Gameplay

In Chroma, two players face against each other with decks of 40 cards (plus up to 10 more in the sideboard) and try to reduce their opponent's life total from 40 to zero.

## Cards

Players start with 4 cards in their hand, with a maximum hand size of 10. The second player starts with an extra card and a Bag of Crowns, which gives one Chromatic mana when cast.

At the beginning of each player's turn they draw a card. If a player would draw one or more cards while their hand is full, those cards are **voided** instead.

If a player tries to draw a card when their deck is empty, they will take damage instead. The first draw will deal 1 damage; subsequent draws will increase the damage taken this way by 1 per card drawn. This damage pierces **Plating** and, unlike most other damage sources, it also pierces Barriers (see the Heroes section below). Damage taken this way is colloquially called "fatigue damage", or simply "fatigue".

The vast majority of cards cost mana to play; cards are divided between Spells and the different kinds of Permanents.

## Mana

One of the main aspects of deck creation is the mana system.

There are 6 types of mana, the most common four being  Ambition,  Devotion,  Insight, and  Valor. Each of those types is often referred to by the color of the mana orbs: Green for Ambition, Purple for Devotion, Blue for Insight and Red for Valor. These types of mana are colloquially collectively called "colored mana".

The fifth type of mana is called  Neutral. Players gain access to 2N when reaching Act 2. Manacosts represented by Neutral mana can also be paid for using colored mana, but not vice versa.

The final type of mana, known as  Chromatic, can replace one unit of colored mana. Unlike Neutral manacosts, Chromatic manacosts can only be paid using Chromatic mana.

Mana is tied to heroes, who each have a two unique abilities and a ultimate (read below) as well as a mana pool comprised of 12 colored mana, with mana colors varying from hero to hero. During deck creation, players sequence 10 of their 12 mana in order to determine what mana they will gain access to on each of the first 10 turns of the game.

At the beginning of each turn, the active player's mana tray is refilled, and a new orb becomes active. This makes mana sequencing during deckbuilding crucial in order to be able to cast cards on curve (read: in a way that allows spending all mana during the first few turns).

More about mana and magic in Chroma's lore is available in Magic and its Effects.

## Heroes

Each player in a match is represented by a Hero.

When building a deck, a player will have to first choose a hero, which will determine the mana available for the deck. Each hero has 12 colored mana to choose to, which amounts varying from hero to hero, although only 10 of those mana can be added into the mana tray. This manapool in turn affects which cards the hero can cast in a match, although there is no color restriction on cards when adding them to a deck.

Initially, heroes have 40 health and 2 "barriers", one at 30 health and another at 15. When a hero takes an amount of damage that would drop the health beyond a barrier, the health is set to the barrier threshold and the barrier is broken, possibly advancing the match to a different Act. Unlike Companions, heroes can be overhealed, up to a total of 80 health. **Plating** works on heroes as it does on Companions: as a barrier before health.

Heroes also have three abilities: A "primary", usually an active ability with 1-turn cooldown and 2N mana cost; a "secondary", which is usually a passive ability; and a "ultimate", which can be used only once and only once the game has reached Act 3.

## Permanents and The Story

A Permanent is a card which stays on the Story when played.

There are three main types of Permanents:

* Companions, which often participate in combat.
* Enchantments, which usually have powerful passive and active abilities and are destroyed after a given number of turns.
* Landmarks, which serve as a resilient passive ability holders, usually having "symmetric" effects.

Additionally, a fourth type of Permanent also exists: Enchantment Companions, which have mechanics from both types of Permanents.

Each player can have up to 7 permanents on the Story, each on one Page, although some heroes impose restrictions on the types of those Permanents.

When a Permanent is destroyed it goes to the Ashes, unless it is Voided or another effect instructs otherwise.

Marks are similar to permanents in that they are placed in the Story and cannot share a Page with another Mark, but they can share Pages with permaments and are not affected by effects that do not mention Marks especifically.

## The Ashes

When a permanent is destroyed or a spell is cast, they go into The Ashes:

* Companions are destroyed when their health drops to zero. Enchantment Companions become normal Enchantments instead when they are killed by damage.
* When an Enchantment's span reaches zero, it is destroyed. Enchantment Companions also die when their span ends, they do not become normal Companions.
* Landmarks are destroyed when all their **Plating** is removed by taking damage.

## Stances

Companions in Chroma can have the ability to switch between combat and guarded stances, being in the combat stance when initially entering the Story.

Companions in combat stance can attack or be attacked, while creatures in guarded stance can't attack or be attacked. Spells and abilities can target a Companion regardless of their stance, unless specified otherwise.

Even if a Companion is in the combat stance, it will not be able to attack unless it is marked "ready for combat" or an effect instructs otherwise, like the **Bolt** keyword. A companion is marked ready for combat if it is in the combat stance at the end of its controller's turn, and stops being marked if they leave the Story or (depending on the effect) change sides.

Companions cannot change stances after attacking, but they can attack after changing stances (provided they are marked for combat). A Companion can change stances on its own up to once per turn, although some effects can override this, such as Bebu Bumo's primary; if a companion has changed stances via an external effect on a given turn, it will not be able to change stance on its own that turn.

## Trivia

* Chromatic mana's dev name was Jolly mana.
	+ This was briefly changed to Prismatic mana before finally naming it Chromatic.

* There used to be a fourth type of Permanent: Weapons. They were reworked into other card types during Pre-Alpha alongside hero abilities.
	+ Heroes could have up to one Weapon equipped, allowing it to attack once per turn, as if they were a Companion.

* Before Pre-Alpha, Heroes used to have an active ability and a passive one. They were roughly equivalent to the current primary and secondary hero abilities, respectively.
* Hero maximum HP used to be 99. This was reduced to 80 for aesthetic reasons after the circular hero health display was implemented.
* Fatigue damage is actually dealt in multiple instances of 1 damage. For that reason, **Plating** and Barriers are ignored by fatigue damage.