blackhole://nilFM

mage rage

Mage Rage is a card game originally developed by my friend Brandon and his sister Sarah. I have slightly modified the rules and documented them here.

setup

Mage Rage is played between two players with a standard 52-card deck each.

After the decks are shuffled, each player draws 6 cards without looking at them and puts them face-down on their side of the field. The first five are your wall, and the sixth is your dragon. Then, each player draws 5 cards for their hand.

Play is turn-based. Decide which player goes first with a coin flip or via some kind of rule.

turn structure

  1. Play Phase: the player may play up to one card from their hand to the field as either a soldier or equipment. A-10 are soldiers with attack and defense equal to their value, and the face cards are equipment (valued 11-13). equipment can be attached to a soldier of the same color in either attack or defense mode (adding its value to that stat). In addition to playing equipment from the hand, equipment can be freely given or swapped between compatible soldiers once during this phase. You may only have up to 5 soldiers on the field at once.
  2. Combat Phase: with the exception of the first turn, the player may attack with any or all of their soldiers. The other player may assign their own soldiers to defend against individual attackers. soldiers whose total defense is less than the total attack of their opponent are destroyed. Any soldiers left undefended against in combat may then attack the opponent's wall; For each, select a wall card. If it is face-down still, turn it over. Then if its value is less than the soldier's attack, it is destroyed (discarded) along with its equipment.
  3. Draw Phase: before passing your turn to the next player, you draw one card. If you reach the end of the deck, reshuffle your destroyed cards into it.

dragon

After one of your wall cards has been destroyed, you may summon your dragon by turning it face-up during your combat phase. It participates in combat the same as other soldiers, but it attacks the wall directly (so it can only be defended against by golems and other dragons), and it can only use equipment by devouring one of your soldiers and stealing its equipment. The dragon occupies a special slot on the field and does not count toward the 5-soldier limit.

golem

You may also sacrifice a soldier to one of your face-down wall cards to create a golem. A golem is both wall and soldier, so it is a wall that can defend itself and attack. The golem's attack and defense stats are selected from the two cards it is composed of. It can't use equipment. The golem is part of the wall and therefore doesn't count toward the 5-soldier limit. You may only have one golem at a time but you can create as many as you would like over the course of the game.

defeat

After all your wall cards have been destroyed, you lose.

DLC

The rules are open enough that house variations may be adopted: