Awesome Rules Concept

Under Construction These pages are under heavy construction & only intended for the developers. Notice that most of the info will change. Please contact us if you want to help us out or join the dev. team.

Intro.

Disclaimer & info

• These rules are, in their current state, only intended for developers that work on the same ruleset as ngoeminne, which is dubbed "the Awesome Rules Concept", or ARC in short.
• Lingual edits are allowed by anyone as long as they keep the semantics and logic of the game, the intention of a rule and so on, fully intact and don't change how the game works.
• Rule-edits are allowed only after being cleared with ngoeminne first.
• The ARC intends to live up to the General Design Document & the Local Design Document for the ORC.
• All content in here can and will likely change as we continue development, concept- & playtesting and revising. Nothing in here represents the finalized game nor should it be seen as set in stone.
• Questions? Please post them in our forum after mailing us for an account in there or mail them.

Getting Started

WTactis is a card game, with freely accessible cards (downloadable).

• Each card in the game belongs to a certain faction; Gaian, Dark Legion, Red Banner, House of Nobels and the Empire.
• Each card has a card type; city, creature, enchantment, magic and event.
• Each player builds a deck of at least 60 cards. The deck may contain cards of multiple factions, and all kind of card types, however it must at least contain three cities, one for each of the three disciplines 'Body', 'Mind' and 'Soul'.
• Each player starts with 15 Victory Points (VP)

Material & Prep

Before you start you need some material.

• A deck of cards (see deck building below), you can download the cards, print, cut and sleeve them.
• Something that can help to keep track of the victory points (i.e. pen & paper, or a 20 sided dices, or one of the many life counter apps)
• Something that can help to keep track of each city's defensive strength (i.e. pen & paper, or a some 6 sided dices)
• For each faction in your deck, a set of corresponding counters, e.g. Green for Gaian, Black for Dark Legion, Red for Red Banner and White for the Empire (10 to 15 counters should suffice)

Winning the game

The aim of the game is to defeat all your opponents. You can defeat an opponent on several ways.

1. You are able to reduce your opponent's Victory Points (VP) to 0
2. You have destroyed all of your opponent's cities
3. You have reached 30 Victory Points (VP)
4. Your opponent has used up all the cards in his/her deck and is forced to draw another card

In case you and your opponent's victory points simulations reach 0 or 30, the player holding the most cities in play wins.

Resource cards, the source of all your power

During the game you can put a card from your hand face down on the table and turn them into power gems.

1. The card becomes a resource card for a given faction
2. Multiple resource card for the same faction are stacked together in a pile
3. The player decides the faction and puts a corresponding power gem (counter) next to it.

(Green for gaian, Black for Dark Leagion, Red for Red Banner, Blue for House of Nobles and White for The Empire)

The power gems give you the ability to play cards from your hand, and bring them into play.

Card Layout

Let's look at a typical card layout.

1. Cost & Faction Logo: The Faction logo - in this case a leaf for the Gaian faction - shows which faction the card belongs to. If the card has a power cost, it will be shown there as a number. The cost is the amount of power gems you will have to spend from the corresponding pile. In this case, you'll have to use the green gems you've put the Gaian resource pile.
2. Loyalty: A card may have a number of loyalty marks. In case you ran out of gems for a certain faction, you are allowed to use one gem reserved for a different faction, for each loyalty mark on the card.
3. Card Art: The illustration has no impact on the rules of the game or anything else. The card art is of purely aesthetical value and also helps the player to quickly identify and remember cards in addition to give the game a nice theme and setting.
4. Card name / types: Every card has a unique name. Each part of the name also doubles as a subtype.
5. Additional Card subtypes: This line contains the types(s) of the card. Each card type is governed by specific rules found in this document, while subtypes are usually associated with rules found on other cards.
6. Coloured border: The border around a card reveals what faction it belongs to. Our Elvish Sorceress has a green surrounding border, revealing - together with the faction logo in 1 - that this is indeed a Gaian card.
7. Card Text: Additional abilities of the card are written in this area.
8. Combat Statistics: The first red value is the units attack (ATK). Second green shield value is it's defence (DEF). These values are used when being part of a combat.
9. Discipline: <obsolete: disciplines will be shown in city cards as text in the card's type>
10. Footer: Contains info about the cards collectors number and version, rarity and the game.
    

