14th Edition

This is the 14th published ruleset of Keeper of the Cards.

Unlike the last two editions, this update is more incremental and 100% compatible with 13th Edition cards. This tweaks some mechanics, adds some new counter types, and adjusts one case of wording by adding a new keyword. Neither of the starter decks have been altered, but this update should expand somewhat the options for card creation.

Compared to 13th Edition, the following changes have been made:

• Added new counter types, and corresponding effect texts which place them on a target. These new counter types are: Berzerk Counters, Taunt Counters, and Trap Counters.
  • Berzerk Counter (proactive): Choose a valid victim for the host; immediately after the current chain finishes resolving, force the host to attack the chosen victim (with only itself as the attacking team), as if it was the host's controller's Battle Phase, but do not exhaust the host, also, the host's abilities cannot be activated until after this battle's Damage Allocation.
  • Taunt Counter (reactive): When the host's controller is the defending player in an attack: Change the victim of the attack to the host.
  • Trap Counter (reactive): When a chaining action is performed while the host is unexhausted: The host's controller may exhaust the host to activate any ability of the host, ignoring its activation condition, as a new chain link to the current chain.
• Spells are now allowed to be level 0.
• Added the "hex-play" keyword, which replaces certain instances of the "ghost-play" keyword.
• Multiple costs on a single ability are now separated by the word "and" instead of "also".
• Touched up the wording of the rulebook and card building guide in various places.

13th Edition, Revision 1

This is a very slight modification to 13th Edition. All cards and card texts are the same, but the rulebook has been revised mostly just to make some parts a bit clearer. One small change to the rules has been made: Shield Counters are now removed reactively to prevent damage, rather than proactively to add HP. This should make Shield Counters much more useful in general, as it avoids "wasted" Shield Counters.

13th Edition

It's time for a spooky update! 13th Edition is very similar to 12th Edition, but makes some tweaks to help make the gameplay flow more smoothly and reward stalling behaviors significantly less. Unfortunately, one of the changes necessitated making this a clean slate edition, so old cards have been invalidated. The following changes have been made since 12th Edition:

• Added a mechanic called "piercing damage", which inflicts any excess damage that would have been inflicted to a minion to its controller instead. This prevents 0 HP minions from functioning as walls and causes most battles to advance the overall game state in some way.
• Removed blowback damage when attacking directly, as this was a disincentive to attacking in some cases. The only damage the attacker takes now is piercing damage, which can be strategically maximized by the victim but doesn't include excess dice.
• When the victim of an attack is a minion and dice are left over after the minion is destroyed, the victim's controller now takes damage equal to the remaining dice, as if the player were the victim.
• Removed the reserves mechanic. While it was interesting on paper, in practice, it was a little too flexible and in practice only served to delay the outcome of games sooner, while at the same time diminishing the importance of proper deck building.
• Removed the traps mechanic. Traps were inspired by trap cards in Yu-Gi-Oh, but in practice only served as a way to delay costs, and were never all that fun of a mechanic.
• Added a mulligan rule: once, at the start of the game, each player can bury any number of cards in their hand and then draw that same number of cards. This replaces the real utility the reserves had.
• The graveyard has been renamed to the "grave" to shorten card texts.
• Doubled the cost of drawing and bouncing cards.
• Updated all cards in both starter decks to fit better with the changes, making both of them more aggressive and improving cards' usefulness.

12th Edition, Hotfix 1

I've noticed a serious problem with the 12th Edition starter set: there was a card remaining which used the no longer valid "Immortality Counter" text. This hotfix addresses that. It also adds War in Heavan to the holy starter deck (since it was mistakenly missing from it), and this also includes some typo fixes that have already been pushed to the website.

12th Edition

This is the 12th published ruleset of Keeper of the Cards.

This update is largely a massive course-correction to the game. We had some lofty goals that we didn't exactly meet. We originally wanted to also add a mechanic to add creativity to the gameplay itself, but our attempts proved that these concepts weren't as good in practice as they were on paper and thus have been abandoned.

However, we did end up making massive changes despite this. Of particular note, this ruleset substantially simplifies the card creation process and eliminates what I like to call "numbers games": card combinations which weren't necessarily fun, but only served to effectively cheat out powerful effects. To that end, activation conditions no longer have any effect on a card's level, and lots of redundant targeting and activation cost texts whose only purpose was to engage in numbers games (like enemy's choice and exhausted creature targeting) have been completely removed. Creature caveats and Immortality Counters have also been completely removed, the latter partially because it helps to reduce complexity of cards, but mostly because both of these were in practice mostly serving to cause games to drag on needlessly.

