The creators of Dungeon Crawler pit your Adventurers against a series of perilous encounters deep within the domain of vile adversaries and insidious plot combinations, which they must strategically overcome. This collectible starter includes 2 decks that support single player gaming. One is a 65 card grey-tone deck, known as the Dungeon deck. The other deck bares a similar logo with a blue backing. This deck is known as the Crawler deck which serves as a "bag of tricks" for your Adventurers. You can also can also expand your collection to play competitive (2 players), cooperative (2-4 players) or multplayer (3-6 players).
There are many questions arising about Dungeon Crawler ECG that have less to do about how to play the game and more about the overall product line. So we've put together some answers for some of the most commonly asked non-rule questions about DC below.
Each player will need a starter pack to play. The starter pack will contain 2 decks and an assortment of other cards for a 1 player game. One deck is called a Dungeon deck, these 65 cards will have the grey backing. The second deck is called a Crawler deck, these 65 cards will have the blue backing. The assortment of cards found with the decks contain 30 double sided tokens, 5 Adventurer cards and 5 Quest cards. Players may choose to play solitaire with this starter pack, or they may join other players with their own starter packs to play against.
This is a snapshot of the rulebook cover and back. Since we have updated the Steps for the game, we have changed the image below to reflect the new updates. However, your Player's Guide from the Starter is still valid as the order of the Steps have not actually changed, but have become better defined.
COMPARISONS: Why DC over LotR?
DC and LotR both offer cooperative and solitaire formats. This comparison is fairly straight forward.
LotR allows for 4 player cooperative and solitaire for $45. DC offers solitaire play for $25, and 2 player cooperative for $43 (a starter and 1 delve pack). The main difference is that only 1 person will own their copy of LotR, while if you have 4 players each with their own $25 starter you can get together for a 4 player cooperative game or a great multiplayer game wherever you go. As each individual owns their own copy, they will always have access to the game in it's solitaire format, while LotR will in theory only be owned by 1 individual who can play the solitaire format.
Consider how many of you will buy a copy of the same game, and that game will cost each of you $45-$60.
COMPARISONS: Why DC over MtG?
DC and MtG are very different although they both offer competitive game formats, the mechanics and production are done in a completely dissimilar manner.
First off MtG is an awesome game, widespread and easy to understand, but to get in to MtG you will buy a starter pack for $10-$55, and that starter will not get you very far in competitive play. You will need to buy much more, check the meta-game and build a constructed deck. Plus with a rarity system in place that makes collecting very expensive where you spend anywhere from $10-$50 to get particular "very rares" and being allowed to have 4 of each card in a 60 card deck - can really add up fast. You can be expected to pay $720-$1000 (based on an average of $12/card) for a truly competitive deck in MtG and that is if you build only 1 deck (granted we are talking averages here, not the best case scenarios).
For DC, each package is fixed/seeded which means you know exactly what you are getting in each purchase. We also have a 4 card limit in competitive, which means you will only ever need 4 of any single product which would add up to a total cost of $460 - for 4 of EVERY rare. Our rares are much more attainable overall. Since our rares are accessible to everyone, the game is really more about a players skill in playing the game or building a strong deck.
Plus when you purchase DC, you will always have a game that you can play on your own. If your collection is extensive enough to play competitively you will be able to easily play all of the other formats with the widest variety of flavour. We admit that the competitive format is the most costly in DC, but we figured that this format was reserved for more hardcore players than the casual gamer and that casual gamers would be happy with 1 full set of cards (a total cost of $115 with all of the Unbound expansions).
COMPARISONS: Why DC over a Board Game?
DC compared to boardgames? This is a strange kind of comparison as the ground is not exactly equal; but we've encountered this question as it comes up when people want to get together with their gaming groups. The cost of a boardgame averages $60, DC costs $25. The most notable issue is that boardgames come equipped for 4 players and DC is built for 1 player. So to be able to play DC with 4 people you need to buy at least 2 starters and 2 delve packs for a total of $86. But, the DC components do not have to be owned by any single individual. We have also noticed that most gaming groups buy the same boardgames for their own collections, resulting in a gross cost of $240 total for a 4 player group ($60 per person).
