How to Play Scoundrel: Rules & Free Online Game

Objective

You start with 20 health and work your way through a 44-card dungeon one room at a time. Clubs and Spades are monsters, Diamonds are weapons and Hearts are health potions.

You win by getting through every card alive, and the health you have left is your score. If your health drops to 0 or below, the run is over on the spot.

Setup: building the Scoundrel deck

Take a standard 52-card deck and remove the Jokers, the red face cards (Jack, Queen and King of Hearts and Diamonds) and both red Aces. Shuffle the remaining 44 cards and place them face down – this is the dungeon. Flip the top four face up to form the first room.

Online, the game shuffles and deals for you; at a real table, keep track of your health on a scrap of paper. Every card belongs to one of three types:

• Monsters: all 26 Clubs and Spades. A monster deals damage equal to its rank: 2–10 at face value, Jack 11, Queen 12, King 13, Ace 14.
• Weapons: the 2 through 10 of Diamonds. A weapon’s strength is its rank.
• Health potions: the 2 through 10 of Hearts. Each one restores health equal to its rank.

How a turn works

Every room has four face-up cards. You must face three of them, one at a time, in any order. The fourth stays put and joins three new cards from the dungeon to form the next room.

Facing a card means something different for each type: you fight monsters, equip weapons and drink potions. Every card you pick counts as one of your three – even a potion that has no effect.

Instead of facing a room, you can avoid it: all four cards go to the bottom of the dungeon and four new ones are revealed. You can only do this before picking any card in the room, and never for two rooms in a row, so the room after an avoided one must be faced.

Near the end the dungeon runs out: the final room has only two cards, the one you left behind and the last card from the pile. You must face both, and you can’t avoid this room.

Fighting monsters and using weapons

You can fight a monster barehanded or with your equipped weapon. Barehanded, you lose its full value: the King of Spades costs 13 health. With a weapon, you only lose the difference between the monster and the weapon, never less than 0 – with the 9 of Diamonds, that same King costs just 4.

The catch is that weapons wear down. Once your weapon has slain a monster, it can only be used on monsters weaker than the last one it killed. After slaying the Queen of Clubs (12) it still works on a Jack or lower; after a 5, only on 2s, 3s and 4s.

Picking a Diamond equips it straight away; your old weapon and the monsters it slew go to the discard pile. The new weapon starts fresh and works on any monster again, even if it is weaker than the old one. Fighting barehanded never affects your weapon.

Health potions

A Heart restores as much health as its rank, but you can never go above 20. At 17 health, the 9 of Hearts only heals 3.

Only one potion works per room – and that includes one you drink at full health, even though it heals nothing. If you pick a second potion in the same room, it is discarded with no effect but still counts as one of your three cards. A potion left behind as the fourth card works normally in the next room.

End of the game and scoring

The game ends when you have faced all 44 cards or your health hits 0 or less. Your score works like this:

• Dungeon cleared: your score is your remaining health.
• Potion bonus: if you finish on exactly 20 health and the last card you faced was a health potion, add that potion’s value. With the 10 of Hearts as your final card, the best possible score is 30.
• You died: take your health (0 or below) and subtract the value of every monster still in the dungeon and in the room. For example, fighting the 9 of Spades barehanded on 3 health drops you to −6; with the King of Clubs and the 5 of Spades still left, your score is −6 − 13 − 5 = −24.

Example turn: order matters

You have 12 health and no weapon. The room shows the 8 of Diamonds, the Jack of Spades, the 6 of Clubs and the 4 of Hearts.

The order you pick them in decides how much this room hurts. Equip the 8 and kill the 6 of Clubs first, and your weapon is limited to monsters below 6. Now the Jack either costs you the full 11 health barehanded, leaving you on 1, or you drag it into the next room as your fourth card. A much better line:

• Take the 8 of Diamonds as your weapon.
• Fight the Jack of Spades with it: 11 − 8 = 3 damage, leaving you on 9 health. From now on the weapon only works on monsters below 11.
• Fight the 6 of Clubs with it. It’s weaker than your 8, so it costs nothing; afterwards the weapon only works on monsters below 6.
• Leave the 4 of Hearts. It carries over and becomes your potion for the next room. You end up on 9 health instead of 1, and the potion is still waiting for you.

Variants and game modes

The Scoundrel card game rules you find elsewhere may differ slightly – some versions, for example, let a weapon hit a monster of equal value. At Tavern Jack the monster has to be strictly weaker: after slaying the 10 of Spades, the weapon only works up to a 9.

Tavern Jack has two modes: the Random Dungeon shuffles a fresh deck every time, while in the Daily Dungeon everyone gets the same cards on the same day. Your high score is saved in your browser.