Scoundrel Rules

The deck (44 cards)

Take a standard 52-card deck and remove the red face cards and red aces, leaving 44. Black cards (♠ spades and ♣ clubs) are monsters; hearts (♥) are health potions; diamonds (♦) are weapons. Number cards are face value; J = 11, Q = 12, K = 13, A = 14. So the strongest monster is a black ace (14) and the strongest weapon a diamond 10.

The goal

Survive the whole dungeon. You start with 20 health (also the maximum). You win when the deck and current room are cleared; you lose the moment your health hits zero.

Rooms

The dungeon is dealt in rooms of four cards. You must play three of the four; the fourth carries over into the next room, which is topped back up to four. Near the end of the deck, when fewer than four cards remain, you simply play out what's left.

♥ Hearts — potions

Playing a heart restores health equal to its value, up to the cap of 20. Only the first potion you play in a room heals — any additional heart that room is wasted.

♦ Diamonds — weapons

Playing a diamond equips it as your weapon, always replacing your current one (even if weaker). A freshly equipped weapon can fight any monster.

♠ ♣ Monsters — combat

Fighting a monster costs health. Bare-handed you take its full value; with a weapon you take max(0, monster − weapon). The catch is weapon degradation: after a weapon kills a monster, it can only be used on monsters strictly weaker than its last kill. A monster too strong for your degraded weapon must be fought bare-handed or avoided.

Running away

At the start of a room you may flee: all four cards go to the bottom of the deck and a fresh room is dealt. In the standard game you can't run twice in a row.

Scoring

Win and your score is the health you finish with (max 20); finishing at full health with a potion as your last card adds its value on top — the only way above 20. Lose and your score is negative: your below-zero health minus the total value of every monster still in the dungeon, so dying early is punished hardest.

Difficulty variants

Online Scoundrel adds optional variants that change only the running rule: Easy lets you flee any room, Classic is the standard rule above, and Hard removes running entirely. Classic is the ranked mode.

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