upon completion in addition to all of the normal benefits if you have any acolytes or white moths on your rights of the blood temple card then once per dawn phase you can activate the rights each right has a cost in acolytes or moths who can be activated only once each per round one acolyte allows one dark contamination card to be removed from any one player's hand you can do this to help yourself or an opponent or to force them to discard the card which they might use to win the game as a darkness player for two acolytes you can remove a dark filament from your own blood temple and gain two daily fame while each moth allows you to move one dark filament from your own blood temple to another players up to a maximum of three per building as a free action you may play a citadel suppliers card from your hand there are three types of cards equipment spells and traps and the cost is shown here on the left these can include coins mana pedals urn relics or drawing dark contamination cards spells we've seen before you resolve them and discard unless stated otherwise equipment cards are added to one of your two equipment slots with a number of decay tokens as shown on the right each time you use the card you'll discard a decay token and once they're all gone so is the card to play a trap play it face down into one of your two slots after paying the cost and then take the matching token and place it in any empty space on the board we saw before how traps will trigger when a character enters the space but a trap can also be triggered on a character in an adjacent space by the owner of the trap paying two coins and this can occur outside of the turn of the player who owns the trap traps which target creatures are resolved in text without doing a crimson fate roll and any creature or player death caused by one of your traps earns you three daily fame [Music] each player does two things to start the nightfall phase first replenishes mana petals up to their current witchcraft and secondly may discard any number of dark contamination cards from hand and redraw the same number which can be useful if the player is looking for the leader of the hunt card then comes the darkest doom turn take this round's token from the track without looking at the back and add it to the target token bag in round 5 that will reveal this icon and the darkest dome events showing that icon which are set aside during setup are shuffled into the deck now draw a new darkest doom event and darker steam event map the previous event may dictate what sort of event comes next here the next event has to be passed so if another present event is drawn then set it to the side until you get one that works shuffle any others back into the deck there is no such restriction for the map events next resolve each of these circled icons on the card and you may recognize some of these icons from the darkest doom track creature attack cards and elsewhere this icon adds a dark pool to the board in each of the six locations showing that icon on the map card there are only six of these tokens in the game and so if you don't have enough you'll start nearer the first player and continue moving outwards from that player's location if dark pools are placed at any other time other than now then you'll remove all six from the board first before placing with this icon you'll add new creatures onto the board adding the level 1 lightless beaters onto spaces as indicated by the map card until you have reached the maximum number of three creatures on the map as for the dark pools you'll start nearer the first player and move outwards these two icons add dark filaments to the board this one adding it to a citadel and this one to a blood temple in each case it will be the nearest of that type of building to the first player with ties for distance going to the building which currently has more dark filaments up to a maximum of three filaments per building then resolve the text event on the card next you'll activate each of the creatures starting with the one nearest the first player and going clockwise around the board draw a target token from the bag and inspect both sides if it has an orange side then the creature evolves to the next level up as long as there is a mini available then determine the target from the priorities on the token this symbol represents the player and so the creature will move towards the player to attack these symbols represent the blood temple or citadel and will cause the creature to move towards that coloured building and add dark filament to it a creature will skip a player in priority order if it is already engaged with another creature in battle and it will skip a building if that building already has three dark filaments if it runs out of options on the tile then it will simply target the nearest unengaged target a creature will move up to three spaces along the shortest path towards its target stopping when it gets there creatures will go through the black lodge to get there and when this happens you'll draw an entry to the black lodge card and resolve the darkest doom track for each moon showing on the card before discarding it you will resolve each creature movement before you resolve the attacks if a creature reaches its target it will attack if a creature is adjacent to its target it will also attack creatures all have the adjacent attack ability if a creature does not reach its target but shares a zone with a different target then it will attack that target instead any attacks on targets which are completed result in that target token being removed from the game if creatures don't attack their targets