Dustrunner Rules

Objective

You’ve stolen plans from a barbaric raider base and now must traverse the wasteland to bring them back to your camp. You win if you make it home alive.

Contents

Setup

Setup

  1. All cards come shuffled together. You must separate the cards and components by type.
  2. Locate the 5 road cards. One of them will have an “S” and an “R” on it. This is the starting road card. Place it face-up on the table. Find the road card with an “F” on it. This is the finish road card. Put it to the side for now. Shuffle the 3 remaining road cards and place them face-up, one at a time, in a row next to the starting road card. This will form a long series of connecting roads. Now place the finish road card at the end. Choose a dustrunner mini to represent your vehicle and place it on the “S” location. Place the remaining mini on the “R” location. This mini will represent the raider’s vehicle.
  3. Locate the tracker card. You will use this during play to track your victory points. Victory points will be used at the game’s end to determine your score and can also be spent during play to re-draw a resolution card at any point. You start the game with some victory points. This is determined by the sum of the star icons found at the bottom of your vehicle cards. Use tracker cubes to indicate your starting victory points. One cube for the tens place and another for the ones place.
  4. Shuffle the modification deck and draw one card at random. You get this as a starting modification for your vehicle. You may now look at the remaining modification cards and pick one to add your vehicle, for a total of 2 starting modifications. Shuffle and place remaining cards face-down.
  5. Shuffle the resolution deck and place it face-down to form a draw pile. Leave space for a discard pile.
  6. Shuffle the exploration deck and place it face-down to form a draw pile. Leave space for 2 revealed cards and a discard pile.
  7. Place tracker cubes on your max/ starting health, fuel, and ammo trackers located on your vehicle cards.
  8. Place the 2 dice off to the side. Dice are only used to track enemy.

Gameplay

Dustrunner is played in rounds, which represent a portion of your journey across the wasteland. Each round is made up of 6 turns, which represent your interactions with the world. The end of the round is triggered after you resolve the 6th and final turn within that round.

Turn Sequence

  1. Draw two cards from the exploration deck, keeping them face-down.
  2. Reveal one of the two exploration cards by flipping it face-up. Read it.
  3. Choose to a) resolve the revealed card and discard the other without looking at it, or b) discard the revealed card face-down, forming a discard pile, and then reveal and resolve the second exploration card. You MUST ALWAYS resolve the second card if you pass on the first.

There are two types of exploration cards in Dustrunner. The first is straightforward and will present you with text that you will have to resolve, sometimes offering you two options. These cards include the ambulance, gas station, outpost, farm, clear path, crags, and the dust worm. It should be noted that the dust worm MUST always be resolved. The second type of card are enemy cards and will require combat to resolve. These include the spybot and raiders.

Some exploration cards will have you gain (or lose) resources like health, ammo, and fuel. When this happens simply adjust the corresponding tracker to indicate such.

Other cards will allow you to spend fuel to move your vehicle a number of spaces on the road cards. In these scenarios simply adjust your fuel on the appropriate tracker and then move your vehicle the number of spaces indicated on the exploration card.

Some cards will have you move the raiders. Move the raiders equal to the number shown. Raiders ALWAYS follow the path you take, and if they ever catch you, you lose the game immediately.

Gain 3 victory points every time you land on, or pass, a star icon.

Resolution Deck

The resolution deck will be called upon throughout the game to resolve all sorts of matters. It is a multi-function card. Let’s break down each portion of the card for a clearer understanding.

Resolution Card

Whenever the resolution deck is exhausted, shuffle the discard pile, and form a new draw pile.

Combat

Raiders and the spybot are the two exploration cards that will require you to engage in combat. The strength of the foe will be altered depending on if you are resolving the first card during the turn or the second card. Fighting enemies as the second card is always more difficult. Here is the process for determining your enemies health and finding out who attacks first.

