1. Turn over the Playing Boards to show the Day Side of each, ensuring that the Shogun’s Palace (7) which is the new starting board is at one end and the Blue Forest (1) is at the other.

2. Each player places their Ninja miniature on the Shogun’s Palace in the row behind the marked Start Locations (Playing board 7).

3. Place a Black Guard Meeple on each tile marked with the black Guard symbol

and

4. Place a Red Patrolling Guard Meeple on each tile marked with the red Patrolling Guard symbol.

5. Place a red Senjutsu/Buki Cube on each tile marked with the Buki symbol.

6. Shuffle the Movement Cards and deal 4 decks of 12 cards. Set the remaining cards to one side. Give one deck of 12 cards to each player.

In a 2 or 3 player game: Set the unused deck/decks beside the playing boards. They become the Interchange Decks.

7. Give the First Player Token to the player who was first to reach the Shogun’s Palace.

8. Give each player a Throwing Star Token.

9. Give each player 1 Trip Wire, 1 Caltrops and 1 Hornet’s Nest. (Wana Tokens).

10. Shuffle the Buki (Purple) deck and set it beside board.

11. Set the Fire Tokens and any surplus Guard Meeples beside the playing board.

12. Set the Senjutsu Cards, Alarm Cards, Alarm Tracker and Lamp Cubes to one side. They are not used in the PvP game.

Once the game is set up for DAWN ESCAPE, the players continue playing using the same basic rules as the MIDNIGHT RAID (Co-op Game), with the same series of Movement Phases and Guard Phases as before (see related rules).

See rule 'Playing DAWN ESCAPE' for further information and differences in gameplay.