Challengers!

To set up Challengers!, organize the cards by their set icons and letter types into face down decks, and place them in the correct trays alongside fan tokens. Players receive randomized tournament plan cards and a matching starter deck. Place park mats in the center of the table, seat players according to their tournament plans, place matching flag tokens at each park, and create stacks of numbered trophy tokens for every park.

The main objective is to assemble the ultimate team of diverse characters, capture flags during head-to-head matches, earn valuable trophies, and ultimately accumulate the most fan tokens by the end of seven intense rounds of tournament play.

Each round consists of two phases. First, the deck phase allows players to draw new cards based on their tournament plan, keep a specified number, discard the rest, and optionally purge unwanted cards from their deck. Second, the match phase involves a game of capture the flag where players take turns flipping cards from their decks until their total visible power equals or exceeds their opponent's current value to claim the flag.

Winning a match awards a trophy for that round. Each trophy conceals a secret number of fan tokens on its reverse side. Throughout the game, players keep their earned trophies hidden, accumulating fans which will determine the finalists at the end of the tournament.

The game spans seven rounds of matches. After the seventh round, players reveal all their collected trophies and tally their total fans. The two players with the highest fan counts advance to a final championship match to determine the ultimate winner.