How to Play: Dungeon Petz

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Hi! This is Ambie from Board Game Blitz, and today I'm gonna show you how to play Dungeon Petz.

The goal of the game is to get the most reputation points. You do this by raising pets, exhibiting them at pet shows, and selling them to dungeon lords.

There are 6 phases in each round: setup, shopping, needs, showing off, business, and aging.

Each round, new customers and exhibitions will be revealed, the resources and items on the board will be replenished, and you’ll get income.

Grouping Imps [0:27] - The main phase is the shopping phase. Each player will group their imps and gold into 6 or fewer groups, ordered by size, behind their player screen. Each group is composed of imps and/or gold, and must have at least one imp, but doesn’t have to have gold. The size of each group is the number of imps plus the number of gold coins. If you don’t want to assign all your imps and gold, you can keep the leftovers in your treasury and imp quarters.

The total number of imps and gold you have is public knowledge.

Everyone reveals their groups simultaneously. Whoever has the biggest group goes first and uses that group. If multiple people have same sized groups, then the players take turn in clockwise order, starting with the player with the starting player token. If you have multiple groups with the same size, you only use one group at a time. Then groups of the next biggest size go, and so on. For example, if I have the Starting Player token with these groups and red has these groups, then I will use this 4 group first, then red’s 4 group will go, and then my other 4 group will go. Then groups of 3 will go - my 3 group, then red’s 3 group, and so on.

Use a Group [1:16] - When you’re using a group, you can either send the group to an unoccupied space on the board or choose to leave it at home, putting the imps and gold back in your imp quarters and treasury. When you send your group, you put your sent gold in the bank, leave your imps on the space, and immediately perform the action of that space. No other groups will be able to use that specific space. Everyone will get their imps back at the end of the round.

Buy Pets [1:33] - This is where you buy pets. In order to go here, you need to have at least one gold coin in your group, since pets cost money. You can go in the upper pet area with the size-3 pets or the lower pet area with the size-2 pets, and choose one of the pets from the corresponding area. You’ll put your pets in cages in the next phase.

Buy Cages [1:47] - This is where you get cages for pets. To go here, you need at least 2 imps in your group in order to carry the cage home. You choose one of the cages available, and you’ll place it on your pet board in the next phase. Each cage has stats on it.

Add-Ons [1:57] - These are add-ons. You chose one of the two add ons when you go here, and you’ll place it on a space on your pet board in the next phase. Add-ons improve the stats of the cage it is attached to.

Food [2:06] - Pets also need food. This is the food stand. When you go here, you take all the food at the corresponding space and put it in the appropriate food storage space on your player board. Green food is vegetables and red food is meat.

Artifacts [2:16] - When you go to the artifact tent, you get both artifacts and place them on your player board. The artifacts have powers that last until the end of the game.

Immigration [2:23] - At the start of the game, 4 of your imps are on the progress board. These are distant relatives, and in order to get them, you need to go to the immigration form space. When you go here, you take from the board all your colored imps from the spaces of the current round and earlier. For example, if I go here on round 3, I will get these 3 imps, but not the last one. Place the imps on the action space - you won’t get them until the end of the round.

Hospital [2:41] - When you go to the hospital, you get a potion card, which is a wild needs card, and you take any imps that are at the hospital and add them to the space, so you’ll get them back at the end of the round.

Rig Exhibition [2:49] - This space lets you help judge and rig the exhibition. When you go here, move your minion figure on the exhibition space up to the 2 space.

Platform [2:56] - You can go here to get an extra bonus to sell pets. When you place imps here, you will not get them back at the end of the round unless you’ve used them. Instead, they will move to the right side of the platform and stay there until they’re used. When you sell a pet, if you have an imp on the platform, you can remove that imp, place it in the sold pet’s cage, and get the platform bonus of 3-times instead of the normal 2-times the score of the pet.

