How to play

Goal

You win by checkmating the opponent's king, just like in regular chess. A game can also end if a player must draw while their deck AND hand are both empty ("deck out") — they lose immediately.

Card types

Every card belongs to one of four types. The type tells you when you can play the card and how long its effect lasts.

Counter — to cancel a card before it takes effect. A card never takes effect the moment it is played: it waits on the stack, where either player can respond to it — whatever is played in response resolves first, last card in, first out. A countered card goes to its owner's graveyard and does nothing.

Game zones

• Deck: the cards you haven't drawn yet. Always hidden from your opponent. You don't know the order of your deck, except for cards you have seen and arranged yourself (mulligan, or an effect that looks at or rearranges the top of the deck) — you know those until they are drawn or rearranged again.
• Hand: your cards in hand, never visible to your opponent (who only sees how many you hold). 6 cards at most: above that, you discard the excess, at the latest at the end of your turn. Once your deck is empty, this limit drops by 1 each time you can't draw.
• Board: the chessboard, shared by both players. It also holds the relics set on ranks 1 and 8.
• Card graveyard: where cards go once played and resolved. Relics end up here too when they are destroyed. Public zone.
• Card exile: cards removed from the game for good by some effects — unlike the graveyard, nothing comes back from it. Public zone.
• Piece graveyard: pieces lost to ordinary chess captures. Public zone.
• Piece exile: pieces removed by card effects (N55, Dragon's Breath, Fusion, Bodyguard…) — not by ordinary captures. Public zone.

Deck building

• Each card costs points; your whole deck must cost 100 points or less.
• You can include up to 3 copies of the same card. You can also pick one "signature" card per deck (free of charge), and include up to 4 copies of it.
• Your deck needs at least 20 cards. There is no maximum.
• You build your decks in the Deckbuilder (free account needed). Three starter decks are ready to play.

Start of the game: the mulligan

1. Both players do their mulligan at the same time, in private (your opponent sees nothing).
2. You look at the top 5 cards of your deck and can put them back on top in any order.
3. You can mulligan again: you then see one card fewer each time (5, then 4, then 3…).
4. There is no limit on the number of mulligans — but each one shows you fewer cards.
5. The game starts with no cards in hand: your first card comes from the draw on your first turn.

How a turn unfolds

1. Flash window 1 (before the draw): either player may play their Flash for the turn here.
2. Draw: the active player draws 1 card.
3. Flash window 2 (after the draw): same as window 1.
4. Main phase: the active player may first play a Maneuver (optional, on top of the move), then must make their chess move OR play an Edict or a Relic instead. After each action, the other player gets priority: they may respond with their Flash, or pass. The turn ends once the main action is done and the stack is empty.
5. Resolution: the game checks for check, checkmate and stalemate, then it is the other player's turn.

How many cards per turn?

• Active player: 1 card at most, of any type (a Maneuver, a Relic, an Edict, or a Flash played in one of the windows) — unless a card explicitly grants an extra action.
• Opponent: 1 Flash at most, in any window, to respond or on their own initiative.

The stack

A card you play doesn't take effect right away: it waits on the stack. Either player can respond with a Flash, which goes on top — a counter included, and a counter can be countered too. A counter targets the card of your choice on the stack, one of your own included. Playing a card doesn't count as passing: when your opponent passes, priority comes back to you, and you can still respond to your own card. When both players pass one after the other, only the top card resolves; then each player can respond again before the next one. A counter whose target has already left the stack does nothing. The only limits: how many cards you may play per turn, and your card for the turn (Maneuver, Edict, Relic) or your chess move, which wait for an empty stack.

Relics on the board

A relic is a card that stays in play: its effect applies every turn, for as long as it stays on the board. It sits on an empty square of your back rank (rank 1 for White, rank 8 for Black) and never moves. It takes up its square like a piece: no piece can move through it. An enemy piece can capture it by moving onto its square, which destroys it — it goes to its owner's graveyard and its effect stops. At the start of the game your back rank is full, so you can only set a relic down once a square has been freed.

End of the game

• Checkmate: the player whose king is in check with no legal move out of it loses the game.
• Deck out: if you must draw while your deck AND hand are both empty, you lose immediately.
• Draw: stalemate (no legal move while not in check), or the other classic chess draw cases.

Clock

Each player has a limited amount of thinking time (15 minutes by default). Some cards affect it directly — for example Reprieve, which adds 15 seconds to the clock of the player of your choice (yours or your opponent's).