These are the human rules. Where the printed rules leave a case open, the v0.1w rulings appendix below decides it — and the game engine enforces exactly those rulings, so what you read here is what the game does.
Setup
- 2 players, 20-card decks (max 2 copies per card; max 1 of any mythic).
- Each player's Forge starts at 20 heat. Draw 4 cards.
- One smith is chosen to forge first (they take no draw on turn 1); the other goes second, drawing a 5th card to open.
Turn structure
On your turn you walk five steps: Stoke → Draw → Work → Strike → Bank.
- Stoke — gain Forge Points (FP) equal to your turn number, capped at 7. (Your turn 1 = 1 FP, turn 2 = 2 FP … FP don't carry over.)
- Draw one card from the top of your deck.
- Work — play any cards you can afford (cost = FP, printed top-right).
- Strike — your creatures may attack: the enemy Forge directly, or an enemy creature. Damage is simultaneous. Damage is permanent — mark it and it stays; a creature dies when marked damage reaches its toughness.
- Bank — end of turn. Unspent FP are lost to the cold.
Card types
- Creature (P/T) — may Strike the turn after it's played (fresh from the forge, still cooling), unless it has SWIFT. Blocks nothing by default — attackers choose targets (except around GUARD).
- Weapon — play it (pay its cost), then attach it to one of your creatures: the creature gains +power equal to the weapon's cost. A creature holds max 2 weapons. If the creature dies, its weapons shatter with it.
- Artifact — stays in play with a passive effect from its keyword.
Keywords
One keyword per card, printed on the type line.
| Keyword | Who | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| GUARD | creature | Enemies must Strike this creature before your Forge or your other creatures. |
| SWIFT | creature | May Strike the turn it's played. |
| VENOM | creature | Any creature it deals nonzero damage to is destroyed outright. |
| HEAVY | weapon | +2 extra power, but the holder can't Strike Forges (too slow). |
| KEEN | weapon | +1 power; holder's damage to creatures can't be prevented or reduced. |
| BLESSED | artifact | Your Forge heals 1 heat at each of your Stokes (never above 20). |
| CURSED | artifact | Enemy Forge loses 1 heat at each of your Stokes. |
| STURDY | artifact | Your creatures get +0/+1 (stacks). |
| EMBER | any | When this card enters, deal 1 damage to any target (mythic: 2). |
| HOARD | any | When this card enters, draw a card (mythic: 2). |
Rarity rule — the collector's edge, kept gentle
Mythics enter with their EMBER / HOARD effects doubled. That's it — rarity should feel special, not pay-to-win. Power, toughness, and every other keyword are unaffected by rarity.
Winning
- Drive the enemy Forge to 0 heat → their forge is cold. You win.
- A player who must draw from an empty deck loses (out of materials).
Deck factions — build advice, not rules
Occult · Wilds · Sundries · Armory · Arcana — the rosters. Mono-faction decks get no bonus in v0.1; if playtests are flat, v0.2 adds faction synergies.
Rulings appendix — v0.1w
"w" = web-resolved. These 18 rulings resolve every ambiguity the draft left open, and the game engine implements them precisely. Where a ruling disagrees with the draft above, the ruling wins.
createGame uses the seed: player 0 is "on the play" (goes first, no turn-1 draw beyond
the opening hand). Player 1 is "on the draw": dealt a 5th opening card in setup and takes the first
Draw of the game on their first turn. The first player does not draw on their very
first turn.
FP scales off each player's own turn count, not a shared clock. A player's
fpTurn starts at 1 and increments each of their Stokes: FP = min(fpTurn, 7).
So both players get 1 FP on their first turn, and so on.
A card costs card.cost FP. You may play any number of cards while you can afford them.
FP is never banked — Bank discards whatever is unspent.
A creature may Strike only on a turn after the turn it entered
(turn > summonedTurn), unless it has SWIFT (or a SWIFT weapon effect)
— SWIFT lets it strike the turn it entered.
Damage is marked and persists for the whole game (never cleared at end of turn).
A creature is destroyed when damage ≥ effectiveToughness.
Once the active player takes any Strike action (struck = true), they may not play or
attach more cards this turn. Work fully precedes Strike.
A player who must Draw with an empty deck loses at that moment (the opponent wins; a
deckout event fires). This is checked at the automatic Draw step only.
When a creature strikes another creature, damage is dealt both ways at once: attacker deals its effective power to the defender, and the defender deals its effective power back. Both mark damage; both check death together (a trade can kill both). Striking the forge deals power to the forge with no return damage.
A Weapon is a card you play (pay its cost) and must then attach to
one of your creatures (+power = weapon.cost, plus R10 for HEAVY/KEEN). Max 2
weapons per creature. If the holder dies, its weapons are destroyed with it. A weapon with no legal
holder may still be played but sits unattached and does nothing.
HEAVY: +2 power beyond the cost bonus, but the holder cannot strike the forge while holding any HEAVY weapon. KEEN: +1 power beyond the cost bonus; the holder's damage to creatures cannot be prevented or reduced (in v0.1w it is effectively +1 power and ignores STURDY-style toughness buffs on the target when computing lethality — see R17).
When a card with EMBER enters play, its controller deals 1 damage to any target
(a creature or either forge). This creates a pending-target state: legalActions returns
only emberTarget actions until it resolves. Mythic EMBER deals 2 to a
single target. EMBER may target a forge, so it always has a legal target and never fizzles.
When a card with HOARD enters, its controller draws 1 (mythic: 2). Drawing off HOARD from an empty deck does not lose the game (R7 is the automatic Draw step only); an empty-deck HOARD simply draws nothing.
While a player controls any creature with GUARD, enemy creatures must strike a GUARD creature before they may strike that player's forge or non-GUARD creatures. If multiple GUARDs exist, the attacker may choose which. GUARD only gates striking the forge and other creatures — a GUARD creature can itself still be struck normally.
BLESSED heals your forge +1 at each of your Stokes, but forge heat cannot exceed 20. BLESSED overheal is wasted, not stored.
CURSED deals 1 to the enemy forge at each of your Stokes. It can reduce the enemy forge to 0 — that is a win, checked after each CURSED tick.
A mythic card's EMBER deals 2 (to one target, not two 1-damage hits) and its HOARD draws 2. Only EMBER/HOARD double; power, toughness, and other keywords are unaffected.
A creature with VENOM: any creature it deals nonzero combat damage to is destroyed outright (regardless of toughness), including in simultaneous combat and including damage it deals while defending (R8). VENOM does nothing to forges. A 0-power VENOM creature deals no damage → destroys nothing.
STURDY artifacts give all your creatures +0/+1 (a static, stacking buff: two STURDY
= +0/+2), applied in effectiveToughness. STURDY buffs apply to creatures already in play
and to ones played later, and vanish if the STURDY artifact leaves play.