Overview

Dimensional Rift is a 2-player competitive card game in which two opponents challenge each other in a battle of wits, strategy and luck. Unlike all the core mechanics, which are heavily inspired by Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic the Gathering, the deck-building aspect is not designed as a TCG (trading card game); the set of cards is predetermined and comes in the box. It can be played with a custom deck building phase added as a initial step in which players pick from random card sets back and forth until they complete their decks (called Draft). Then, both opponents can play any number of duels with the created decks, or at any point between duels decide to re-run the deck building phase. Alternatively, players can pick pre-designed or randomized decks and play with them instead.

The suggested way of playing is to do one Draft phase followed by a "match", which is a name commonly given to a "best of three" set of games, i.e., the first player to win 2 duels, wins. Then you can follow with deck build again to spice things up, or keep the same decks, and do another match. After the first game of a match, the losing player (if any) can choose who starts the next game (replacing the Jan-Ken-Pon starting rule).

Deck Building

There are many possible ways to build Dimensional Rift decks before you play. While our proposed procedure is the Draft, as per described in detail in the wiki page, for first-time players that are still learning the game, a much simpler process can be used:

• each player gets assigned a faction (randomly or by common agreement)
• each player acquires the cards associated with their faction (15 cards)
• collect all the Unaligned creatures and deal 8 randomly to each player
• collect all the Unaligned artifacts and monuments and deal 7 randomly to each player
• add 3 random Unaligned cards to each player's extra deck

Duel

The core of gameplay is the duel, a single unit of competition between both opponents. A duel is a sequence of rounds in which each player take turns in order until one player reaches 0 life and loses (and the other, then, wins).

In their turns, players go through phases, in which they are allowed to (following certain rules), draw 1 card, perform 1 event, play cards from your hand, and activate effects from cards. The main strategy is to activate creature zones to summon creatures and attack the opponent during the Battle Event, destroying their creatures and, eventually, reducing their life points to zero. Players must be careful to avoid traps and tricks setup by the opponent as they can cause long chains of effects that put a twist into the game. Use the resources you draw wisely and destroy your opponent.

Most cards, being creatures, artifacts or monuments, have one or more effects of different types to be applied in a myriad of ways. Some effects require the arrows in the card to point to targets, so positioning your cards correctly is crucial. In general, card effects supersedes this ruleset (i.e. cards will add exceptions to the rules here). Unleash powerful boss cards from your extra deck using Rift Summoning. Use their soul-crushing effects to put an end to your opponent's play (and their life).

Game Pieces

While fundamentally you only need two decks to play, some extra pieces and supplies might enhance your experience with the game:

• sleeves and deck boxes to keep your cards tidy
• 2 (or more) 20-sided dice to hold players life points
• other kinds of dice to represent temporary effects on cards on the field (mana and damage counters). two sets of color-coded d6's are ideal.
• some way to represent Souls
• a playing mat is specially recommended as the position where the cards are on the field is relevant. You can dry one yourself. But you can use your imagination as well.
• Summoning Tokens: small indicators (beans, pebbles, anything really) to mark which zones on the field have been activated.
• other dice and markers: many effects might require counters, markers or indicators.

Places

At any moment in the game, each card has to be on one place. Game actions might allow players to move specific cards from one place to another under various circumstances. There are a few places in which cards can be:

• main deck (each player has one): main deck cards start here. This is a facedown pile of cards in which order is relevant. This is secret to all players. If a card, rule or effect says 'deck' without specifying which, it is referring to the main deck.
• extra deck (each player has one): extra deck cards start here. This is a facedown pile of cards with no relevant order. Each player can consult their own extra deck at any time (but not the opponent's).
• graveyard (each player has one): cards that are no longer on the field usually are moved to the graveyard. This is a faceup pile of cards with no relevant order (but usually should be kept in the order cards are added, new cards being added to the top). Once a card hits a graveyard, it will stay there until the end of the duel. Both graveyards are public and can be consulted by any players at any time.
• hand (each player has one): players draw cards from their decks to their hands. Normally players hold their hands in their hands because it's a small amount of cards. They have no order and are secret to the other player but public to you. You should hold the cards facing yourself so that the opponent can only see their non-descriptive backs, while you get to see what they are.

The Battlefield

Cards are played from the hand (or extra deck) to the field. The field is a single place but has two sides, one for each player, which are mirror images from each other. The field is composed by specific zones in which some cards might be able to be played (typically one per zone). Cards must be played on valid zones to be on the field.

Each side of the field consists of two rows of 5 zones on top of each other; the one closer to your opponent contains the creature zones, and the one closer to you has the artifact zones (very similar to a Yu-Gi-Oh! board). There is also an 11th, separated Monument zone for each player, that is on the field but not considered adjacent to anything, and thus cannot be targeted or target anything via arrows. Monuments do not interact with the targeting system.

If you were to compare with an old school Yu-Gi-Oh! board, you can apply the following substitutions to get to a Dimensional Rift battlefield:

• monster zones ➙ creature zones
• spell/trap zones ➙ artifact zones
• field zone ➙ monument zone
• deck, extra deck and graveyard are the same
• there is no banishment in DimRift