How to Play Veilforge

1 Overview

In Veilforge you summon creatures to defend your ideals, arm your allies with powerful equipment and technology, and cast spells to turn the tide of battle. Lead your heroes to victory and crush the opposition. Veilforge can be played with 2 or 4 players.

2 What You Need

Each player brings:

• A main deck of 40–80 cards
• An evolution deck of up to 16 cards (evolved heroes, creatures, or structures)
• 3 hero cards
• 1 ideal card

Deck-building rules

• Only one copy of any given hero card; heroes and ideals are never placed in your main deck.
• No more than 4 copies of the same card in your main deck.
• Your ideal and every card in your main and evolution decks must be from the same setting as one of your 3 heroes.

3 Setup

1. Place your 3 hero cards in your hero zone and your ideal card in your ideal zone.
2. Shuffle your main deck thoroughly.
3. Draw 5 cards to form your starting hand.
4. Determine who goes first (coin flip, die roll, etc.).
5. The player who goes second starts the game with 1 mana.

4-player games

Teammates sit next to each other, opponents across the table. Each team takes its turns together, moving through all five phases simultaneously. You may manipulate your teammate's zones as your own. A team loses only when both of its players have lost — the last team standing wins.

4 How to Win

A player loses the game when any of the following happens:

• Their life is reduced to 0 or less.
• They must draw a card but their main deck is empty.
• They must add mana from their main deck but it is empty.

The last player (or team) remaining wins.

5 The Battlefield

Each player controls the following zones:

• Hero Zone — holds your 3 heroes. Heroes can use abilities from here and can never be attacked while in it. A hero removed or destroyed in play returns here disabled, and its attachments are sent to the graveyard.
• Battle Zone (5 slots) — where creatures and heroes fight. Each card here reduces direct-attack damage you take by 1.
• Support Zone (5 slots) — structures, equipment, technology, spells, and events resolve here. Cards here can't be attacked unless an ability allows it.
• Mana Zone — face-down cards from the top of your deck that pay for everything. Consumed mana returns to the top of your deck.
• Ideal Zone — holds your ideal card.
• Evolution Deck — up to 16 evolved cards, played via the Evolution ability.
• Main Deck, Graveyard, and Banish Zone (cards removed from play entirely).

6 Turn Phases

A turn has five phases, in order:

1 · Start

Restore every card on both players' fields to full health and enable your disabled cards.

2 · Draw

Draw 1 card. The player who goes first skips this on their very first turn.

3 · Mana

Add the top 3 cards of your deck face-down into your mana zone.

4 · Action

In any order, play cards, activate abilities, and attack. An enabled hero or creature may attack once per turn unless stated otherwise.

5 · End

Resolve any end-of-turn abilities, then the next player's start phase begins.

7 Combat

• Direct attack: an enabled hero or creature in your battle zone attacks the opponent directly for its damage, reduced by 1 for each card in their battle zone (minimum 0).
• Attacking the battle zone: the attacker deals its damage to a defending card. The defender only deals damage back if it has Counterattack. A card reduced to 0 health is destroyed.
• Support zone: cards there can only be attacked if an ability explicitly allows it. Heroes in the hero zone can never be attacked.

8 Card States

• Enabled — ready to attack or activate abilities. Acting turns the card 90° to disable it.
• Disabled — can't attack or activate abilities. Cards enter the battle/support zone disabled, but can still be attacked.
• Exhausted — turned 180°. Behaves like disabled, but on your next turn it only becomes disabled; it enables the turn after.

9 Card Anatomy

Every card shares the same frame. Here's a Hero card, part by part:

• Cost — top-left diamond. The mana you pay to play the card.
• Setting — top-right banner. The universe the card is from (used only for deck-building).
• Damage ⚔ — upper-left. Dealt when this card attacks.
• Health 🛡 — lower-left shield. The card is destroyed when this reaches 0.
• Name — the central banner.
• Class — below the name (here, Human / Mage). What abilities and spells can target; a card may have several, split by " / ".
• Ability — the text box. What the card does (passives use a dash, actives a colon).
• Type — the bottom banner. One of the 8 card types.
• Artist — credited in the bottom corner.

10 Card Types

11 Abilities & Chains

Passive abilities are always active (even while disabled) and read with a dash, e.g. Counterattack –. Active abilities must be activated and read with a colon, e.g. Activate:

Key active abilities

• Activate — usable while the card is enabled in your hero, battle, or support zone.
• Evolution — used from your evolution deck to transform a hero, creature, or structure into a stronger form.
• Quick & Vigilant — reactions that can be used in response to actions, even on your opponent's turn.
• Graveyard / Hand — abilities used while the card is in your graveyard or hand.

Chains

A chain forms when a Quick or Vigilant ability responds to an action. Only Quick and Vigilant abilities can be added to a chain. Players alternate adding responses; once everyone passes, the chain resolves in reverse order — last in, first out.