  1. The health of your enemy will be tracked using 2 6-sided dice. One die will be determined by the die icon on the enemy card. The value on the left is used if resolving the first card during the turn. The higher value on the right is used if resolving the second. Take one of the dice and place this value face-up.
  2. Now you must reveal a resolution card to determine the value of the second enemy health die. Reveal a card and refer to the pink die icon and place the second die to this value. You now have the total health of the enemy. Keep these 2 dice near the enemy card and adjust them as the enemy loses health.
  3. Now you must resolve who attacks first in combat. Looking at the resolution card used for the enemy’s health die, refer to the icon below the pink die icon to see who gets to attack first

Enemy Card

Once the enemy health and combat initiative are determined, you are ready for combat. Combat resolves in turns, starting with whoever got initiative attacking first, and then the other attacking second. This back and forth continues until either the enemy or yourself loses all of their health. If you lose all your health, the game ends immediately. If you defeat the enemy, you will gain loot and then discard the enemy card and continue play.

Raiders always inflict damage to your health. The ✸ Icon next to the die icon on the enemy card tells us how many cards to draw from the resolution deck when they attack. Typically 1 card. On a raider’s turn to attack, simply draw resolution cards equal to the ✸ icons shown on their card. Refer to the upper-right box to see how much damage they inflict. This is represented by a number of skulls ranging from 0-3. If the raider attacks twice, just add the two results together. Adjust your health on your health tracker accordingly. If you are still alive, it becomes your turn to attack!

The spybot on the other hand does not damage your health, but instead moves the raider mini on the road cards. When the spybot attacks draw a resolution card and refer to the blue triangle icon on the bottom-left. Move the raider mini the value shown. If the raider mini ever catches your vehicle mini, the game ends immediately.

On your turn to attack you must decide how much ammo you want to spend on your attack. For each ammo spent, you will be allowed to reveal one resolution card. You may spend up to 4 ammo. You will deal damage to your enemy’s health equal to the sum of all the skulls shown on the revealed resolution cards. In addition you will add your vehicle’s damage bonus (bonus shown on the middle section of your vehicle) to the total. Adjust the enemy’s health dice accordingly. If the enemy is still alive, they get to attack again. If you defeat the enemy you gain 2 victory points and some loot.

You may always deal damage equal to your vehicle’s damage bonus without spending ammo.

Two additional things happen when an enemy is defeated. Draw a resolution card to determine the loot you have gained and also see if the raider mini gets to advance on the road cards.

To determine your loot, look at the lower-right icon on the resolution card. You gain whatever is show here. Refer to page 10. If the moon icon on the enemy card matches that of the moon icon on the resolution card, you also gain the loot shown on the enemy card. If however the enemy you defeated was the second card revealed during the turn, you gain the loot from both the enemy card and resolution card no matter what, and ignore the moon icons.

If a raider card does not have a loot icon, but instead has the words “WILD! WILD! WILD!”, you may choose from any of the loots listed on page 10, including a modification.

Referring to the same resolution card that you used for determining your loot, look at the lower-left icon to see if the raider mini advances on the road cards.

Move the mini if required.

Ending a Round

The end of the round is triggered once you have resolved the last set of cards in the exploration deck. You must then do the following.

  1. Shuffle the exploration deck and place it face-down to form a new draw pile for the next round.
  2. You must also fill your vehicle’s gas tank by spending 1 fuel. Adjust the fuel tracker on your vehicle accordingly. If you are out of fuel, and cannot fill your tank, the raider mini advances 2 spaces on the road cards.

Victory Points

Victory points are tracked on the tracker card. Your total is used at the games end to determine how well you did. However they can also be spent during play as a resource to re-draw a resolution card whenever you are asked to draw one. Spending 2 victory points will allow you to take this action. You may repeat this until you get the result want, or run out of victory points. Here is a list of ways you can use this to your advantage:

Ending the Game

The game ends immediately in three different ways:

  1. You are defeated if you ever run out of health.
  2. You are defeated if your vehicle mini is ever caught by the raider mini.
  3. You win if you are able to reach the space marked with an “F” on the last road card with your vehicle.

Scoring

Regardless as to if you managed to reach the base (“F” space on the road cards) or not, you still may score your run.

If you did reach your base you gain 10 bonus victory points. Add these to the number indicated on the tracker card.

Refer to the chart below.

Credits

Dustrunner is Copyright 2023

By Grey Gnome Games & Jason Glover

All Rights Reserved.

Designed & Illustrated by Jason Glover

Tutorial Video

A video tutorial and play through are available on our YouTube channel at: https://youtube.com/@jasonglover6615

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