Thunderstone Advance: Towers of Ruin

To set up the 'Epic' variant of Thunderstone Advance, first, shuffle all Level 1 heroes together into one pile, then divide them into four stacks and place them in the hero area of the board. Next, shuffle all items together, divide them into two stacks, and place them in the item area. Do the same for all spells and villagers, placing them in their respective areas. Add the always-available cards (Regular, Longspear, Torch) to the village area. For the dungeon, separate all enemies by level (1, 2, and 3). Select one Thunderstone Bearer card and shuffle it together with four Level 3 monsters to form the bottom of the dungeon deck. Then, place six more Level 3 monsters on top of this stack. Finally, place ten Level 2 monsters on top of the current stack, followed by four Level 1 monsters per player on top of the entire dungeon stack. This completes the setup for both the village and the dungeon.

The primary objective in Thunderstone Advance: Towers of Ruin is to defeat the powerful Thunderstone Bearer, a special monster located deep within the dungeon. However, simply defeating the Thunderstone Bearer is not enough to win the game. Players must also accumulate the most victory points, which are primarily earned by defeating monsters in the dungeon and by purchasing certain valuable cards from the village. The player who successfully balances dungeon delving and deck building to achieve the highest total victory points will be declared the winner.

During your turn, you have two main options: visit the village or go to the dungeon. In the village, you can purchase new hero, item, spell, or village cards to improve your deck, or use special village abilities. The 'Epic' variant introduces a unique village ability that allows you to name a card type and move any number of matching cards from the top of a stack to the bottom, offering more strategic control over available cards. When you go to the dungeon, you reveal monsters from the dungeon deck and use the cards in your hand to generate attack power, magic, and light to defeat them. Each monster has a difficulty rating, and darkness penalties apply based on the monster's rank in the dungeon hall.

Scoring in Thunderstone Advance is straightforward: players earn victory points primarily by defeating monsters in the dungeon. Each monster card has a victory point value indicated on it. Additionally, certain cards purchased from the village, such as some heroes, items, or spells, may also contribute victory points at the end of the game. The goal is to strategically acquire cards that not only help you defeat monsters but also provide a strong victory point total. The player with the highest cumulative victory points from all sources at the end of the game wins.

The game concludes under one of two conditions: either the Thunderstone Bearer, the ultimate monster, is successfully defeated by a player, or the dungeon deck runs out of cards. Once either of these conditions is met, players proceed to a final scoring phase where all victory points from defeated monsters and purchased cards are tallied. The player with the highest total victory points is then declared the winner.