Dungeon Mayhem Review: All Out Brawl!

Play Time: 10 Min / Players: 2-4 / Complexity: Low / Age: 8+ we think 6+ / Publisher: Wizards of the Coast / Designer: Jordan Comar, Roscoe Wetlaufer   

What You Will Find in Our Dungeon Mayhem Review

• How to Play
• Gameplay Experience
• Components
• Theme
• Final Thoughts
• Variations and Expansions
• Frequently Asked Questions

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Whether you are an avid fan or not you have probably heard of Dungeons & Dragons. When I was growing up, my experience of Dungeons & Dragons was of banding together with my mates and exploring dungeons to slay monsters and have fun. Dungeon Mayhem takes some familiar D&D characters and attempts to create a simple, quick filler game that’s more accessible to a broader audience with the Dungeons & Dragons theme. My daughters just love this game and I really enjoy playing it with them, but there isn’t a lot of strategy here so it’s best suited to a younger audience.

How to Play Dungeon Mayhem

Objective

Trouble is brewing and no amount of chit chat is going to resolve it amicably. Paladin, Barbarian, Wizard and Rogue will have to face off in an all-in battle to straighten things out. It’s simple, pick your character and defeat your foes before they kill you first. Last person standing wins.

Set Up 

Great news, you can set up in a few minutes and be playing asap! To setup you will pick a character deck each, place your hit point tracker in front of you and put your token on the space marked 10. Then draw three cards and you’re ready to play.

Turns

Playing Dungeon Mayhem is very simple, you draw a card from your deck, play a card and follow its instructions. There aren’t that many card abilities either, so the good news is you can teach this game in minutes. Ideal for younger kids.

So, what do the cards do? Well, there are some things all decks have in common:

• Crossed sword icons will deal one damage to an opponent for each icon on the card
• Cards with a shield will stay in front of you after you play them and absorb damage from other players up to the total number of shields on the cards. There are some favourites in here for our kids, ‘Fluffy’ the horse, ‘Riff’ and ‘Raff’ the mean looking wolves spring to mind in particular
• Card icons with a plus sign allow you to draw more cards
• Heart icons allow you to replenish one life point for each heart icon played
• Finally, the lightning bolt. These are the cards we get excited about when they are in our hand because they let you play one additional card per lightning bolt icon. This lets you chain cards together for some nice plays.

Cards can contain just one type of icon or a combination of icons on them. The main decisions are which card to play in your hand so the strategy here is very straightforward and easy for kids to pick up.

As well as the generic card icons each player has their own unique ‘Mighty Powers’ in their deck leading to a bit of variation from character to character. Sure, most cards will be similar, but these unique cards do make each character play very differently. You could choose to be Sutha the Skullcrusher (Barbarian and my oldest daughter’s favourite), Azzan the Mystic (Wizard), Lia the Radiant (Paladin) and Oriax the Clever (Rogue and my personal favourite).

Each character has two or three unique Mighty Powers and each of them seem really useful. Sutha the Barbarian can play Battle Roar to discard each player’s card and then draw back to three cards, useful if you don’t have any useful cards in your hand and you can see that your opponents have quite a few cards.

My daughter loves playing Vampiric Touch when she is on her last hit point as Azzan the Wizard. This card allows you to swap your hit points with another player. ‘Thanks for getting my hit points so low dad, I’ll just grab your 8 hit points and leave you with 1.’

My personal favourite is Oriax the Rogue’s ‘Clever Disguise’ which protects you from all damage for a turn. Very useful if you are on your last couple of hit points. Most of all though I like the amusing disguise on the card complete with beard and comically shaped nose. The abilities seem to fit nicely with the character type which is quite nice.

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Gameplay Experience  

Let me start by saying that both my daughters (aged 8 and 11) love this game, it’s simple, quick and has very amusing artwork. That is a great combination for kids and hit the mark nicely for them. They always have a good laugh when we play, and just adore the amusing artwork on the cards.

They will often get excited when they see their favourite cards and get to play them, I mentioned Fluffy earlier right? The humour on the cards is something I enjoy as well, I have a chuckle as I play cards like ‘Cunning Action’. This one has the Rogue reading a book titled ‘How to Make Friends & Betray Them’, it is just so well done.

Each character’s deck really fits the theme with the card abilities and artwork really well. Which means my daughters got really excited to try different characters and see how they played. The great thing is they seem quite well balanced overall. There is one exception from my perspective, Vampiric Touch seems very powerful in the right situations.

