Lockwood's Asylum
Lockwood's Asylum Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Winning the Game
When there is a single player left in the game with at least 1 Health, that player wins the game and is able to escape the Lakeshore Asylum with her life!
If the last players left in the game are all reduced to 0 Health at the same time, they all lose and Dr. Lockwood claims victory for herself!
Terminology
Here are the various elements of a card:
- Card Name: This is the name of the card.
- Cost: This is the card's Cost. The higher a card's cost, the more powerful it tends to be.
- Produce Value: This is how much the card produces when it is used to purchase other cards.
- Card Type: This denotes the card's type. Cards can be Allies (which are helpful), Monsters (which are harmful), or Horrors (which are very harmful).
- Damage: This is how much damage the card deals during the Battle Phase.
- Health: This is how much damage the card can be assigned before it is slain.
- Card Text: This section contains any relevant rules text for the card.
- Flavor Text: The italicized text is descriptive text that has no actual game effect.
- Card Number: This is the card's number in the set. The building means that the card belongs to the core Lockwood's Asylum set.
Set Up
Each player creates a Deck consisting of 5 copies of the "Frightened Patient" card and 5 copies of the "Stoic Orderly" card. Set any extra Frightened Visitor and Stoic Orderly cards aside; they will not be used.
Next, create the Asylum Deck. Shuffle the remaining Ally and Monster cards together, then separate them into five equal piles.
Shuffle the Horror cards together and place a random face-down Horror card onto the bottom of each of these five stacks of cards. Set the remaining Horror cards aside; they will not be used during the game.
Without shuffling the stacks of cards, place them on top of each other to form the Asylum Deck. Place the Asylum Deck in the middle of the table.
To the right of the Asylum Deck are eight spaces (two rows of four spaces each) that represent the asylum. Cards in these spaces are said to be "the Asylum," "in the Asylum," or "in an Asylum space."
Flip over the top eight cards of the Asylum Deck, one at a time, and place each card into one of these spaces so that each Asylum space contains a single face-up card.
(Layout diagram: each player has a Deck, a Discard pile and a Room. The Asylum Deck sits in the middle with the eight Asylum spaces beside it, in two rows of four. Each player's Room starts with the cards in play in front of them.)
Reshuffling and Revealing
If a player is asked to draw cards from a Deck that has run out of cards, she draws as many cards as she can and then shuffles her Discard Pile back into her Deck. Once this is finished, she continues drawing cards until the appropriate number of cards have been drawn.
If the Asylum Deck runs out of cards, the game continues, but no new Monsters or Allies appear in the Asylum (as the Asylum Deck is empty).
Note that decks don't reshuffle simply for having zero cards left in them; they should only be reshuffled when a player needs to draw a card and cannot do so.
If a player is instructed to reveal a card, they flip the indicated card face-up and show it to every player.
If a player is instructed to reveal a card from a Deck that has no cards in it, then no card is revealed. The revealed cards are then returned to the appropriate deck.
How to Play
Determine the first player in any suitable fashion. Each player shuffles their ten card deck and draws five cards from the top into their hand, save for the first player, who only draws four cards on his first turn.
Each player takes one copy of each of the two Health Tracker cards and places a coin or other small object on the space denoting 20 Health. As they gain or lose Health over the course of the game, this marker lets players track their current Health value.
The first player then takes a full turn as described below. When she is finished, play passes to the player on her left, who takes a full turn as well. Continue in this way, going from player to player in a clockwise manner, until the only one player remains.
A game turn consists of the following phases:
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Start Phase: If there are any effects that resolve at the start of a player's turn, they happen now. If there are multiple effects that take place at this time, the player whose turn it is may decide the order in which they resolve.
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Threat Phase: The player places any Monster cards in her hand into her "Room" (the play area in front of her), one at a time, until there are either four Monsters in her Room or no more Monster cards in her hand. If there are already four or more Monster cards in her Room, the player doesn't place any additional Monster cards into her Room.