After everyone has used all their imp groups, move on to phase 3. For this phase, everyone can go simultaneously, but if you think it matters you can go in player order for each step - starting with the player with the first player token and going clockwise. In phase 3 you arrange the cages and pets, draw needs cards, and assign need cards to the pets.

Place Cages & Add-Ons [3:28] - You will need to place any new cages you acquired this round. You can place a cage on an empty plot, or replace an existing cage, discarding the old one. Once you place a cage, you cannot move it. The same rules apply for add-ons. The add-ons apply to the cage right next to it.

Assign Pets to Cages [3:40] - After you place your cages, you need to assign all your pets to cages. Your pets don’t have to stay in the same cage, but any mutations and suffering moves with the pets. Poop stays in the cage. Each pet needs to be in its own cage - you cannot have multiple pets in a cage. If you have more pets than cages, or just  want to let some of your pets go, you remove those pets from the game, and it counts as losing a pet.

Draw & Assign Needs [3:57] - When you’re done assigning cages and pets, draw one need card per each revealed colored bar on your pets. The need cards need to match the colors shown. For example, if I have these pets, I’ll draw a red, yellow, and two purple and add the cards to my hand. When a deck runs out, shuffle the discard pile and make a new deck.

After you draw the need cards, you will need to assign need cards to your pets. For each color bar on your pets, you will need to assign that pet one need card of that color. The cards represent the pets’ needs that you’ll need to meet in the next phase - hunger, poop, anger, magic, play, and disease. These need cards will also apply to scoring for the showing off and business phases. When you assign the needs, place them in a column face down. In the basic variant, you play the cards so the single symbol is at the top. In the full variant, you choose which symbols to use - if there are two symbols on a card and you play those on top, you will need to fulfill both needs, but you will also score both needs in the later phases. You can replace any color with a potion card, which gives the pet a free need. If you use a potion card, you need to discard one card of the color that the potion card replaced.

You’ll need to satisfy the pets’ needs or else they’ll get sad and suffer. For each need symbol that you have, you need to satisfy it or pay the penalty. These are the possible needs:

Hunger [4:58] - If you have this, you need to feed your pet. For each hunger need, you must feed your pet one food that it can eat - some pets can only eat vegetables and some can only eat meat, and some can eat both. This symbol on a cage satisfies one vegetable hunger need, and this symbol satisfies a meat hunger need. For each hunger need you cannot satisfy, your pet gets one suffering token.

Poop [5:15] - For each poop need, your pet poops a cube, so add one cube to the cage. If the cage has this symbol, add one less cube.

Play [5:22] - For each play need, you need to have an imp assigned to play with your pet. Any imps that haven’t been sent to the market can be used for this - one imp can play with 2 pets in adjacent cages. You put the imp between the cages to show that it’s being used, and it will satisfy one play need for each pet. One imp cannot play twice with the same pet. A cage with this symbol satisfies one play need. For each play need you cannot satisfy, your pet gets one suffering token.

Anger and Magic [5:43] - Anger and magic can be satisifed by your cages. For each of these, count up your total anger or magic needs. If the total is less than or equal to the number of the cage plus add-ons, the red number for anger and the purple for magic, then the need is satisfied. For anger, if the anger is greater, it will try to escape. You can use one unused imp for each anger need that exceeds the cage value. Those imps will go to the hospital. If you don’t use imps, then the pet escapes and you lose it. For magic, you cannot use imps. If the magic is greater than the cage, you place a mutation token on the pet. Once a pet has two mutation tokens, you lose it.

Disease [6:10] - This is a disease need. If your pet has at least one of these, then you must count up all the disease needs plus the number of poop tokens in the cage. Poop needs are evaluated before disease needs, so they will add to the number of poop tokens. If you have a disease need and the total number of poop tokens + disease needs is greater than 2, then your pet will get one suffering token for getting sick, plus one suffering token for each point that was greater than 2. For example, if I have three poop here and one disease need, that adds up to 4, so I get 1 suffering token for getting sick, plus 4-2, or 2 more suffering tokens. If I have a bunch of poop tokens and no disease needs, the pet will not get sick.