Paying a card

1. The player checks if all prerequisites are met, if they are not the card can't be played.
2. The player looks at the card's faction's power cost.
3. The player then moves the corresponding amount of unused power gems on to the resource cards pile.
4. The power has now been spent, regardless if the card actually gets resolved or not (played).
5. The gems on the resource cards pile are used for this turn and cannot be used to produce power.
6. The card is put into play if it resolved.

Prerequisites may be written on the card and are often custom, straight forward and vary highly for each card. E.g. This card can only be played if you control less creatures than your opponent(s).

Setting up the battleground

The battleground ( (the kitchen table :-) ) is divided into imaginary areas. The below table overview is an example of how a game should be properly setup. It shows only the table side of one of the players. Each additional player should have the same table layout.

Kingdom (1)

When you build a city you place it in the kingdom area. When creatures visit the city they become residents of that city and are placed on the same imaginary row as the city. Cities are peaceful places, so residents of a city can not launch attacks, yet they defend their city bravely when attacked.

Your Army (2)

Creatures that will help launch an attack or defend against enemy attacks must be in the your Army face up.

The Faction's Power Reserves (3)

Each faction in your deck has it's own power gems.

• If you have produced more power than you have used during a turn the surplus is lost at the end of the turn.

Deck (4)

This area is where the deck resides and from where the player draws new cards every time it becomes his/her turn.

Graveyard (5)

The area where all the discarded, used up or somehow wasted or killed cards go, like for instance dead creatures and used event cards. All cards in the grave are face up. Any player may search through any players grave at any time. The order of the cards in the grave should however be kept intact, meaning that the most recent discarded card would be on the top and first on the grave, the next most recent card second, and so on.

Card States

In Play

When a card is legally moved from hand, main deck, cities deck or grave onto the game table it is entering play, and if nothing hinders it the card is then in play.

All cards that have been paid for, if any, are considered to be in play. Typically that would be all permanents that are on the table, like your creatures and enchantments. Events, effects of abilities and Magic are technically speaking also in play for a very short moment: They enter play, are in play, resolve and then become discarded into the grave - leaving play.

Marked & Unmarked

• Cards in play are always in either a marked or an unmarked state. All other card types lack the ability to (un)mark.
• Cards always come into play in their unmarked state unless it's clearly specified otherwise.
• The marked state is normally used to show that the card has been exhausted/used somehow.
  • Examples of when a card becomes marked: When a creature attacks, moves or uses an activated ability that requires it to mark.
• A card can only be marked once per turn unless an effect or rule unmarks it after it was marked.
  • There is no limit on how many times a card can become marked or unmarked if it happens as a result of an effect.
• During every new turn the player gets all of his/her marked cards unmarked during the players own unmark/unassign-phase.

Mark me

The Mark Me symbol

Different actions, abilities and rules require a card to mark when the player wants to use it in a particular way. Marking is not a cost, as gold is. It should rather be seen as a kind of prerequisite, an action that needs to happen in order for an effect to happen. Whenever the mark me symbol is shown (a horizontal rectangle with a symbol within, ) it means that you have to mark the card itself if that is a part of the pre-requisite for whatever you're trying to accomplish.

Disclaimer How a player (un)marks cards is not decided by the rules or us behind WTactics due to legal reasons. It's up to the players to agree on it. In many CCG:s cards are rotated 90 degrees so that they lay down horizontally Rotating a card in this way is supposedly a patented idea in the U.S.A. To not violate patent(s) that protects that amazing invention we do not with this text want to give the idea that we encourage anyone to use that system to mark/unmark cards, and we also don't take any legal responsibility for players doing so.

