Before you begin, each player follows these steps to set up the game.
1. Shuffle: Shuffle your deck and randomize your Legends face-down in the Legends area.
2. Determine Play Order: Both players roll a d20 (reroll on a tie). Whoever rolls higher decides who goes first. The player going first spends their 2 leftmost Legends and doesn’t ready them on their first turn.
3. Draw 6: If you don’t like what you see, you can mulligan once. Shuffle your hand back into your deck and draw 6 new cards.
(See rules 7.4-7.9.)
Each turn in Cyberpunk TCG has two phases: the Start Phase and the Main Phase. (See rule 8.1.)
At the start of your turn, complete all of these steps in order.
1. Ready Spent Cards: Return all your spent (sideways) cards to the ready (upright) position.
2. Draw 1: Add the top card of your deck to your hand.
3. Gain a Gig: Take a die from your fixer area, roll it, and add it to your friendly Gig area. You can choose any die except the d20, which is always rolled last.
(See rule 8.6.)
During your main phase, you can do any number of these steps in any order.
- Sell for Eddie (once per turn): Sell any card in your hand with a sell tag in the top left corner. To sell a card, reveal it to your opponent, then place it face-down in the Eddies area. Keep in mind: no matter how much a card costs in your hand, it’s only worth 1 €$ per turn as an Eddie.
- Play: Spend Eddies equal to the cost in the top left corner of a card to play it from your hand. (You can also spend any number of Legends as 1 €$ each, whether face-up or face-down.) All Units enter the field with Lag, which lasts until the end of the turn. Units with Lag can’t attack or activate self-spend effects.
- Call a Legend (once per turn): Spend 1 €$ to flip a Legend face-up. Don’t peek beforehand, choom! The randomness of your choice is a part of the game.
- Attack: Spend the attacking Unit. It can attack a spent rival Unit to start a fight, or attack the rival Gig area to steal a Gig. Keep reading to learn more about attacking.
(See rules 8.9-8.15.)
Each Unit attacks individually, and completes all the attacking steps before another Unit can attack. You can choose to attack a spent rival Unit or your Rival’s Gig area. Depending on your target, the attack plays out a little differently. (See section 9.)
1. Spend the Attacking Unit: (Turn it sideways.) Resolve any [ATTACK] effects on the Unit. Remember, Units can’t attack the turn they’re played.
2. Declare a Target: Attack a spent rival Unit to start a fight, or attack the rival Gig area to steal a Gig.
(See rule 9.3.)
The attacked Rival may take any number of these reactions.
- Call a Legend (once per turn): Spend 1 €$ to flip a Legend face-up.
- Quick: Activate card effects or play cards with the [QUICK] keyword.
- Blocker: Spend a Unit with the [BLOCKER] keyword to redirect the attack to it instead.
(See rules 9.7-9.14.)
Compare both Units’ power.
- The higher power Unit defeats the other.
- On a tie, they defeat each other.
Move defeated Units to the trash and resolve any [DEFEATED] effects on them. (See rules 9.15-9.20.)
Choose a rival Gig die and move it to your friendly Gig area. Units steal an extra Gig for every 10 power (and 0 Gigs at power 0).
- Power 1+ > 1 Gig
- Power 10+ > 2 Gigs
- Power 20+ > 3 Gigs, etc.
(See rules 9.21-9.25.)
If you don’t want to put a Unit in a vulnerable position, it doesn’t have to attack at all. Ready Units can’t be attacked. But keep in mind that most Units, even ready ones, won’t be able to protect your Gigs. Only Units with reaction effects like [QUICK] or [BLOCKER] can interrupt attacks, so they’re typically the only Units worth keeping ready. You can’t become a Legend without taking some risks, after all.
When a [BLOCKER] Unit redirects your attempt to attack your Rival directly, a fight plays out as though your Unit attacked the blocking Unit instead. Even if you defeat it, you don’t steal any Gigs for that attack. In general, if an effect redirects or stops a direct attack on your Rival, you don’t get to steal a Gig.