If you are new to the game Fury of Dracula, here is a beginner’s guide for you.
The one-versus-many deduction game Fury of Dracula was inspired by Bram Stoker’s well-known book Dracula. Up to four hunters take on different roles while one player controls Dracula.
In the game, Dracula tries to evade the hunters while spreading new vampires throughout Europe, and the hunters work to track down Dracula and kill him to put an end to his terrifying rule.
Reviewing the rules will help determine whether it’ll work well with your own gaming group; without further ado, here’s how to play (and some tips for mastering) the Fury of Dracula board game!
Setup of the Game
Your four hunters are suggested to start in certain cities in the basic rules, but you are free to change them if you’d like. Dracula chooses his starting point after each hunter has decided on an entrance location.
As soon as a player enters his current location or one from his trail, he must reveal the location card, providing hints as to where he is hiding. He will place the location card face-down on a track that can hold up to six cards.
Set the timer to Monday morning, shuffle all tokens and cards (we’ll deal with them later), and have Dracula draw five encounter cards for his starting hand. Your first-day phase can now begin!
Day and Night Phases
All hunters will take one action (which we’ll cover soon) in the day phase, then they’ll all take one at night, and they must activate in the order listed below:
- Lord Godalming
- Dr. Seward
- Val Helsing
- Mina Harker
Plan your actions carefully to take advantage of the freedom you have in the day phase since the night phases have some limitations on the kinds of actions you can carry out. You can talk to other players about your upcoming moves, but unless you’re using the trade action (which permits secret communication), Dracula is allowed to overhear your conversation.
You add a despair token to the despair track each time a week in the game passes (when you go from Sunday night to Monday morning), which amplifies the power of some Dracula abilities.
Hunter Actions
Move Action
You can travel the board with move actions only during the day. You can travel from one city to other using roads. If you have a train ticket, you may move through the railroads (which are much faster) by the number of spaces specified on the ticket.
Due to color restrictions on train tickets, you can only travel on white or yellow tracks. You can enter sea zones from port towns (which have anchors), but you must pass if you are starting a night phase there and must keep moving if you are starting a day phase.
Supply Action
Items are essential for your upcoming battle with Dracula. You can draw both an item and an event card when using the supply action in a large city (which has a special icon), but only an event card when using it in a small city.
You draw both during the day from the top of the deck, and if the event card has a bat symbol, you can just toss it away without consequence.
Think carefully before supplying at night because if you do, you must draw your event from the bottom of the deck and, if it has a bat symbol, you must give it to Dracula (who can use its powers). While some events have an immediate impact, others have a delayed one.
Special Action
In order to complete a hunter’s special action, he must resolve either an effect from an event card in his hand or an ability from his character sheet that can be used as an action.
Ticket Action
You’ll need train tickets in order to travel by train. By using this action, you can take one from the face-down supply; however, until you draw it, you won’t know what numbers it bears (which indicate how many squares you must move). Each hunter can hold a maximum of two at once. If you don’t want to risk a supply, try to carry out this action at night.
Rest Action
Simply put, this allows you to regain one health (or two, if you’re in the same city as Dr. Another excellent move to make at night, is to use Seward). You are only able to add to your initial amount of health.
Trade Action
You can conduct a trade with another hunter in the same city to exchange goods as you see fit. Additionally, you are able to discuss strategy in private with no worries about Dracula listening in. The only person who can trade event cards is Van Helsing (more on that later).
Search Action
When you enter a city that Dracula has been to, he might or might not play the encounter card he hid there; searching for a place makes the encounter happen. This helps prevent the powerful “matured” effects that occur when an encounter card is pushed to the end of Dracula’s trail.
Dracula Actions
The Dracula phase starts when each hunter has finished their night action. Dracula recruits followers to produce vampires, and bends the laws of nature during the Dracula phase, leaving misery in his wake. Every time Dracula moves during a phase, he then places an encounter card where he has moved.
Moving
Dracula can travel by land and sea, but not by railroad. Dracula tracks his movement by laying location cards facedown along the trail rather than moving his figure as hunters do on the game board. Each location on the board is represented by a separate location card in Dracula’s location deck.
To move, Dracula slides all cards already on the trail one space to the right (see “Dracula Movement Example” on page 9). He then secretly chooses one card from the location deck, lays it face-down on the first spot on the trail, and moves on.
The location he selects on the card must be close to the one he is currently in. The reference map will be useful to Dracula in determining his range of motion.
It is risky for Dracula to travel by sea because his location card will notify the hunters that he has done so because sea location cards have a different card back than city location cards.
In addition, Dracula takes two damage each time he enters a sea zone from a port. Dracula sustains one damage for each transition from one sea zone to another.
If Dracula moves to a city that a hunter lives in, Dracula is made known.
Placing An Encounter Card
Following his movement, Dracula picks a card from his hand and lays it face-down on top of the location card on the trail’s first space. Dracula is currently revealed, and he cannot play an encounter card if he placed a sea location on the trail this turn.
Dracula can obstruct the hunters in a number of ways by setting traps and spawning vampires thanks to encounter cards. Dracula draws encounter cards until he has five in his hand if he ever has less than five in his hand.
End of the Game
Dracula wins the game by advancing the influence track to space “13”. He can advance the influence track in several ways, as follows:
- The track moves forward by the number of spaces indicated on the vampire encounter card when that card is matured.
- Resolving the “Fangs” combat card against a mesmerized hunter advances the track by one.
- The track moves forward by two when a hunter is defeated, plus one for each despair token present on the board.
The hunters win the game if Dracula is defeated because he has 15 damage tokens listed on his character sheet.