Quick Start
Note This Quick Start Guide is still being developed and fine-tuned. While the full rules will explain everything you need in details, this page might be confusing or lacking.
This is a simplified version of the rules covering only key points to get you started with the game. This assumes you have a cursory understanding of TCGs in general.
Dimensional Rift is a Yu-Gi-Oh!-inspired TCG where cards are played in specific zones in the Battlefield, which is a 5x2 grid for each player.
There are 3 types of cards, Creatures, Artifacts and Monuments. They each can only go on their dedicated zone, and they can be played either face-up or face-down (except Monuments, which are always face-up).
Cards (except Monuments) have arrows that indicate which direction they can target (both effects and attacks). You can only target cards that your card connects to. You can use the arrows printed on the card plus its current orientation and position on the grid to determine which zones it connects to. You can check the wiki on Targeting for more details on how the arrows work - but for now you can use the interactive application below to get yourself familiarized with the concept:
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The zones on the battlefield must be activated before they can be used. Each player starts with the 3 central artifact zones active. Each turn, if they choose to take the Campaign Event, they will get a Summoning Token that enables the activation of a new zone. It is of strategic importance to quickly start to active your creature zones so that you can block your opponent attacks by playing creatures.
Your turn has the regular phases that most TCGs operate with: Start > Draw > Main 1 > Event > Main 2 > End. The difference is that instead of a Battle or Combat Phase, each turn you have to pick a event to perform, between Campaign Event, Battle Event and Rift Summoning Event.
During your Event Phase, each card you control on the field, one by one, in any order, can perform at most one action chosen from their Action Pool. The choice of event can give bonus action options to the Action Pool of all cards, and also can have other effects.
- Campaign Event: the first one you want to take. Activate a new zone and your cards with Movement Stat get the "Move" action.
- Battle Event: all creatures get the "Attack" action.
- Rift Summoning Event: allows you to access cards from your Extra Deck. Requires the consumption of Souls.
You win by reducing your opponent's life to 0. You can do that by attacking with your creatures and not being blocked. There is no alternative Winning Condition.
Game actions can be either slow (sorcery speed; only at Main Phase) or instant (instant speed):
- slow: Summon cards from your hand, Set cards from your hand
- instant: activate any card effect already on the field; flip Artifact cards face-up
Card effects of the type Action can only be done during the Event Phase, so you can think of them as super-slow.
Simple Game Flow
- Decide who goes first using Jan-Ken-Pon (the winner decides who goes first).
- Each player starts by drawing 5 cards, and then can Mulligan in turn order.
- Once they are both satisfied, each player gets a Preparations turn (set any cards).
- Then the first player can start their turn. They do draw a card and can attack in the first turn (though they won't be able to).
- Normal turns follow the turn structure described below:
- On each players' first turn, they will probably want to choose the Campaign Event.
- There is no Summoning Sickness.
- While you can flip Artifacts at instant speed (as part of resolving one of its effects), creatures must be targeted in order to be flipped.