If your pet ever has suffering tokens greater than or equal to its size, then you will lose it.

Each round except the first has an exhibition. To score an exhibition, you either choose one pet to score or score all your board, depending on this symbol on the exhibition tile - this is a single pet exhibition and you choose one pet, and this is a full-display exhibition where you score all your pets and cages, including empty ones. The symbols here show what you get positive points for, and here shows what you get negative points for. For example, if this were my board, I’d score 2 times 2 points for play, minus one for the poop cube for a total of 3 exhibition points.

After the exhibition, you get reputation points based on your placement in the exhibition. If you didn’t get more than 0 points, you score nothing. Everyone else gets points based on the ordering - first place gets the points indicated here, second place here, and so on. If players are tied, they each receive the reputation amount for that place reduced by one for each other player tied.

For example, if red, blue, and yellow are all tied for first, they will each get 8 minus 2, or 6 reputation points. Green is 4th place and will get 2.

Remember the judging action lets you move up 2 spaces here. For a full-display exhibition, you don’t need to have pets to get reputation, but for a single pet exhibition, you must have a pet in order to gain reputation. Even if you got points from judging, if you don’t have a pet you won’t get any reputation points.

If there are customers in the round you may sell a pet to each customer. The first two rounds don’t have any customers, and the final round has two customers. Each customer buys one pet from each player if the customer likes the pet, and the player wants to sell.

To sell a pet, it must be size 4 or higher. To see if the customer likes the pet, it is similar to scoring an exhibition - you get positive points for the light box, and negative points for the dark box. The symbols refer to the needs you assigned to your pet this round, or the suffering or mutation tokens that are on the pet. If your pet score for the customer is greater than zero, you can sell that pet to the customer. For example, for this customer and this pet, I’d get 2 times 2 points for the play, plus one point for the food, minus one for the suffering token, for a total of 4 points, and I could sell the pet. When you sell to a customer, you get reputation points equal to 2 times your pet score for the customer. If you sell from the platform, using an imp you had there, you get 3 times the score. You also get the amount of gold shown on the pet, and remove the pet from the game. If the pet has a mutation token, you get 2 gold less than the price shown, which means you may have to pay to sell the pet. For example, with the pet I sold to the customer, since it had 4 points, I’d get 8 reputation points, or 12 if I used the platform. Then I’d get 2 gold for selling it. If it had a mutation token, I wouldn’t get any gold, but I’d still be able to sell it.

In the last round, there are two customers, and you can sell two pets. But only one of them can be sold from the platform, even if you have two imps there.

When the showing off and business phases are done, you discard all the need cards to the corresponding colored discard piles.

If you have any leftover unused imps, you can use each imp to either clean a cage or get 1 gold coin. To clean cages, an imp can remove up to two poop tokens from cages without pets. They don’t have to be from the same cage, but the cages must be empty of pets, and you cannot move pets at this time. Any imp that wasn’t used at all this round earns you 1 gold coin.

At the end of each round, pets will age, your food will start spoiling, and your imps will return home. The starting player token goes clockwise, and the progress marker moves to the next place.

If you ever lose a pet, either from not putting it in a cage, when it has suffering equal to its size, when its anger needs are not met, or when it has 2 mutation tokens, you remove the pet from the game. Return any suffering and mutation tokens it had to the bank, and discard all its need cards. Poop stays. Also, you lose one reputation point for every 10 points you have, rounded down. For example, if I had 29 points and lost a pet, I would lose two reputation points.

At the end of the final round, there is final scoring. This is done with 2 exhibitions that are scored separately. There is no +2 judge bonus for these exhibitions. Also, if your exhibition score is negative, you lose reputation points equal to your exhibition score. Otherwise, the exhibitions are scored normally, with the players getting reputation points based on their place.

The player with the most reputation points wins. If players are tied, they share the victory.