then that token remains with the creature until the subsequent nightfall phase in case there is another creature movement effect triggered by something else in the game before that time at the start of each nightfall phase any remaining tokens are discarded but not removed from the game if the bag is ever empty then any discarded tokens with an orange side are returned while the others are not and if there are no tokens at all the creature will attack the nearest target a creature which attacks a player engages in battle as described before and a creature that attacks a building adds one two or three dark filaments depending on its level up to a maximum of three the final icon on the back of one of the orange tiles is the eclipse and you'll see this elsewhere on the board the creature that drew this takes no further action and instead every building with a dark pool next to it gains a dark filament with the pool being discarded following that the darkest doom turn is complete and the players will take their nightfall turns which work the same as dawn with the exception that the rights of the blood temple cannot be done during nightfall at the end of nightfall you will check the daily fame track and the player with the highest daily fame is the winner for the day in the event of a tie the player with the most total fame breaks the tie so here green has 14 to six if still tied the players share the day a sole winner draws two daily fame rewards and then chooses one to resolve tied winners draw one card each and must resolve that one then set the new turn order according to this round's daily fame order from top to bottom then reset each player's daily fame to zero -1 for each white moth [Music] the game can end in one of five ways four of which involve victory for one of the players and the fifth of which is a common loss if you complete all nine rounds of the game then there will be a new high priest crown for the victory and the win will go to the player who has the most combined daily fame plus permanent fame from citadel alliances this makes saving up final round points very important here green and black would be tied each with 14 fame and if tied the winner is the player with the most coins of destiny then with the fewest dark contamination cards in hand and if tired victory's shared the second way to win is to free mosh the shadow shaman at the monolith to go here you must have three sigil stone relics in your possession then complete a trap check against your wisdom trying to match the first four symbols if you match the four symbols you win the game otherwise you must suffer one harm for each missed symbol before trying again the third option is to battle the darkness within the high priestess this works like a regular player vs creature battle but to determine the priestess's stats you must first count up the number of blue circles showing here which will be her base hits and then the number of orange circles here which is her base harm in this instance seven hits to harm then flip a creature attack card and add this column to the result so this becomes nine hits and four harm to win the game the priestess must die and you must remain alive if all eight buildings on the board ever have three dark filaments at once then the darkness wins the game and if no player has switched over to the side of the darkness all players lose but there is one way to join the dark side firstly you must defeat the leader of the hunt in battle secondly you must be holding a leader of the hunt dark contamination card in hand at that time and then you play that face up on the table you are now one with the leader from now on you play under a new set of rules attacking the other players drawing dark contamination cards each nightfall phase which you can spend to gain benefits in combat however your opponents can still battle you and if you're killed as the leader of the hunt you're out of the game [Music] darkest doom is balanced to be a four player game and so if you're playing with fewer than four players you'll need to use the bot guardian board to make up the numbers the bot players do not have any minis on the main board and at the start of each dawn and nightfall phase you'll draw the top card from this deck and refer to the row for this round you'll activate the bot according to turn order this number represents the amount of daily fame the bot gains where a citadel is shown the bot attempts to gain that citadel and will be able to place it if it has the daily fame to do so placing these unlocks extra daily fame this icon lets the bot remove a dark filament and this icon means the bot will attack in this round using some special rules to resolve this finally the bot guardian can also attempt to win the game by the high priestess or the shadow shaman these don't work the same way as the player and force one of the players in the game to attempt a trap check if the player fails the trap check then the bot wins immediately and that's how to play darkest doom we hope that you enjoy the video we are using a prototype copy of the game and so the rules and components may not be final and do check out the project page for the game we'll put a link to that in the description below if you find this video useful please help us by hitting the like button subscribe to us you can also hit the meeple in the corner to do that and hit the bell icon so you'll know when we have new videos you can also follow me on instagram for my board games journey and if you have any questions comments or feedback please leave them in the comment section below thanks for watching and see you next time bye