Description

Guilds and Gambits is a fantasy battling card game that draws inspiration from auto battler video games, deck-building board games, and trading card games. In this world, two players assume the role of rival guild masters, recruiting guild members, acquiring powerful items, and battling it out until one remains. Be the first player to eliminate your enemy's health points to bring glory to your guild!
The game is played in rounds, which are split into phases.

Draw Phase: Both players draw 5 cards and gain 10 Stamina. The player with the Initiative token will go first, but the other player can start planning their turn ahead of time.

• Trade any number of cards from hand to gain gold.

• Play a member from their hand face-down. Members cost Stamina and can only be played face-down. Therefore, a member’s Stamina cost is paid secretly, so the enemy player won't know what you have in store for them!
• Play items face-up. Items have no Stamina cost and can only be played face-up, activating any abilities immediately.

Discard Phase: Once the player has no actions left, the player must discard any cards left in hand, lose any unspent gold, lose any unspent Stamina, and then the other player conducts their turn.

• If the Power of the members are different: The member with the lower Power is defeated and sent to the discard pile. The member with higher Power remains face-up in the frontmost position until defeated.
• If the Power of the members are the same: Both members are defeated and sent to the discard pile.

Each time a member is defeated, move the next member in order to the front, flip it face-up, and then battle. Repeat this until a single player or both players have no members remaining.

End Phase: The player with no members left takes the combined battle damage of all remaining members. The Initiative token is given to the losing player. All members and items left on the field are sent to their respective discard piles. A new round starts until a player has reaches 0 Health Points.

Each round is filled with a variety of decisions and, of course, gambits! The dynamic and unique combat system creates suspense and strategic depth without the complexity of keeping track of chip damage or multiple stats which are present in most collectible card game combat systems.

—description from the designer