Each player is the leader of a clan of Dwarves returning to a lost mountain kingdom. Players are competing with each other to remove threats, find artifacts, complete tasks, and earn honor. The player with the most victory points at the end of the game becomes the new King of the reclaimed mountain.

It is fundamentally a worker placement game, but with many rules that increase player interaction. Players compete to recruit four different worker types as they also compete to utilize locations before their opponents.

The board is made up of 20 halls, semi-randomly placed at the start of the game. The top 8 halls were undefended, but the lower 12 halls have threats that must be cleared before they can be accessed.

Each hall has one or two labors that can be performed in them. Each labor requires a particular type of dwarf, and often will require a team of dwarves plus other resources to be completed. Each labor offers its own rewards, from honor or gold, or mine cards, or artifacts, or retaining more dwarves to a players palace.

A particular labor can only be used from one to four times a year, so players are competing to use use labors before each other. Because labors have different requirements to complete, they are also competing to gather the types of dwarves needed for the labors they want to perform.

There are four kinds of dwarves: Workers, Warriors, Craftsmen, and Nobles. They are generally used for the kinds of labors one might expect from their names.

Unlike most worker placement games, the players do not have their own pieces. There are common pools of dwarves available, and the players take or assign dwarves from those common pools. One pool is a hall called The Commons, which has dwarves ready to work in them. Players can use one dwarf from The Commons on each of their turns. Dwarves are also in The Camp outside of the mountain, recovering or resting until players recruit them to their palaces.

Play goes around the table, with players selecting a labor they want to perform in a hall, or a threat they want to remove. When a threat is removed, the hall it guarded is revealed and the player effectively gets a free turn to be the first to perform a labor in the hall.

Players can obtain mine cards that will have either gold, iron, gems or mithril. Gold is turned in immediately, while the other three are kept secret until they are used to complete a labor or a task.

There are also Tasks which the players can complete to earn victory points, which generally require four or five resources.

Artifacts may be gained in several ways, and provide victory points as well as the opportunity to attract a dwarf from the Camp when it is revealed. They are a way to hide your possible activities from your opponents.

The game is played in five segments, each representing a year, though players can agree to shorter games by reducing the number of years played. A year ends when The Commons is empty of Dwarves and a player passes. That player will be the first player for the following year. Then the dwarves out in the halls return to The Commons to be available for the next year.

Many of the threats have year-end effects that can remove dwarves from The Commons, remove them from the players' palaces, take gold or mine cards, re-close halls, or even remove a hall from the game.

Players are also determining what kind of values the reclaimed kingdom will be known for. There are four Dwarven virtues - Military, Craft, Wealth, and Heritage. Players can promote these virtues by completing Tasks and performing Labors. The most promoted virtues can earn players bonus points at the end of the game for each Task they completed or Artifact they acquired associated with those virtues.

The combination of randomly placed hidden halls and randomly placed threats with varying effects provides an enormous amount of replayability. Players need to consider the kinds of labors and threats that are present when devising their plans, as well as what dwarves are available in The Commons.

It is a victory point gathering game. There are six ways to earn VP:
Rewards for a Labor
Completing a Task
Acquiring Artifacts
Clearing Threats
Bonus points for clearing the most threats
Bonus Points for matching Tasks and Artifacts to the most promoted Dwarven Virtues

-description from designer

Lost Halls of the Mountain King

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