Just be aware this is meant to be a light-hearted game and there aren’t really any seriously chunky decisions here. That will suit younger kids just fine, but older players will find it gets a little repetitive after a while, even with the amusing cards. My teen son for example isn’t a fan of Dungeon Mayhem, he just thinks it’s very luck based and there isn’t much here in terms of strategy.

At two players the game plays very quickly and is probably my favourite player count as I think this game works best when it is nice and snappy. It’s great to be able to fit in a game in 10 minutes with my daughters and they love it. They will often want to play 2 or 3 games in a row.

At four players there is a little more to consider as you have to decide which players to target with your attacks. It makes the game more interesting, but the downside is it can at times drag on a bit long for what it is. Sometimes four player games can last up to 30 minutes which from my perspective is a bit long for me to play a game without much in the way of strategy. My daughters really don’t mind that though. The other thing to watch out for in higher player counts is that because you are choosing who you attack some more sensitive kids can feel targeted and it can result in some arguments.

All in all, this is a great game for younger kids but if you are looking for a filler game for an older audience, I would probably not pick Dungeon Mayhem but lean more towards something like Coup. Coup can still be played quickly but has more depth to it and is easy to learn. With a player count of five or up to eight Bang! The Dice Game is also a lot of fun with more depth. Both games have a little social deduction which I enjoy.

Components

This is a fairly compact game. You will get four 28 card character decks, some tokens to track health and a rule book. It all fits in a box about twice the size of a deck of cards, thankfully quite small. The card quality is good and is holding up well after repeated plays but I can see some minor wear starting to appear around the edges.

The standout here is the card art by Kyle Ferrin which is very funny and fits the theme of each character very nicely. I think this has a big impact on the enjoyment of the game and my daughters just love the characters depicted on the cards.

Theme

For such a light game Wizards of the Coast did a great job to differentiate the characters nicely. As I mentioned above the card art is great and aligns nicely to each character in the game. It’s not deeply thematic, but for such a simple, quick game I think they have done well.

Final Thoughts on Dungeon Mayhem

Dungeon Mayhem is a light-hearted, simple card game with some nice humour in the card art. This game is ideal for younger kids due to its simplicity and humour, both my daughters just love this game.

There isn’t a lot in the way of strategy here so for older players it may get tired quickly, my teen son isn’t a fan of Dungeon Mayhem for this reason. My wife and I love the humour on the cards and playing with our kids but wouldn’t choose to play it without the kids.

Is Dungeon Mayhem easy to learn?  Yes, incredibly easy to learn.

What will Dungeon Mayhem teach my kids?  This is a fairly simple game but there are some great tactile opportunities to practice addition and subtraction using the health tracker and the tokens.

What age is appropriate for Dungeon Mayhem?  The box says 8+ but we think kids even a couple of years younger should be able to enjoy this game.

Does Dungeon Mayhem have good replay value?  Our younger kids have played this game a lot, especially my youngest daughter and are still not tired of it. I think older players will find it gets repetitive fairly quickly though.

We hope you enjoyed our Dungeon Mayhem review. If you have any more questions or just want to share your thoughts on this game please leave a comment below, or get in touch through our contact page.

About the Authors

We are parents who love board gaming. We have three children and have been enjoying board games as a family ever since we had our first child. We share our real unbiased experiences and opinions on board games so you can decide if they are right for your family. We also write guides and articles to help you get the most out of your family game time. 

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Variations and Expansions

As at the time of writing the expansions and variations are:

• Dungeon Mayhem: Battle for Baldur’s Gate: This expansion adds two new characters to the game, a ranger and a druid.
• Dungeon Mayhem: Monster Madness: This game includes six D&D monster characters that can be combined with any other characters from the base game or Baldur’s Gate expansion. It also includes rules to expand the player count to 6.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use healing cards to get more than 10 life points?

No, the maximum points you can have is 10.

If I play a card with a lightning bolt symbol, do I have to play another card?

Yes, you must complete all actions on the cards you play.

What happens if I run out of cards in my hand after playing a double lightning bolt and have no cards in hand to play my second card?

Whenever you run out of cards you must pick up two more from your deck, this doesn’t count as an action.

Can you heal defence cards?

We interpret the rules as saying you can only use healing to heal a character not a defence card.

When I use Oriax’s mighty power to steal a card from another player, which discard pile does that card go into?

The stolen card goes into the discard pile of the player you stole it from.