Current public rules

Rulebook Summary

This is a compact player-facing snapshot of the active Chosen rules: enough to understand the game loop without reproducing every design note.

Circle and zones

The team is the engine.

A Circle is a team of allied Chosen bound by one shared Soul Link. The Circle shares the deck, hand, discard, Channel Zone, generated resources, Gate control, and other team possessions.

Chosen: A primary Circle-linked Being that normally determines Circle survival and can play default deck cards.
Being: A battlefield object that can occupy space and may have stats, attachments, actions, reactions, or abilities.
Structure: A non-creature Being. Gates are Structures.
Banish: The removed-from-game zone.

ATK

Attack

Baseline Basic Strike damage and attack-power reference.

FORT

Fortitude

Physical solidity, mass, carrying capacity, and resistance to bodily disruption.

RNG

Range

Maximum natural attack reach cap, not a fixed range.

MOB

Mobility

Exact orthogonal squares moved by a normal Move.

INT

Intellect

Card-flow stat for opening hand, draw pressure, and hand size.

SPD

Speed

Activation-order stat. Fast Chosen act before slower Chosen.

Setup and round

Draw, develop, activate, clean up.

Deck construction: Main constructed uses a 30-card shared Circle deck. Tutorial and skirmish formats may use 20-card decks.
Copy limit: Unless a card says otherwise, a Circle deck may include up to 3 copies of a card with the same name.
Opening hand: Each Circle draws cards equal to the total INT of its allied Chosen, with one mulligan available.
Round draw: After the first round, each Circle draws cards equal to the highest INT among its allied non-defeated Chosen.
Hand size: Maximum hand size equals the total INT of allied non-defeated Chosen.
Fatigue: If a Circle would draw from an empty deck, it takes 1 fatigue damage for each missing card.

Start of round

Advance Yin/Yang phase, check Gate Control, resolve start-of-round effects, refresh AP/MP, Ready Preparing cards, draw, then begin activations by SPD.

Activation

Basic Strike and major Action cards spend AP. Normal Move spends MP and moves up to MOB orthogonal squares. Flow cards usually spend neither.

Timing

Actions, reactions, abilities, and triggers use the Stack unless a rule says they resolve immediately or use a simultaneous procedure.

End of round

Resolve end-of-round effects, expire temporary effects, clean up hand size, clear combat markers, and proceed to the next round.

Affinity economy

Preparation is shared. Execution is personal.

Affinity: A Chosen's native elemental or polarity threshold and identity. It contributes only when that Chosen is the source.
Circle Threshold: Shared threshold from Channeling, Gates, scenario effects, or other explicit Circle-level sources.
Source Threshold: The source Chosen's matching Affinity plus matching Circle Threshold.
Aptitude: A Chosen's maximum personal execution depth for a given affinity. It limits Affinity Foundation cards, but does not provide threshold.
Channel: Once per round by default, place a card into the Channel Zone during an allied Chosen's activation. Normal cards enter Preparing and become Ready next round.
Essence: A Ready Channeled card may be exhausted to generate generic resource according to its Resource text.

Battlefield

Gates make the board matter.

The standard PvP board is a 9x9 grid divided into nine 3x3 regions. Each elemental Gate occupies the center square of its matching elemental region.

Movement: Normal movement is orthogonal. Diagonal movement is not allowed by default.
Line of sight: Blocked by Gates, blocking Structures, terrain, obstacles, and enemy Beings between source and target.
Gate Control: At the beginning of each round, a Circle controls a Gate if it has more allied Chosen adjacent to that Gate than any opposing Circle.
Adjacency: Orthogonal only by default: up, down, left, and right.

Offering

Defense is elemental, not a flat block number.

Offering commits a card into the combat chain as an elemental prevention object. Overcoming defender-side Offering prevents 2, generative receiver-side Offering prevents 1, same-element Offering prevents 0, and neutral Offering prevents 0 by default.