Slay the Spire: The Board Game

The base board game supports 1–4 cooperating players, each controlling one character and choosing the next room along connected map paths. Defeat your chosen final Act's boss to win; at the end of any Act you may stop, continue or save. Four Acts are not mandatory. Under standard rules, any player reaching zero HP immediately defeats the whole party.

Resolve rooms as combats, Events, Merchants, Treasures or Campfires. At a Campfire each player either heals 3 HP or upgrades one card. Upgrade by flipping the same card to its green-text side, not by keeping two copies. Removing and transforming cards follow their own procedures; do not import video-game costs or numbers.

Each combat round has one shared Player Turn followed by an Enemy Turn. Players begin together: set energy to 3 and Block to zero, draw five cards, roll one shared die, resolve die changes and start-of-turn abilities. That result applies to all relevant relics and enemies for the round; do not reroll per player or monster. Energy has a maximum of 6, player Block 20, and there is no hand-size limit.

During play, coordinate cards, potions and abilities between players in any order, but finish resolving the current card first. Pay your own energy, choose targets and resolve text from top to bottom. Normally discard the card; Powers remain in play and Exhaust cards enter the exhaust pile. If you need to draw from an empty deck, shuffle discards, excluding the draw card currently resolving. Resolve end-of-turn abilities and discard your hand, subject to explicit exceptions such as Retain.

Players can normally target enemies in any row. A row-wide effect affects every enemy in the chosen row and always includes the Boss. Effects on yourself normally affect only you: energy and Block are not freely shared, though text may explicitly help teammates. Enemies normally target their own row's player, while group attacks affect all players as their icons instruct.

At the start of the Enemy Turn, remove enemies' leftover Block. Resolve enemies from the top row downward, left to right in each row, with Bosses last; follow the rules for enemies explicitly saying they act last. Use their fixed, die-based or cube-indicated intentions, then advance cube action tracks. Block prevents damage, but not effects explicitly saying to lose HP.

Combat ends immediately when every monster is dead or has left, except that pending on-death summons must still be handled. Resolve end-of-combat abilities and rewards. A normal card reward reveals three cards and lets you take at most one, or skip; unchosen cards go to the bottom of the appropriate reward deck. Return Powers, discards and exhausted cards to your deck, remove temporary Status cards and reset combat resources. Ending combat does not automatically restore full HP.

Base rules allow only potions to be given to teammates outside combat; cards, relics and gold cannot be freely traded. However, at a Merchant or Event you may pay any portion of another player's purchase with your gold. Each player holds at most three potions. They are normally single-use and return to the potion deck's bottom after use. An over-limit gain must be skipped, passed to a teammate below the limit, or accommodated by first making room under the rules.