How to Play:
Objective:
The primary objective in a game of Archon Legends is to reduce your opponent's life total from twenty to zero. You do this by playing units to attack them and using other cards to hinder their strategy or bolster your own.
Card Types:
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Unit: These cards can attack and defend. They have power (how much damage they deal) and health (how much damage they can take).
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Workers: These cards are a type of unit, however, they are the backbone of your economy as they produce the resources you need to cast cards from your hand. Although they are units, they are unable to attack. They are only able to block in combat situations. You can only cast one Worker from your hand each turn.
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Action (Instant): Cards you can play at almost any time, even during your opponent's turn.
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Action (Standard): Cards you can play only on your turn.
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Structure: Ongoing effects that stay on the battlefield.
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Archon: This is the player’s avatar; you are the archon. Each archon has 3 abilities -Passive, active, and ultimate. This card also dictates the deck's color identity. This means that you can only use cards in your deck whose color symbols appear on your archon.
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For example, if your archon's colors contain only blue and red color symbols, you can't have cards that are green, yellow, or purple in your deck.
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Gameplay:
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Archons start with a 5 turn countdown. Archons are inactive until the player's 5th turn. On the 5th turn, players are now able to use their Archon's special abilities.
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Players start with a hand of seven cards and can play one Worker unit from their hand each turn.
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Resources from Workers are used to summon other units, actions, and other cards.
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Players take turns in sequence, following these steps: Rise any rested cards you control -> Maintenance phase-> Draw a card from your deck -> Main Phase -> End.
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Players can only have a maximum of 20 units on their side of the battlefield. *There are cards that can increase your maximum population.*
Playing a Turn:​
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Rise Step: Rise all rested cards (Turn all your cards on the battlefield vertically)
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Maintenance: Some cards have effects that occur during the start of your turn.
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Draw Phase: Draw a card from your deck.
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Main Phase: Here you can summon units, structures, action cards and more. This is also when you can attack with your units.
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End: End-of-turn effects happen here.
Combat:
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During your turn, you can declare which (if any) of your units will attack. Attacking is done on an individual unit’s basis. For example; You attacked with unit-X first and then attack with unit-Z second.
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Units are able to attack the enemy archon directly or they can attack rested enemy units. When your unit attacks, it goes into a rested state (card is turned horizontally). Your opponent can decide if they want to block your attacking unit with one of their own units.
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Creatures deal damage equal to their power. If a creature takes damage equal to or greater than its health in a single turn, it's destroyed and goes into their owner’s graveyard.
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Winning:
Reduce your opponent's life total from twenty to zero.
How to read your cards:
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Below are a couple diagrams labeling the parts of the card. The two cards displayed are a unit card that can also represent structures and action cards as the designs are similar to one another; and the second diagram is an archon card. As you will notice the archon cards have a different design to other card type in the game.
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How to Build a Deck
Decks consist of at least fifty individual cards plus one archon. When building your deck make sure not to have duplicate copies of a card, unless the card says otherwise.
Players choose which colors symbol (blue, green, purple, red, or yellow) they want in their deck by the color their archon represents, which can influence the type of strategies and cards they can play.
Building a deck is as much a part of the strategy as playing the game itself!
Here is a quick guide on how to build your fifty card deck.
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Select your archon
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12 - 18x Worker units
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12 - 20x units
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3 - 7x structures
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7 - 14x action cards
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The above is just a standard guide on building a simple deck. The way you build your deck will also depend on your strategy. For example; if you are building a deck that uses a lot of token producing structures, make sure to have more structure cards in your deck than the standard guide. Of course, make sure to playtest your deck -adjust the ratios based on the deck's performance and your experience with different matchups. The flexibility to adapt your deck composition based on your playstyle and the evolution of the game is a significant aspect of mastering Archon Legends TCG.
What are the different card types?
There are currently 5 different card types in Archon Legends TCG. Those 5 are:
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Archon
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Unit
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Structure
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Action
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Token
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Let's break down what each of the above 5 card types are.
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Archon
This is the player’s avatar; you are the archon. Each archon has 3 abilities -passive, basic, and ultimate. This card also dictates the deck's color identity. This means that you can only use cards in your deck whose color symbols appear on your Archon.