Then, the player places any Horror cards in her hand into her Room, regardless of how many Monster cards are currently in her Room.
Once the player has placed these cards in her Room, she draws one card for every card placed in this way.
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Action Phase: The player may play a card from her hand with a listed "Action" to gain its effects. To do so, she places the card face-up in front of her, so that every player can see it, and then resolves its effects. Once the card's effects have resolved, the player places it in her discard pile (unless the card's effect says otherwise).
There is no limit to the number of Actions that a player can play on her turn. After each Action is resolved, the player discards the card used to perform that Action to the top of her Discard Pile, which is located to the right of her Room.
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Purchase Phase: The player may purchase Allies or Monsters from the Asylum using the cards in her hand. To do so, the player selects the card she wishes to purchase and discard cards from her hand with a combined "Produce" value that is equal to or greater than the chosen card's "Cost."
The player may purchase multiple cards during this phase, but each card must be purchased one at a time; any "Produce" in excess of the purchased card's Cost is lost and cannot be carried over to purchase other cards.
Ally cards that the player purchases are placed in her Room, ready to defend her from the Monsters that have found her. Any Monsters that the player purchases, however, are placed in the Room of the player to her left!
Card Timing
Sometimes, players will encounter situations where one card effect triggers another card effect. In these situations, the player whose turn it is finishes resolving the current card effect, then she chooses another card that needs to be resolved and completely resolves that card, continuing in this manner until no other cards need to be resolved.
Hardcore Mode (Variant Rule)
In Hardcore Mode, a player must end their turn with at least 1 Health to win. This variant is recommended for 2-player games.
This change forces players to focus on both offensive and defensive strategies, as purchasing too many Monsters can lead to a "winning" player being devoured by the very Monsters she directed toward her opponent(s).
Killed Players
When a player is reduced to 0 Health or below, that player is killed. The player chooses half of the Monsters in her Room, rounded up, and places them in the Room of the player to her left.
The player then places any Horrors in her Room in the Asylum in whatever spaces she wishes. Any cards already in those spaces are placed on the bottom of the Asylum Deck. If it is the killed player's turn, she also refills every empty space in the Asylum with a face-up card from the Asylum Deck, just as if it were the End Phase.
The player (and all cards in her Deck, Hand, Discard Pile, and Room) is then eliminated.
Survival Mode (Solitaire Variant)
This variant allows a single player to play a solitaire version of Lockwood's Asylum.
Create a Deck as normal (5x Frightened Patients and 5x Stoic Orderlies) and set your Health to 20.
Place all of the non-Starter Allies into a single Asylum Deck. Deal out the Monsters into four ten-card stacks and set the rest aside; they will not be used in this game. Randomly select four Horror cards and place each one on the bottom of a stack. Without shuffling, combine the stacks to create the Lockwood Deck.
There are only four Asylum spaces in Survival Mode, and they are only filled with Ally cards from the Asylum Deck. Any cards purchased from an Asylum space are placed in your Room.
Cards in Survival Mode cannot interact with other Rooms (as there are none).
At the start of each turn, place the top two cards of the Lockwood Deck into your Room.
In Survival Mode, Horrors are not discarded from your Room at the end of your turn, and they cannot be assigned Damage unless all the Monsters in your Room have already been assigned Damage equal to their Health.
At the end of the turn, before refilling Asylum spaces, you may place any non-Horror cards in one or more Asylum spaces on the bottom of the Asylum Deck. After your turn ends, begin a new turn, continuing in this manner until the game ends.
After a Horror is slain, resolve any Slain effects on its card, then remove it from the game, place it in a Victory Pile near the player's Room, and permanently reduce the number of Asylum spaces by one.
If your Health reaches 0, you are overwhelmed by Dr. Lockwood's creations and killed. When you place your second Horror in your Victory Pile, you win!
For a greater challenge, increase the number of Horrors you need to win to three (or even four, if you're feeling particularly masochistic).