Stats:
No. of players: 2-4
Amount of time to play: 30-90 min
Age requirements: 10+
Set-up time: 5 min

Loot and Scoot Rules Description:

Loot and Scoot is classic dungeon crawl complete with monsters, looting and running when the going gets to tough. You delve into your opponents’ dungeons in search of treasure, but be careful there are plenty of monsters waiting to stop you.

To win Loot and Scoot you want to have the most loot once a dungeon boss is killed. To begin you and the other players take a play mat with a dungeon on it. You also each take turns randomly drawing one of the boss monsters.

Now you must set up your dungeon. The monster tiles are placed face-down and you take and look at it and place it face-down in one of the rooms in your dungeon. Each room has a level and it is best if you place a monster in a room of its level or greater. If you put a monster in a room with a level lower than it has, it will be easier to kill.

When you draw from the pool of tiles there will be monsters, poison and treasure. Once everyone has filled their dungeon you select your party. Your party is made up of two of these classes: squire, thief, priest or wizard. When selecting your party it cannot have the same exact two classes as one of the other players’ parties.

On your turn you may take two actions or take one action and go looting. Your choices of actions are: recruit an adventurer, hire hirelings, beg funds, build an upgrade, train adventurers or trade adventurers.

If you go looting you enter an opponent’s dungeon and flip over the face-down tile if it is a monster you must decide whether to fight or run. If you fight you will roll a number of six-sided dice based on the revealed monster. To defeat a monster you must roll a six. If you don’t kill the monster it will hit you. Hits will kill your hirelings and possibly send your adventurers back to the inn. You can continue to fight as long as you have adventurers to battle.

Defeating monsters gets you treasure and they may be carrying more treasure. If you decide not to fight but simply run from an encounter you get a bonus the next time you fight. If you leave the dungeon after killing at least one monster you earn 3 gp for each level of the highest monster tile you killed. If you leave after fighting at least one round you get 1 gp from the bank for each room you looted.

This continues until the boss monster is killed in one of the dungeons. If you had any unclaimed treasure tiles in your dungeon you get the loot from them. You score one VP for every 5 gold you have. The player with the most VP wins the game.

A Quick Review of Loot and Scoot:

Loot and Scoot plays quick, is easy to teach and fun. There is enough strategy and variety to keep things interesting.

This is a classic dungeon crawl with many RPG elements. You can level your heroes, kill monsters and even bring hirelings with you. The implementation of these red-shirts is great. They are simply there to take hits for you.

Loot and Scoot also has many of your typical fantasy monsters and where you place them can help fend off your opponents. Since the monsters placed in your dungeon are random it makes things different every time.

The components are typical for Victory Point Games. While not amazing they are pretty good quality and designed well. All you information need is easy to understand and each tile holds a lot of info.

Loot and Scoot is fun and definitely worth buying if you are looking for a light-weight dungeon crawler. It plays well with 2-4 players but really shines with three or four.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 3 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 5 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 3 out of 6
Fun 4 out of 6
Overall 4 out of 6