Not in Play

• A card that is not in the in play state is considered to be not in play.
• All the cards in a players hand, main deck, cities deck and grave are examples of cards that are not in play until their owner pays for them and meets other criteria so that they can be put in play.
• There is a distinction between being "in play" and "was played".
  • Card types that can stay on the table (permanents) are put "in play".
  • Card that don't stay on the table after they "were played", like for example Event cards that are discarded directly after their effect tries to happen happen, are never considered to be "in play".

Removed from Game

A card that is removed from game is not considered to have the in play state or the not in play state: A card that has been removed from the game ceases to exist for all intents and purposes for the remaining duration of the game. Removed from game cards are not placed in the grave. They are be placed in a pile more distant from the game since there will be no interaction with them while playing.

There is a huge difference between cards not in play and cards removed from the game: Cards not in play are still a part of the game and might come into play at some point. Cards in hand or in the deck or even in the grave are an example of cards not in play. Cards that have been removed from the game may never in any way become part of it again during that game.

Card Types

WTactics provides the players with different card types that have their own associated rules:

Creatures

Creatures are the backbone of every army, they are the courageous forces that will bring a player glorious victory (or a miserable defeat that is best forgotten). All creatures also belong to one or more creature types. Creature types are words separated by spaces in the creatures name and subtype line. An example of a a couple of creature types a creature could have is: Leader Beast Caster. Leader would be one, Beast another type, and Caster a third creature type. They don't necessarily relate to each other in any way even if it may look like it in some cases. Creature types have no function by themselves. They are however relevant in many situations when other cards interact with the creature cards.

During the play phase a player may put new creatures into play by paying their power cost and then placing them into a city you control. The can not be put into the army directly, but they might be moved from a city to the army at a later stage in the game. Creatures that are part of the army can attack the opponent, as well as defend against oppositional forces. Creatures that are part of a city are only able to defend against attacks on the city and are never part of an attack.

Fighting skills

Unlike other cards, creatures have specific and distinct values that show their fighting skills in combat:

• Attack (ATK): The skills a creature has in combat. This is the number of damage the creature will inflict on it's enemies if they should stand in the creatures way.
• Defense (DEF): How much damage a creature can take before it becomes wounded and dies.

When the creature suffers as much damage as it defense can take during a single turn, the creature is put in the graveyard, along with all cards attached to it. When the turn is over, and the creature survived all inflicted damage disappears.

When other cards manipulate these combat values they are often paired and written in the form of ATK/DEF.

• Example: +5/-2 would mean that a creature would gain 5 more to it's ATK and lose 2 of it's DEF.

Abilities

Creatures may have additional abilities giving them an advantage (disadvantage) - these abilities are stated on the card - and may or may not require them to be marked. Other kind of cost may also be required to trigger the creatures abilities.

Movement

Each turn you are allowed to move unmarked creatures in play form a city to another city or from a city to the army, or from the army to a city. However per turn, a city can only take part once in a move , either as a source or destination.

The movement is only allowed during the play phases of your turn.

To move a creature do the following:

• mark it
• announce the move
• place it in the destination

Cities

Cities are the heart of your kingdom, and give you tactical advantages over your opponent. A city belongs to a faction, and is specialized in one of three disciplines, the 'Body', the 'Mind' or the 'Soul', as stated on the city's card. During the game setup, select three cities from your deck, one for each of the disciplines. One for 'Body', one for 'Mind' and one for 'Soul' and reveal them to your opponents. Then place them in your Kingdom area. Shuffle your deck afterwards.

Building a city

During your play phase you may play additional cities from your hand, by paying the city's gold cost.

Residents

When a creature or player is in the city they count as residents.