And that's how you play Dungeon Petz. Check out the link for setup, customers, exhibitions, and artifact explanations. Check out our website for more videos, podcasts, and blogs. Thanks for watching Board Game Blitz!

Place the main board in the middle of the table. For a 4 player game, use the side of the board with no arrows. For a 2-3 player game, use the side of the board with arrows. Place the progress board on the table as well. For a 4-player game, use the side with 4 imps in the corner. For a 2-3 player game, use the other side.

Put the progress marker on the first space of the progress board. Shuffle the exhibition tiles and put one on each exhibition space face down. Turn the first one face up. Shuffle the customer tiles and deal one on each customer space face down. Turn the first one face up. Remove the unused exhibition and customer tiles from the game without looking at them. For the full variant, you can reveal 2 exhibition tiles and customer tiles at the beginning of the game, or all the tiles.

In a 2-3 player game, there are some dummy action spaces, and the spaces are organized into 3 groups of 6 spaces connected by arrows, and some of the action spaces have small dots. For a 3 player game, use 3 imps from a non-player color and put one imp on each action space marked with a dot. This will block the actions for that round. In a 2-player game, take 6 imps and block two action spaces in each group - the one with a dot and the one 3 spaces away from it.

Shuffle the pets, cages, addons, artifacts, and need cards and place them in piles next to the board. Put the potion cards in a stack on the hospital building. Put the gold tokens in a pile in the bank. Put the food tokens in their respective storage areas, vegetables and meat. Put the suffering tokens, poop tokens, and mutation tokens in piles next to the board.

Each player gets a pet display board and the following of their color - 10 imps, 2 minions, a player board, and an achievement marker. Each player also gets a poop token in their initial cage. Put one imp on each indicated space of the progress board for each player. Put each player’s minions on the 0 spaces of the exhibition track and the reputation track. Each player draws one need card of each color. These are kept secret from other players.

The player who most recently fed a pet gets the starting player token.

During the setup of each round, everyone gets income. The starting player and the player on their left each get 1 gold, and the other two players get 2 gold. In a 2 or 3 player game, the starting player gets 1 gold and everyone else gets 2 gold.

You also reveal new information and add new stuff. The information is already revealed in round 1, but in future rounds, you turn up the first unrevealed exhibition tile and the first unrevealed customer tile. The final round has two customers - you reveal both of them at the same time.

In a 2-3 player game, move each neutral imp to the next action space, following the arrows. If an action has a neutral imp, it is blocked, so you will restock differently.

Discard any food in the food stands and put food in it according to the round’s exhibition tile. For the first round, there are 2 vegetables in the green stand, 1 of each in the mixed stand, and 2 meat in the red stand. For a 2-3 player game, If a space is blocked by an imp, don’t put any food there. If the neutral imp is in the green or red space, then the mixed stand will get one less vegetable or meat token, respectively.

Remove any artifacts and put 2 new artifacts face up in the artifact tents. Don’t add any artifacts if the space is blocked.

For the first round, deal out 3 cages. In future rounds, at least one cage is left over. Discard all but the lowest cage, and put that cage in the uppermost spot. Then draw 2 new cages. If a space is blocked, then you should only have 2 cages showing total.

For the first round, deal out 2 add-ons. In future rounds, discard the upper add-on if it’s there, and move the bottom one to the top space. Then put one new addon in the lower space. If the space is blocked, skip this step.

For the first round, deal out 3 pets in the lower part of the pet board - the younger pets. They should all be size 2 - so set them so that the wheels reveal the first two colored bars. Deal one pet to the upper half, the older pets, and set it to size 3. In later rounds, the pets will get older. Any pets in the upper half get discarded and sent to a farm. Add one meat token to the meat stand for each discarded pet. Age the pets in the lower half 1 bar - so they’ll become size 3, and move them to the upper half. Then deal out 3 new size-2 pets to the lower half.

