Welcome to the arena for today’s Dungeon Derby! We are very excited that you are here and even more excited that you have brought your money with you. Sit back and relax as you enjoy the race, and feel free to help or hinder the competitors. After all, it’s your money that’s at stake.
So….Dungeon Derby is a racing/betting game where each player is encouraged to manipulate the contestants to achieve their desired outcome. Each player will receive a Champion card which denotes which of the contestants you have sponsored in the race, but you can bet on anyone. If your sponsored Champion wins the race (or comes in 2nd or 3rd), you win the purse, but if a Champion you bet on wins the race, you can win some big money. Let’s take a closer look.
Gameplay
Dungeon Derby is played in several phases which at first seems daunting, but after 1 round, everyone will be on board, and it goes relatively quickly. Here are the phases:
Draw/Quest Phase – During this phase you draw cards. If you have less than 3 Treasure Cards in your hand, you draw up to 3. Treasure cards can be Armor, Encounter or Spell cards (more on these in a minute). Quest cards can be drawn if you have lost most of your money (below $250). They help get you back in the game.
Line Up Phase – During this phase you are preparing the race course. You clear away the previous race’s Armor cards and draw a new Purse Card. The Purse Card will tell you how much treasure to put out for the purse for this particular race as well as the Odds that will pay out if someone wins there bet. It also tells you which lanes to put the Champions in. Champions will change lanes each race, but Encounter and Treasure tokens will not (more on this next).
Armor/Encounter Phase – During this phase you are going to manipulate the Champions and the Racetrack. In real time, you place Armor cards on the slots behind the starting line for each Champion. Armor cards will either provide a significant advantage for Champions or a hinderance.
Encounter cards are played to the Treasure Discard Pile, and then you hunt down the tokens that correspond to the card and place them in the lane or lanes that will help or hinder the chosen Champion. Only 2 of the same type of encounter token may be played per lane (2 Monster, 2 Trap, 2 Loot or 2 Champion tokens). And, in a really fun twist, the Encounter cards stay on the board if the Champion doesn’t land on them directly. This means that in subsequent races a different Champion may encounter them instead, since Champions will switch lanes from race to race.
Betting Phase – Once the Armor and Encounter phase is over, it’s time to bet. But, you don’t flip over the Armor cards yet, that happens after betting. If you think that after looking at the board, Roque and Roller has the best chance of winning, then you place their token face down on your champion board and place your bet on top. 
If they win you win, most of the time at 5:1 odds. If Roque and Roller doesn’t finish first, you lose your bet. Bets don’t pay off on 2nd and 3rd place finishes.
Race Phase – Now we come to the whole point of this exercise, the race. First we reveal all armor cards and perform any actions required in the order they were played. Any cards giving boosts to rolling or negative stat adjustments are kept on the board as a reminder during the Race.
And they’re off! The Dungeon Master for this round rolls the dice and moves the shown Champion the number of spaces on the number die. That’s all. Except that it’s not.
See, now is the time to play Spell cards. Spell cards can be played anytime during the race phase. In fact, they are encouraged. The Dungeon Master must give time in between each roll for the players to play Spell Cards. If the Champions land on one of the Encounter Tokens, they do what it says and then you just keep rolling and moving and throwing spells until a Champion crosses the finish line.
Payout Phase – Winners are paid. The purse is rewarded to 1st, 2nd and 3rd place Champions, and winning bets (1st place only) are paid out. Then we do it all over again.
So…what do we think?
First off, this game is fun. It took us a minute to get to the actual gameplay, because there is so much that you need to understand before you can start, but once you do it goes really fast. This is definitely a game that is easier to learn from someone rather than learning from reading the rules. The rules are by no means bad, there is just a lot of information (but to make it easier, they are adding more images for clarification).
The game is billed as a “real time” game, and it is, just not in the maddening hectic insane way that often drives some of my gaming group away. You place Armor and Treasure cards in real time, and you roll for movement and play Spell cards in real time, but I never felt rushed or rattled. So don’t let the real time aspect scare you away if that is not usually your thing. We did have two players who were sitting more towards the finish line who felt a disadvantage because they were sitting far away from the place they needed to play their Armor cards, but most of that was because the table was large.
Having the Armor cards be played face down is a super nice touch, since there is no way to tell whether the cards played on a particular Champion are good or bad until after the betting.
The Spell cards are probably my favorite aspect of the game. 
They have the ability to change each race completely, or not at all. I got a particularly good one early on and held it until just the right moment to seal my victory (and thus win the game), which I have to imagine is exactly what the designers would’ve wanted me to do.
The Quests are as perfectly silly as you would want them to be in a game about weird mythical racing creatures. If you are down on your luck and low on cash, you can draw a Quest card and perform the task.
Most of the time you either just straight up gets some money or have to roll dice to determine how much if any money you get. But…there are times when you must play Rock, Paper, Scissors or Sing in order to complete your quest. Quite charming.
Pay attention to the Purse cards and the order of the Champions in their lanes. We missed this at first and it really changed the game. 
You definitely want the Champions to keep moving around since the Encounter tiles stay from race to race. This keeps things interesting, and makes sure that one Champion is not bogged down the entire game. The only thing I would say is I wish there were more cards that had different Odds on them. I only found one that was different than 5:1, and it was 10:1. Still, this is one of my favorite elements of the game. That and the Spell cards.
The components are all good quality, with nice chunky tiles and sturdy Champion pawns, which it looks like may get upgraded to minis if the images in the rulebook are to believed. The board is huge but folds up nicely, and to be honest, if it was smaller I might feel cheated out of some of the racing. The racetrack is just the right size.
I do think that, at first, you feel as though it takes a long time to get to racing. But, this changes after even the first race. I taught it to four different groups of players at a game event and this was universally true after the first few minutes. Once you get it, you get it. Everyone picks up on the nuances and the gameplay flows really well after that. And I can imagine that once you have a group of experienced players going from the beginning, it will steam along.
So, what’s the verdict?
Dungeon Derby is a light, quick racing game with plenty of betting and ridiculousness thrown in just for fun. Never before have I cheered so much for a MInotaur or cursed a Hammerhead Shark for not being fast enough. Just when you think the Champion that you bet on is nearing the finish line, a Spell will be cast that throws them into last place or propels another character just past them to steal the victory. But don’t worry there will be plenty of time to get your revenge in the next race. Just make sure you bet on the right Champion. Move it shark!
Dungeon Derby was sent to us by Rabbiteer in exchange for an honest review, which is exactly what we provided.