Defending a city

The city has a defense strength. When an opponent's army attack your city, your residents may help defending the city. Additionally your army can help out defending the city, during the course of the attack the army's creatures that are allowed into the city are residents of the city.

Any left over unblocked attacking creature deals damage to the city. Damage dealt to a city is permanent and doesn't dissolve after the turn. (You can keep track of the cities defense strength by placing 6 sided dice). When the cities strength is 0 it is destroyed an you must put it in your graveyard.

When all of your cities in play are destroyed you lose the game.

Victory Points & Advantages

During your tactics phase, your cities can give you strategical advantages until your next tactics phase. To claim an advantage for a discipline:

• Say the words 'I claim advantage for Body , Mind or Soul'
• Mark any number of unmarked residents of your cities.
• Your opponents can mark any unmarked resident of his/her cities in response.

Your claim to the advantage is the sum the power costs of all the marked cards. If you have the better claim you win the bid. For each bid you win, you gain one victory point.

When a city is destroyed its advantages wear off.

Events

• Events are cards representing one time effects that try to resolve instantly. In CCG terminology these are more widely known as interrupts or Instants.
• You may play an Event card at any time, even on your opponents turn as a response to what he/she has done.
• After an event has been used and the resolution of it decided it is always discarded, and that happens the same turn it was played.
• When you play an event, you follow the instruction provided by its rules text, then you put it in your graveyard.
• Keep in mind that whenever you play an Event, your opponent may do the same in response, and back and forth until nobody want to play more Events.

Magic

• Magic can only be played during the player's own turn, during the play phases.
• Once a magic card has been played it is discarded into grave.

Enchantments

• Enchantments can only be played during the player's own play phases.
• Enchantments are always targeting something or someone, like for example the player, a city, a creature, a resource card, an other enchantment...
  • are always attached to it's target,
  • are permanently in play on the table until some effect removes them.

Playing the game

Before playing the game, each player selects three cities form his/her deck, one for each of the disciplines, puts them on the table in the Kingdom area. All players may shuffle all decks afterwards.

Each player then draws 7 cards from his/her main deck.

The game is played using individual player turns, that are divided into different game phases. Randomly choose who is going first, the player going first is only allowed to draw one card during his first draw phase.

The player who is currently taking his turn is named the active player. All other players are considered to be passive players even if they would do something (i.e. play Event cards) during the active players turn. When we refer to "the player" we most often refer to the "active player". In cases where we don't refer to the active player, we use the "passive" or "any" player terminology.

Turn Structure

A turn is made up of the following phases, where each name is followed by the postfix "phase":

1. Unmark
2. Draw & Resource
3. Tactics
4. Play
5. Attack
6. Play
7. Discard

The phases that are mandatory are the Unmark, Draw & Resource, Tactics and Discard-phases. The Play and Attack phases are optional phases and can all be omitted by you if you choose to do so.

The phases must occur in the given order. Example: You can't use a Play-phase once you have used your Discard-phase.

Unmark/Unassign

• During the unmark phase a player must unmark all his/her cards that are marked.
• The player also removes all the used power gems form the different resource piles and puts them next to each pile. This replenishes them for future use.

Draw & Resources

During the draw phase, the player must decide and choose one of the three possible actions:

• draws 2 cards, play no (0) resource cards, or;
• draw 1 card, play 1 resource card (obliged), or;
• draw 0 cards, play 2 resource cards (obliged).

When choosing 1 or 0 cards, the player MUST play 1 or 2 resource cards during his turn.

Tactics

• During the tactics phase the player claims strategical advantages provided by his cities (see city card type)

Play

• This phase is not mandatory - the player chooses if he/she will use it.
• The play phases allows the player to use creature abilities & play any card he/she wants to.
• The number of things a player can do during his/her play phase is limited only by that player's resources and cards.

