– Brian Donnelly (Jazz)

So you’ve gone through the Beginner’s Tutorial (right?) and the Tips for Beginners and now you’ve got to create a dungeon. This part of the game can be almost as fun as playing the game and certainly is as important. A good dungeon design in itself can sometimes win you a game and a bad one can sometimes lose you a game. Let’s make a dungeon from the spirits available to you in the Free Side of the game (everybody has the same 200 spirits to choose from in this version).

Before we even decide what colors and spirits to use we need to know roughly how large our dungeon should be and how many of each type of spirit we want. The larger our dungeon is, the less predictable it becomes. This means we are more susceptible to getting all energy and no combat creatures in our courtyard or vice versa OR if we are playing multiple colors, we increase our chances of getting the wrong color energy for the spirits we have in our courtyard. The downside of having a small dungeon is that if your game goes on a long time and you run out of spirits you will start taking 3 points of damage per turn. Since games do not usually go on too long I suggest making as small a dungeon as you can, thereby increasing your chances of getting good spirits out quickly. We will aim for a dungeon size of 30 (the minimum).

Next we need to decide upon roughly how many of each type of spirit to put in the dungeon.

Energy: You need energy spirits in order to supplement the energy that your castle produces. The more energy you produce the better you’ll be able to afford combat creatures, movement, spells, etc. However, if you have too much energy you’ll decrease your chances of having those good spirits available in your courtyard. A good rule of thumb is 1/3 (10) of your dungeon should be energy spirits. Some energy spirits have magical abilities like adding one to a spirit’s attack, healing a spirit, or acting as a defender. Use some of these as well as normal energy spirits.

Combat: In general, these are the guys that are going to do the damage to your opponent’s castle and his spirits. Your opponent will undoubtedly kill some of your spirits too. Because of these facts, you will need a lot of creatures. There are a few different types of combat creatures:

Scouts: Low casting cost (1-2), high vision (2-3) and movement (2). You’ll want a few of these (3-5). Put these out quickly and you’ll be able to see more of the map.

Archers: Medium cost (3-4), medium vision (2) and movement (2), attack range 2. You’ll want as many of these as you can! Attack your opponents from a distance.

Bully’s: These are the big tough creatures with high attack and defense (3+). They have varying other stats and abilities. They may be deities, regenerating creatures, or slow moving machines. Once you get one or two of these out, your opponent is in trouble. Use 2-4 of these guys, too many more and you won’t be able to afford them. Note: many of these have a maintenance cost associated with them.

Magic User’s: These guys have varying costs (3-5), and can cast some kind of magic spell. The spells can be healing, extra attack, defense, vision, movement, etc. The spells always cost energy to cast. Use 1-3 of these guys depending upon how many bullies and archers you have.

Staples: These are all the other creatures that supplement the other types. You may have some in your dungeon, you may not. You may use some low casting cost spirits in order to make sure you get SOME spirits out while you wait to get an archer in your courtyard or while you wait to get enough energy to afford a bully. You may want a high attack, low defense spirit who you stealthily move towards your opponents castle, you decide!

Use 0 – 5 of these, remember they are just supplementing your other spirits.

Adding all these up gives somewhere around 13-16 combat spirits. This is a good number, since it is nice to have half your spirits available to get out and destroy your opponent.

Defenders: These guys can take the damage that your opponent tries to do to your castle or spirits. It is nice to have one out defending your castle when your opponent is pressing the attack. It is also nice to have one protecting your combat spirit as he attacks your opponents castle. We can probably put 1-2 of them in our dungeon and save them when we draw them for just the right time.

Spells: The spells vary so much and are so interesting that it is almost impossible to not put 10 of them in your dungeon. Don’t! Remember, most of the damage we do to our opponents castle will be from combat spirits, so we don’t want to reduce our chances of getting combat spirits by putting a ton of spells in our dungeon. On the other hand, it’s nice to have a few spells in order to surprise our opponent and gain the upper hand. 4-6 spells is not unreasonable.

So we now have a general idea of how many of each type of spirit to put in our dungeon. We’re now going to make them add up to approximately 30. Here’s an example:

Energy: 10: some will have special abilities

Combat: 14: Scouts-4, Archers-4, Bully’s-3, Magic User’s-2, Staples-1

Defenders: 1

Spells: 5

Now we choose the colors we are going to use. You can use 1, 2, or 3 (4+ is not feasible). Using one color allows you to always have the right color energy to cast your spirits, whereas using 2 may mean we run into this problem occasionally. Using 3 colors is very difficult and not recommended until you are quite experienced.

Once you choose your color(s), go ahead and choose the spirits you are going to put in your dungeon according to the guidelines above. You then need to set your homeland/ally for castle energy production. In general choose your homeland to be that of the color that requires the most energy in your dungeon. In a mono-color dungeon set them to be the same. When choosing energy spirits, divide the 10 spirits between the colors you are playing based upon how much energy of each color is needed. e.g. If half your spirits are green and half blue, make your energy half green and blue.

That’s it, you’re done. Here’s a sample Yellow/White dungeon based on the parameters we built.

Energy: 2 Pyramids (y + w), 2 Lost Cities (y), 1 Drylands Palace (y), 3 Roman Forums (w), SPECIALS: 1 Granary (w), 1 Gladiator Academy (w)

Combat

Scouts: 2 Desert Jackals (y), 2 Bedouin Scouts (y),

Archers: 1 Parthian Archer (y), 1 Fixed Catapult (y), 2 Javelineers (w), 1 Ballista (w),

Bully’s: 1 Sphinx (y), 1 Ramses (y)

Magic User’s: 1 Calabrian Merchant (w), 1 Priest of Mars (1)

Staples: 2 Apulian Lancers (w)

Defenders: 1 Drylands Fort (y)

Spells: 1 Flame Strike (y), 1 Hunting Party (y), 1 Council of Generals (y), 2 Cupid’s Arrow (w)

We’ll set Homeland to Drylands (yellow) and Ally to Flatlands (white) since it looks like I’ll need more yellow energy.

Add it all up and it comes to 31, more than we wanted, oh well it looks like a pretty good dungeon, we’ll leave it as is. Remember all the above are just guidelines. Feel free to experiment with many different dungeon ideas!