Despite the removals, there have also been several additions. A new "bury" mechanic has been added, which sends cards to the bottom of the deck, which is almost impossible to get to. New targetings have been added, including ones that allow choosing a specific card in your hand or an opponent's hand. Activation conditions have been substantially expanded, opening up lots of possibilities for interaction. You can even stitch together multiple "sub-abilities" – combinations of a target selection and one or more effects, together into a single ability, increasing the potential flexibility of card design.

We've also made a move to fix a problem with games that have more than two players. Previously, when a player's HP reached 0, they were out of the game and could do nothing but wait for the other players to finish. To address this, a new mechanic called zombie players has been introduced, which allows players whose HP has reached 0 to still participate and be able to get a chance to win again by raising their HP.

There have also been a number of other changes. Costs across the board are quite different from what they used to be, often more generally accessible due to the removal of numbers games. Terms have also changed; what were previously referred to as "creatures" are now known as "minions", what was previously "deck-stacking" is now "sheathing", and a new "ghost-play" keyword has been added to clarify when you can ignore the usual requirement to exhaust a minion to use its ability.

To help people learn how to design their own cards, we've also added a new card building examples page which goes thru how to create some of the cards in the starter decks step-by-step. We're thinking of also posting some video tutorials which do the same thing on YouTube at some point, but for now, we hope this can help some people who might find the card building process intimidating step into it a bit more gradually.

Overall, while we didn't exactly accomplish everything we wanted to accomplish with this update, we're pretty happy with this new ruleset and excited to start playing it. If you're as excited as we are, or if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please let us know!

11th Edition

This is the 11th published ruleset of Keeper of the Cards.

11th Edition marks some dramatic changes to this game compared to previous editions. Many of the rules have been completely rewritten, and card texts have changed so much that we've decided to make this the first ever "clean slate" edition, meaning no cards made for prior editions are legal for 11th Edition. This also marks the first time that the rulebook and card building guide are in HTML format, allowing them to be easily accessed straight from the website.

There are too many changes to make a fully exhaustive list, but here are some broad changes of note:

• Added an extensive lineup of keywords documented explicitly in the rulebook, which makes card texts much shorter and easier to understand. Nearly every card text component has been changed in some way.
• Renamed several field zones: "battlefield" instead of "Creature Zone", "trapfield" instead of "Trap Zone", and "granary" instead of Resource Zone.
• Added several card text options.
• Revised the costs of most card texts.
• Activation conditions now have a more pronounced effect
• Added explicit chaining rules to govern interactions with named counters and card abilities.
• Increased starting HP to 35.
• Increased the deck size from 25 cards to a range of 40–60 cards.
• The reserves now consists of only up to 5 cards, and the way it is accessed has changed: instead of exchanging cards between your reserves and your hand, you now can obtain a card from your reserves instead of drawing.
• Replaced the previous random collection of cards with two starter decks: one with a holy theme, and one with a satanic theme.

We're excited to be able to finally play this updated version of Keeper of the Cards with other people. If you give it a try, please let us know what you think! Please also consider sharing any interesting cards you've designed. 🙂

10th Edition

This is the 10th published ruleset of Keeper of the Cards. It features the following changes compared to 9th Edition, revision 1:

• Added caveats of the form "you must [x] to attack with, defend with, or use an ability of this creature". The primary purpose of these caveats is to make creatures require a cost to attack or defend, but it's phrased this way to ensure that it cannot be exploited to produce infinitely powerful creatures that are only used for abilities.
• Added a caveat which destroys the creature if it is unexhausted at the end of your own battle phase. This is designed to serve the purpose of creating creatures that are required to attack each turn. (It is phrased this way to ensure that edge cases where no valid target is left do not break the balance of it.)

9th Edition, Revision 1

This is a quick revision which fixes some typos in the manual. It also includes a modified Lucifer card that works better.

9th Edition, Hotfix 1

This is a quick hotfox of 9th Edition. It fixes the fact that the Dark Necromancer example card was left with redacted text (meaning it was a banned card), and the fact that Sistrurus Catenatus had its cost misrepresented.

9th Edition

This is the ninth published ruleset of Keeper of the Cards. Changes since 8th Edition are:

• Added a new zone: "reserves", which is used to make it easier to get key cards out.
• Deck size now set strictly to a size of 40 cards, 10 of which are placed in the reserves at the start of the game.
• Starting hitpoints reduced from 60 to 20.
• Added a mechanism for modifying costs of card texts.
• Modified the costs of several card texts.
• Redacted several card texts that were deemed to be unbalanced.
• Improved the text in the manual and on the tip cards further.
• Modified a substantial number of cards, too many to list here. Most were to account for redactions and modified costs, while some were simply to give cards new niches or make them more useful.