• The player may move creatures from the army to city, from a city to army or from a city to another city. A city may be involved only once in a move per turn (either as source or destination)

Attack

• This phase is not mandatory - the player chooses if he/she will use it.
• During this phase the player's army can attack either an opponent's army or an opponent's city.
• Only one attack is allowed, see the combat section to resolve the battle.

Discard

• If the player has more than 7 cards (>7) in his/her hand the playermust select and discard any excess cards down to 7.
• A player may notdiscard cards from hand in the discard phase if he/she has 7 or less cards in hand.

Combat

General

• Only unmarked creatures may attack or defend,
• The active player is the only one that can perform one attacks during his/her Attack-phase.
  • When doing so the player must use one or more creatures in his/her army and declare which opponent's city or army he/she is attacking.
• In the same manner, the inactive player is the only one that may defend against attacks during the opponents turn using one or more creatures in his/her army and one or more creatures in the attacked city.

• • Combat is resolved on a "per attacker basis": Each attacker (together with all it's blockers) is part of one single and specific combat.
  • The order of how a combat(s) are resolved could often matter and affect the outcome of other combats or states in the game. Choose wisely.
  • The resolution order of several combats is decided by the attacking player, before the defending player announces a) if and how he/she will defend and b) which defenders he/she will assign to which attackers.

Combat sequence

I. Announcing attackers

• The attacking player may choose to attack during an Attack phase using any number of unmarked creatures in his/her Army.

• • Creatures assigned to attack are called attackers.
• The attacking player chooses and announces all attackers that will fight that turn by marking them & announcing them as attackers.
• The attacking player chooses the army or city he/she is attacking. (You can not attack your own cities)
• In cases where there are more than one attackers the attacking player must announce and choose the order of the attacks, which is first, then second, and so on.
• Once the attackers are announced, the passive player gets a Response phase, that gives him/her the opportunity to play one Event card or one Ability (but not both at the same time).
  • The attacking player then gets the same opportunity, and this process is repeated until both players make a pass on the opportunity to play something in the Response phase. When the players pass on the Response phase the attack continues as follows:

II. Choosing defenders

• All creatures assigned to defend are called defenders for the duration of the battle.
• The defending player may choose to:
  • Defend one or more of the attack(s) with one or more creatures from his/her Army or the attacked city (if a city was attacked).
  • Allow the attacks to go on undefended.
  • If the defending player decides not to defend the attack on his/her city, it loses defense strength equal to the total amount of damage dealt by the attackers.
  • If the defending player decides not to defend the attack on his/her army he/she lose Victory Points equal to the total amount of damage dealt by the attackers.

III.

• If the player decides to go for a defense with creatures in his/her army he/she:
  • May assign any number of creatures as defenders to any number of attackers.
  • Must clearly show which defender(s) is assigned to which specific attacker.
    • A specific defender can only defend against one single attacker.
    • Several defenders can be assigned to the same attacker.

IV.

• Each individual combat takes place. In each combat the players take turns with Response phases.
• When both players pass instead of responding to the other player's actions the combat is resolved:
  • Take into account all effects and then compare the values of the Attackers ATK value with the Defenders DEF value.
    • If it is higher or equal the Defender will die. If it is lower the Defender will survive.
    • Regardless of the outcome the Defender successfully protects the defending players city/player from that attacker.
    • Compare the Defender's ATK value with the Attackers DEF value - if it is equal to or higher then the Attacker will die.
• When combat is over place all dead Creatures into the discard piles, along with all Events that were used during the combat and also any cards that were attached to the Creatures.

Additional Rules

Conflicting rules

As in many games some rules and mechanics may seem to contradict themselves and even do so at times. This is actually a feature and what makes the deep, complex and modular nature of a CCG possible to begin with. Always use the following two rules to resolve such situations:

Cards vs rules

• If a card contradicts the core rules found in this document, the card wins over the core rules.