Plus, you usually can not play your boardgame with yourself if your gaming group falls through.
In the instances where a boardgame does offer solitaire play (such as Castle Ravenloft) the experience in solitaire is very limited and not extremely replayable. To expand this experience you will have to spend another $60 on another boardgame, which again will have a limited single player experience.
You don't require the expansions to play DC, the $25 DC starter is a stand alone game and will give you hours of replay value on its own.
Where is DC Located?
Gifted Vision is a Canadian based company and we are now warehousing some of our product in the states.
Is DC an Actual CCG?
In short, no, DC is no longer a collectible game. After much discussion and research with our customer base (and issues with our printers not following specifications), we felt it was best to discontinue any randomized features of our product line. Through individual purchases of the Unbound Starter and 5 Unbound Delve packs you can acquire the entire set. There are rarities, so some cards are found more often than others, and promo cards are made available through special venues or campaigns. Our randomized packaging has been discontinued as of April 2011.
1 Starter + 5 Delve Packs = 1 whole set of Rares.
Four Playable Formats
Dungeon Crawler supports 4 standard formats of play; solitaire (1 player), competitive (2 player), cooperative (2-4 players) and multi-player (3-6 players).
Solitaire can be played indefinitely with just the Starter or even 2-3 Delve Packs. Cooperative and Multi-player can be played if each player has a Starter. All 3 of these formats can be improved with Delve Packs.
Competitive, due to it's very nature is a special case. It is best done using a constructed format (building your decks before arriving to your matches). Since 4 is the maximum number of any single card you can have in either your Crawler or Dungeon deck we recommend picking up four Starters and four of each Delve pack to maximize your ability to construct competitive decks.
Four Rarities = Yikes?
Many people twinge at four upfront rarities (not including promos), but DC Unbound does not have "ultra-rare" or similarily hard to acquire cards. All of the rares can be found in fixed sets; the Unbound Starter and the Unbound Delve Packs. Each rarity contains 40 cards for the total of 160 cards found in the Unbound set.
DC ECG is extremely easy to collect.
For every 1 Rare (star symbol), you will get 2 Uncommons (diamond symbol), 3 Infrequents (pyramid symbol) and 4 Commons (dot symbol). An easy rule of thumb to know how rare a card is in DC, is to check how many sides it has (dots/circles having 1 side). There are only a certain number of Promos (vortex symbol) ever printed, while sets will stay in print until the next set comes out.
What's in the Starter?
The Starter comes with a 40 page player's guide, 30 double sided tokens, 10 Adventure cards (5 Adventurers and 5 Quests), a 65 card Crawler deck and a 65 card Dungeon deck (that's 140 cards in total). All of these cards are "fixed" which means that all Starters are identical. There are 14 of 40 rares found within the starter that are exclusive to the starter.
What's in the Delve Packs?
The Delve Packs contain 52 non-random cards. There are at least 5 Rares in each pack out of the 26 rare cards. If you have purchased a full Unbound set, you will already have what is found in the Delve Packs. We discontinued our randomized Booster Boxes and resorted them in to the smaller Delve Packs.
Do We Support Leagues?
Right now we are all about educating the public about playing the game. We do support Leagues for storefronts that order directly from us. Assuming they go through a distributor, the storefront will need to make arrangements with us to get league support as we can not track non-direct sales.
We have an Exemplar program in place where volunteers can organize games and earn points towards special items.
Will There Be Tournaments?
We do have a Multi-player tournament scheduled for Anime North 2011 in May, and will continue to support such events as we are able. Once we feel we can support a tournament environment we will jump on board. We often run Contests on a monthly basis for free product/merchandise/promos on our site. We fully encourage organizers that wish to run local tournaments in lieu of a game day (league).
What Can a Player Expect in the Future?
While we are working on our next full-sized set, we plan to release smaller expansion packs to keep the experience fresh. These expansion packs are under development and will be released once the game can sustain itself. Once we get in to our production routine we plan to have a new Starter set released every 3 years.
Improved Production Line.
After our rather lengthy experience with customs and a terrible series of disappointments with our printers, we will be moving our production closer to home where we can have better control over the quality and the timeline of our products.
We recommend stopping by this page next to learn to play the game!
