How To Play

## Introducing The Cards

There are a number of card types within the game.

- Areas

- Characters

- Conditions

- Gear

- Legendaries

- Spells

### Characters

Character cards have a strength value that represents their effectiveness in battle. They also have a number of abilities that can be activated during your preparation stage (unless otherwise stated). They also have *keyword abilities* which show passive abilities that can be shared by many cards. (See Keyword Abilities).

### Conditions

These cards are utility cards which represent natural events and actions.

### Legendaries

These cards represent powerful spells and relics that heavily benefit your deck. They also represent your health. Positioning of the legendaries is key to your strategy's effectiveness.

### Spells

These are cards that you can use to support your position in the battle. They can strengthen your characters, weaken your opponent's and do many other things. These are utility cards which are usually cast by your own creatures. Some spells may become attached to the creature that cast them and some may be reused. Others will be discarded when used.

## Setting Up The Game

To play the game, you need a 40 card deck and 5 legendary cards. Place the deck in the deck zone on your field and place the five legendary cards into your legendary zones in an order that you feel they may benefit the game. (See Legendaries if you need guidance).

To start the game, determine who is going first.

Both players choose a rank one character in their deck and place it in their central character zone. This character becomes their Immortal. Players will play higher rank characters onto this character to 'rank up' their Immortal as the game progresses.

Both players draw 5 cards.

The player who goes first cannot rank up their Immortal or attack that turn.

## Playing The Game

The game consists of a series of turns between both players.

A turn consists of a series of steps:

1) Turn Start: Draw a card. Any effects that resolve at the start of the turn resolve before drawing the card unless it says otherwise.

2) Preparation: Here, you play any cards you wish to play from your hand and activate any effects you wish to use during preparation. You can do any of these things in any order. This is where you will recruit a character (if you wish to). Quite often, recruiting a new character will be the first thing you do during preparation. (See Recruiting).

3) Attacking: Here, your characters may attack your opponent's characters, unless it is the first turn (See Attacking).

4) Wake: This allows you to prepare for your opponent's turn. Any effects that activate during the wake can be used now. During this phase, you can do any of the steps you can do during preparation, but it is not treated as preparation. You can recruit a character during this phase only if you did not do so in your preparation phase.

5) End Turn: Any effects that activate when the turn ends activate now and then it becomes the other player's turn.

6) End Round: If both players have already had a turn, the round ends and any effects that resolve at the end of the round happen now.

### Playing

The term 'played' when mentioned on a character's card refers to it being recruited or summoned. On any other card, it refers to whenever you play that card onto the field.

### Recruiting

Recruiting is the process of playing a character from your hand. You can play one character from your hand this way during your preparation phase. You can recruit any number of additional characters if card effects and abilities would allow you to do so but this is called Summoning.
When you recruit a character, you must pay any cost listed on that card beforehand.
If you recruit a creature as your Immortal, you must play it onto your Immortal which is the same rank or one rank lower than your previous Immortal.
If you play a supporter, it's rank must be lower than your Immortal's.

There are other kinds of recruitment. (See Evolution).

### Summoning

Summoning is the process of playing a character due to an effect or ability. You cannot summon creatures except by the effect of a card. This is different to recruiting. Any effects that trigger when a character is recruited do not activate. However, you must still pay any cost on that character.

### Attacking

During your turn, you may want to make an attack - or series of attacks - in order to damage your opponent or to reduce the strength of their forces. For a character to attack, designate the attacker and target and dedicate (turn the card sideways) the attacker. Simply, if the attacker's strength is higher than the strength of the target, the target is hit by the target. Unless the target is an immortal, it is defeated when hit. A defeated character is placed into the discard pile. If the target is a player's immortal, that immortal is 'Afflicted'. An affliction represents damage to your Immortal.

### Affliction

When an Immortal is hit, it is afflicted. At this point, either turn your face-down legendary card in your lowest legendary zone face-up (if you have none face-up already) or discard your face-up legendary card. (When you first take damage, flip (turn faceup) your legendary in zone 1. When you take your last damage to your legendary, you will discard the legendary card in zone 5. This will be your last legendary to take.

If you are afflicted while you have no cards in your legendary zone, you lose the game.

REMEMBER: This is not the same type of damage as when an effect or ability would deal a character damage. (See Damaging Characters Vs Reducing Strength).

### Ending The Game

The game ends when a player takes damage when they no longer have any legendaries. Also, if a player no longer has enough cards in their deck to resolve an effect or ability, they lose the game. A player may also surrender at any time, in which case the game ends immediately and the other player wins.

## Damaging Characters & Reducing Strength

Some effects and abilities refer to damaging characters. When a character takes damage reduce their strength by that amount. Other effects may mention reducing a character's strength. (This may also be represented by a minus sign. 'That character gets -1000 permanently', in the same way a strength increase may be referred to by a plus sign). In that instance, also reduce the character in question's strength by that amount. These are two different pieces of terminology. Damage is intended to refer more to hurting a creature and reducing strength is meant to represent crippling or weakening a creature. Though they essentially do the same thing, they are different.

Regardless, If a character's strength becomes below 0 due to either of these things they are discarded. This is referred to as 'over damage'. If an Immortal has its strength reduced below 0 through either of these means, it is afflicted and then it immediately removes all strength reductions and damage from itself.

Track damage and strength reductions with specific dice or counters that clearly show what is ailing a character.

If a character is healed (See Healing), then damage is removed. However, strength reduction effects are not removed when a character is healed.

NOTE: If an effect does not state that the damage or reduction lasts until the end of the turn, it is permanent.

## Dedicate

The term dedicate refers to the action which a character has committed themselves to undertake during that turn. When a character attacks, or when a character instructs you to 'dedicate' it, turn the card sideways. A card that is dedicated by an effect cannot attack that turn or perform any other actions (such as activating abilities or casting spells) that would also require that character to be dedicated.
Dedicated characters may still perform actions such as activating abilities and casting spells unless those actions require the character to be dedicated as a cost to perform.