Duel for Cardia

Players sit facing each other. Place the seal tokens, modifier tokens, and persistent tokens in a reserve pile on the table. Shuffle the location cards and form a face-down deck between players, orienting the arrows on the back towards the opposite side of the table. For the first game, use the basic location card. After the first game, you can integrate other locations by revealing the top card of the location deck, which imposes constraints for the entire game. Each player takes one of the two decks of 16 character cards marked with a '1' (or '2' for advanced play), shuffles them, places them face-down in front of them, and draws the top 5 cards to form their hand. Finally, take the two reference cards if needed.

The goal of Duel for Cardia is to become the master of the city by being the first to collect 5 seals. Alternatively, you can win by forcing your opponent to run out of cards or by playing a specific card that grants an instant win.

Each turn, players simultaneously choose one character card from their hand and place it face-down in front of them. Once both players are ready, they reveal their cards at the same time and place them face-up. Compare the influence values of the played cards. The card with the highest influence wins a seal, which is placed directly on that card. If the influence values are tied, neither card wins a seal, and no effects are triggered. Otherwise, the player with the lower influence immediately resolves their card's effect. After resolving effects, each player draws a new card to replenish their hand. If a player's draw pile is empty, they do not shuffle their discard pile, and they will play with a reduced hand for the rest of the game.

In each encounter, the card with the highest influence value wins a seal. This seal is placed directly on the winning card. If both players play cards with equal influence, it's a tie, and no seal is awarded to either player for that encounter. Additionally, in case of a tie, no card effects are triggered. If a card's capacity modifies influence, add the corresponding modifier token. If this changes the outcome of an encounter, simply move the seal to the new winning card without triggering additional effects.

The game concludes immediately under three conditions: if a player successfully collects 5 or more seals at the end of a turn, they win. If an opponent can no longer play a card because their hand and draw pile are empty, the other player wins. Finally, if a card's capacity grants an instant win, the player who played that card immediately wins the game.