Golden Serpent

Golden Serpent is a deck building card battle game with a dark fantasy occult theme, where players take turns playing characters, relics, and spells to kill their opponent's leaders. Players take control of 1 or more of 3 dueling factions: the Pagan, the Chosen, or the Fallen, by constructing a deck prior to the start of the game. Each faction offers unique abilities and strategies to the game play. The game comes with a full playable set of all cards to choose from.

Each player will have 2 draw piles that make up their deck, preventing players from being flooded with card types they don't need as they can choose which to draw from: a character draw pile made entirely of character cards, and an arcana draw pile made up of relic and spell cards. Additionally each player must start the game with 1-3 leader cards in play, which each offer unique abilities that are unlocked as they level up by killing opposing characters. Players may have a mix of factions within their deck as long as the have a leader for each faction. Lastly a shared draw pile of immortal cards are set aside at the start of the game, containing 1 of each immortal card. Players are able to summon these powerful cards only by taking enemy characters prisoner during combat, and then waiting until their next turn to sacrifice the prisoner to the immortals.

Rather than using resource cards or counters, cards are played using a delayed purchase mechanic referred to as the cool down system. Cards are put into play expended (rotated 90 degrees clockwise) 0-3 times, representing the number of turns that must be waited for the card to be usable, as cards only cool down (rotate 90 degrees counter-clockwise) once per turn automatically. Likewise, abilities and attacks require cards to expend 0-3 times when used. Players must manage when their cards are ready for use to make sure they aren't left open to attack. Each faction offers unique key abilities that let you cool down cards faster in different ways: the Pagan by drawing cards, the Chosen by attacking, and the Fallen by casting spells. Strategically utilizing these abilities is key to gaining advantage over opponents.

Golden Serpent takes place centuries after the Chosen conquered and thought to have exterminated the Pagans, ancient people who ritually worshiped the god of balance and the god of chaos (the Golden Serpent). When a group of Chosen missionaries stumble upon a crumbling Pagan temple housing an evil book left on earth by the Golden Serpent, the spirit of chaos is unleashed into the world and the Fallen faction is created. Now the few Pagan people left come out of hiding to stop the Fallen from summoning the Golden Serpent to earth, and war erupts between the 3 factions.

—description from the designer