- Place six towers and six walls in the center of the board.
- Find 5 Goblin tokens, 3 Orc tokens, and 2 Troll tokens. Return the other tokens to the box.
- Shuffle the tokens and place them facedown next to the board.
- Roll the die. Ignoring the Forest ring, place a random token face-up on the outermost ring of that die's wedge,
pointing the highest number corner towards the center (its hit points).
- If the wedge is full, re-roll the die and try again.
- Create a shuffled deck of only Swordsman, Knight, Archer, Hero, and Barbarian cards. Return the other cards to the box.
Players alternate taking turns as follows.
- The current player rolls the die and draws that may cards from the deck.
They choose one to play, if possible.
All drawn/played cards are then discarded to the discard pile.
- If not enough cards are in the deck, shuffle the discard pile to make a new deck.
- A hit monster loses one hit point by rotating its token. A monster with zero hit points is slain and is removed from the board.
- The player rolls the die to advance monsters. All monsters in that wedge move one space inward if unoccupied.
- If a monster is blocked by a wall/tower, the wall/tower is removed, and the monster stays still.
- A monster not blocked by a wall/tower is able to move into the castle. These monsters advance clockwise within the castle when their die is rolled, and can only be stopped by the Barbarian.
- If all monsters are slain, the players win!
- If all towers are removed, the players lose...