If a younger pets action space is blocked, then deal out only 2 pets. If the older-pet action space is blocked, discard the leftmost pet in the upper half after the pets age, since the neutral imp buys it.

In the full variant, when Stareplant is sent to the farm, you should add 1 vegetable token to the meat stand instead of meat. If Baby Golem is sent to a farm, add 1 gold token to the meat stand. If Ghosty is sent to a farm, do not add anything.

At the end of each round, there is an aging phase. All pets that players own will age based on the arrows in the window. Turn the wheel to reveal one or two more colored bars. Food will also age. Any food in the rightmost chamber gets discarded back to the central board, and all the other food moves one space over to the right. Then, everyone takes back all their imps from the Pet Display board, and the action spaces, excluding the hospital and the platform. Imps on the left side of the platform move to the right side. Move all the exhibition minions back to the 0 space.

Remove the exhibition and customer cards that were used in the round. 

Move the progress marker one space to the right. If it hits the final scoring space, go to end game scoring.

The starting player token goes clockwise. In the final round, the starting player token will be given to the player with the lowest reputation. If there are ties, pass it to the left and keep passing until it gets to one of the players with the lowest reputation. For the full variant, instead of player order being clockwise in the final round, player order is in order of lowest score to highest score, with clockwise order breaking ties.

Customers and Exhibitions are scored similarly - you get positive points for the items in the lightly shaded box, and negative for the darkly shaded box.

For these customers, you get points based on the needs you played that round on the pet you’re selling to the customer: hunger, poop, anger, magic, play, and disease. Also, all the customers give you one or two negative points for having suffering tokens on the pet. This one also gives you negative for having a mutation token on the pet. For these multicolored symbols, you get 3 points for each different colored matching need that you played. For example, if I played 3 green poop needs, I would only get 3 points here, but if I played a green and a red poop need, I’d get 6 points.

There are two types of exhibitions - single pet exhibitions and full display exhibitions. These are the single pet exhibitions. You need to choose one pet and score according to the needs and suffering tokens on that pet. If you don’t have a pet, you cannot get points in a single pet exhibition. For these exhibitions, you score points for hunger and anger needs, and lose points for disease needs. In these, you lose points for suffering tokens on the pet. In this exhibition, you choose one need and score two points for each of that need assigned to your pet. This one gives you two points for each different need assigned to the pet. Here you get one point for each different color card assigned to your pet, including potions. You also get negative for poop cubes in its cage and mutation tokens on the pet.

The full display exhibitions score all your pets and cages, and you don’t need to have a pet to score points. You score for all the needs you assigned that round: magic here and play here. In these, you lose points for all the mutations you have and all the poop you have in your cages. This one gives you two points for each pet you have.

The final round exhibitions are scored similarly, except if you get a negative exhibition score, you lose reputation points equal to your score. In this exhibition, you get half a point for each gold, and one point for each food token, artifact, and potion you have. You lose 2 points for each imp that is not home at the end of the game, including imps at the hospital, on the platform, and on the Progress Board. In the other exhibition, you get 2 points for each pet you still have and one point for each cage and add-on. You lose a point for each suffering token, poop token, and mutation token you have.

When you get one of these artifacts, choose one color and place the artifact so that color is on top. Draw a need card of that color. You will always have one extra need card of that color.

The crystal ball allows you to discard up to 3 need cards and draw a replacement for each one before drawing need cards for your pets in phase 3.

The shovel allows one imp to remove two poop tokens from occupied cages during the Showing Off phase, even before you deal with disease needs.

The armor allows 2 imps to each act as a +1 bonus to the anger or magic strength of the cage without getting hurt.

This artifact allows one imp to count twice when cleaning cages, playing with pets, or catching them when they break out of the cage. This does not let an imp earn two gold.

The whip gives you +½ to all exhibitions, except the final scoring ones.

When you get the refrigerator, you can place one food token on it. It can be used as either meat or vegetable, and it won’t spoil. You can refill it when it’s empty - it holds one food.

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