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For example, if you selected a blue archon , you can't have cards in your deck that are from the green, red, purple, or yellow colors.
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Your archons' abilities are only playable at standard speed. To know more about standard and instant speeds, CLICK HERE for more details.
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Unit
These cards can attack and defend. They have power (how much damage they deal) and health (how much damage they can take). Players can only have a maximum total of 20 units on their side of the battlefield.
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Workers: These cards are a type of unit. They are the backbone of your economy as they produce the resources you need to play cards from your hand. Although they are units, they are unable to attack. They are only able to defend. You can only play one Worker from your hand each turn.
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Structure
These cards are buildings that stay on the battlefield and have ongoing effects that can benefit you in your strategy.
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Action
Action cards are powerful one-time cards that play an effect and go to the graveyard right after. Although only temporary and not permanent like structures or units, these cards can make a significant difference in the outcome out battle. There are two types of action cards: Standard and Instant.
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Standard action cards can only be played on your turn.
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Instant action cards can be played at almost any time, even during your opponent's turn.
To know more about standard and instant speeds, CLICK HERE for more details.
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Token
These cards are not part of a player's deck and cannot be drawn like regular cards. Instead, they are brought into play only through the effects of other cards.
Learn more about archons!
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Archons are the centerpiece of your deck. You are the archon, and that makes the archon a very big deal. The game starts off with each Archon having a 5-turn countdown meaning the archon will be inactive until your 5th turn. From then, your archon's passive, basic, and ultimate abilities will now be active and ready to cause havoc to your opponent.
Each player starts out with 20 life. Once that life reaches zero, it's game over! But, there are ways for you to gain life using your archon's abilities. First, let's go through what these abilities are. Each archon has 3 abilities -passive, active, and ultimate.
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Passive ability: This ability is automatic, meaning that it triggers if something happens or just gives an overall benefit.
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Basic ability: This ability is the one that will give you life if you use it.
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Ultimate ability: This ability will cost your archon life. By selecting this ability your life points will be reduced however, the tradeoff of life for the ability can pay out significantly if used correctly.
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Now that we have all that information out of the way. Let's discuss when these abilities can be used. Passive abilities are always in effect no matter whose turn it is. Active and ultimate abilities are only able to be played during their controller's turn -thus, meaning the archon's active and ultimate abilities can only be played at standard speed.
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To learn more about standard and instant speed -CLICK HERE
How does combat work?​
Combat is when two enemy units fight each other. Units have two main stats: power and health. Power is the amount of damage it deals to an enemy unit's health; and health is the amount of damage it can take from an enemy unit. If the damage dealt reduces a unit's health to zero or more, that unit is destroyed/killed.
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Let's discuss how units get in combat: When it is a player's turn, they can decide to attack with a unit during their main phase. The attacking player can decide to attack a rested unit or the enemy archon directly. The defending player can choose to block the attacking unit with an unrested unit of their own. By blocking the attacking unit, no damage is dealt to the original target.
If the attacking unit is unblocked and has targeted a rested enemy unit, than the rested enemy will be in combat with the attacker.
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Let's talk the different phases in combat and how to use combat tricks. There are two phases in combat: before combat starts and during combat. By using instant action cards or unit abilities during these phases, you can change the tide of battle.
What is standard and instant speed?
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Standard speed are cards and abilities that can only be used during your Main phase outside of combat. Below is a list of cards and abilities with such example:
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Action cards: Standard
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Archon abilities
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Instant speed is when you can play cards and abilities during your turn and your opponent's. Below is a list of cards and abilities with such example:
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Action cards: Instant
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Unit abilities
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Structure abilities
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Remember that instant speed can be used at almost anytime. You can use it before combat starts, during combat, or right after your enemy uses an instant speed ability on you. By playing an instant speed ability or card right after your opponent's instant speed card/ability, you created what is essentially the stack. The stack is when the last card is played first and the first card is played last.
Understanding the resource system in Archon Legends
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Most games rely on a system similar to Magic the gathering requiring a resource and having that resource used to summon cards. Ours is similar however, the resources you produced do not reset. It’s permanent until you use it to summon a card. By having this system, it can alter the course of your game.
For example; you can summon big units when you’re falling behind.