Effects vs effects

• If an effects forbids something to happen while another allows it, the forbidding effect always wins.
  • Example: A creature has the effect "Can not fly." printed on it as card text. Playing a spell on the creature with the text "Target creature can fly." will not make the creature able to fly. The "not/no/can't" etc always outweigh what "can" happen.

Abilities

Many creatures have special skills and some are able to perform different kind of actions. There are numerous ways how the creatures can interact with one and another without engaging in actual physical combat. These skills are called abilities, regardless of what they do, and if they have any drawbacks or not.

Abilities are not limited to just creatures, magic could have them as well, granting a creature additional abilities they wouldn't have without them.

There are three main types of abilities : activated, passive and triggered.

Passive

A passive ability is one that is always in effect. As soon as the object with the ability enters play, the ability effect starts, and stops when the object leaves play.

Example: "All Elvish creatures gets +3 defense" is a passive ability.

Activated

• In contrast to passive abilities, activated abilities requires the activation by the player.
• To use a card's ability the player must pay the cost required. The effect of the ability will not activate before that is done.
• Only the controller of a card may activate it's abilities. Usually that means the player that put the card in play by paying for it.

There are three main groups of costs and prerequisites that are used to activate abilities: Gold cost, mark and custom. What's always common for all types of costs and prerequisites is that we always reveal the cost first, followed by a colon separator, and lastly the effect is written. It looks like this:

Cost : Effect

Whatever is on the left side of the colon (:) is the cost or prerequisites. The text on the right side of the colon is the card's effect that will activate once you have met the cost/prerequisites demands.

Triggered

• A triggered ability is activated if and only if it's trigger takes place.
• Triggered abilities are not optional and must always be applied if possible.
  • If a triggered ability's effect can't be applied then nothing happens.
• Example: Discard a non-Dark Legion creature every time a skeleton comes into play.
  • If my opponent played that curse on you, and your opponent puts a skeleton into play, then you must discard a non-Dark Legion creature. If you have only Dark Legion creatures however, then it is not possible for you to discard a creature, in which case you don't have to do anything.

Variable Gold Costs

Cost of X

This card costs X gold.

• Apart from integers, a card can have a cost of X, as well as X with a modifier. If that is the case, X is always defined in the card text.
  • Example: A card costs X + 2. It's text says that X is equal to the ATK value of the target creature. The target creature's ATK is equal to 3, thus we'd have to pay 3 + 2 = 5 gold to play our card.

Cost of T

This card costs T gold.

• T is also around as a cost, as well as T with a modifier. T is always equal the target cards gold cost.
  • Example: A card costs T - 3. The target cards gold cost is 5, which means hat we have to pay 5 - 3 = 2 gold to put our card in play.
• T reminds us of X, with the difference that it always takes into account one and the same type of variable no matter when or how it is played.

Deck Building

Basics

Every deck should contain at least 60 cards with at least 3 cities, one for each discipline.

Details

Every player composes his/her pile of cards (deck) of whichever cards he/she wants. Usually you would want to have prepared a deck and be done with the building of it before you sit down to play a game.

It's allowed to have up to 4 copies of a card in the deck except for city cards which are unique. A card is only considered to be an instance of itself if it has the same card name.

The deck building process is vital for the outcome of the game. In it the decisions about your play style and possibilities are decided, directly affecting how well you could fare against your opponent. As the game proceeds you will draw a given number of cards from the deck almost every round. The deck is often shuffled and the player seldom knows what card(s) he/she will draw from it.

The back of all cards in a deck must look identical. Having somehow different backs is considered cheating and prohibited.

Each card has it's own unique identification name and a version that precedes it at the bottom right. These are the card number and card version numbers, and they're very important if you always want to stay up to date or compete with other players. The card number for a card wont ever change. Any other info on the card may however become a target for revision, and, those revision will be reflected by the cards current version number. Huge changes in card versions are always announced at the site and well in advance before people are allowed to compete with them. For casual players this isn't really that important - play the way you all agree on.