Cardia: Tide & Storm Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup Deck III
• The Cards
• Objective and Gameplay
• Round Overview
  • 1. Play Cards
  • 2. Activate Ability
    • Instant Ability
    • Ongoing Ability
    • Modifying Influence
  • Move Ships
  • Island Effects
  • 3. End of the Round
• End of the Game
• Example of a Full Round
• Deck IV
  • Deck IV Setup
• Expedition
  • Phial Ability
• Locations
• Combining Decks
• Keywords
  • Influence
  • Discard Cards
  • Copy and Activate
  • Activate
  • Positions
• Deck III Clarifications
• Deck IV Clarifications
• Summary: Game End Conditions

Components

• 2 x 32 Character cards
• 6 Summary cards
• 3 Location cards
• 14 Signets
• 6 Ongoing tokens
• 28 Modifiers with different fronts and backs (8x1, 6x2, 8x3, and 6x5)
• 3 Island cards
• 3 Ships
• 8 Phials

Cardia Tide & Storm is a standalone sequel to Duel for Cardia and follows the same basic rules. It includes 2 new decks, each featuring one new faction. If you are playing Cardia for the first time, read pages 2-16. If you are familiar with Cardia, reading the sections highlighted in teal and pages 12-15 is enough.

In each game, you use one of the two included decks. We will start by explaining setup and gameplay for deck III with the Archipelago. See page 18 for differences in deck IV.

Setup Deck III

1. Sit opposite each other. Place a supply of all signets, modifiers, and ongoing tokens at one end of the table.
2. Take all character cards marked with a III in the lower right corner. Each player takes the 16 cards with the same back design. Place the other 32 cards marked with a IV back in the box.
3. Shuffle your 16 cards face down and place them in a stack in front of you. This is your draw pile. We will call this your deck from now on.
4. Place the 3 island cards in a row as shown. Lay them out at one side of the play area between you and your opponent as shown on the next page.
5. Place 1 ship on each of the 3 islands showing an anchor icon.
6. For your first games: Put the Soft Breeze location in play face up next to the island cards. Place the remaining location cards back in the box (more on them on p. 21).
7. Take a round summary card and an Archipelago summary card each. They are marked with a deck III icon in the top-right corner. Ignore the other summary cards for now.
8. Draw the top 5 cards from your deck into your hand.

The Cards

Your decks are identical except for the backs.

A deck consists of 16 cards with the values 1-16. This value is called a card's influence. Each card also has an ability and belongs to one faction. Each faction has its color and icon.

The card layout shows: the influence, the name, the ability, the ability type, and the faction and deck number.

Objective and Gameplay

Cardia is a duel. Every round, you play 2 cards opposite each other. This is called an encounter. The played card with the higher influence gains a signet. The lower card activates its ability. Played cards stay in play and can be affected by abilities.

Signets that have been won can change sides over the course of the game — more on that later.

Place your next cards, again opposite each other, in the direction of play next to the previously placed encounter, and so on.

The player who first collects 5 signets on their cards wins the game.

Note: To win a game with the Soft Breeze location in play, you need 6 signets instead.

Round Overview

A game lasts several rounds until one player wins the game. Each round consists of 3 phases, in order:

1. Play cards
2. Activate ability
3. End of the round

1. Play Cards

You each place 1 card face down on the table and reveal them simultaneously. Then you compare the two cards.

Place cards: Choose 1 card from your hand and place it face down on your side of the play area. You can choose any one of the cards in your hand. Your opponent also chooses 1 card and places it opposite your card.

Reveal cards: Now, reveal your cards at the same time and compare their influence. The card that has the higher influence wins the encounter. Take 1 signet from the supply and place it onto the winning card.

Tie: If both cards have the same influence, the encounter is a tie and no card wins or loses the encounter. This means that no signet is placed on any card in this encounter. Skip phase 2 (Activate ability) and continue with phase 3 (End of the round).

2. Activate Ability

Only the player whose card loses the current encounter immediately activates the ability of the losing card.

You must resolve the activated ability to the fullest extent possible including any and all consequences for other cards. To resolve an ability, do what the text on the card says.

Note: You are allowed to play cards whose ability you cannot resolve completely or at all.

Important: Only the ability of the card losing the current encounter in phase 1 is activated. If an ability causes a card in a past encounter to lose, that card's ability is not activated.

Important: Some abilities contradict the general rules of the game. In such cases, abilities always take precedence over the general rules.

There are two types of abilities, each with their distinct icon: instant abilities and ongoing abilities.

Some abilities can change the influence of a card (see pp. 10-11).

Instant Ability

When you activate an instant ability, resolve it immediately once.

Example: Your Buccaneer (5) loses the encounter, so you activate its instant ability: Your opponent discards the top card of their deck, then one card from their hand. Your opponent puts both cards face up into their discard pile.

Ongoing Ability

When you activate an ongoing ability, place an ongoing token on that card. The ability is in effect from now on. It remains in effect even if the card wins its encounter later in the game.

If all ongoing tokens are ever removed, the ongoing ability ceases to be in effect. If an ongoing ability ceases to be in effect, immediately resolve any changes that this may entail (including in past encounters).

Note: Some abilities allow you to place ongoing tokens on cards already in play. This allows you to activate an ongoing ability of a card in a past encounter.

Example: In the second encounter, your opponent's card wins again, so they place a signet onto their Shipwright (7). You activate your Occultist's (4) ability: While this card has 0 or less influence, it is worth 2 signets. You place an ongoing token onto your Occultist. While the token remains there, the ability is in effect.

Modifying Influence

Some abilities allow you to modify the influence of a card. When you activate such an ability, take a modifier with the indicated value from the supply and place it on the appropriate card.

Note: In some cases, you will need several modifiers to represent the needed value (e.g., a total of +7 may need more than one modifier).

The values of all modifiers on a card are immediately added to (or subtracted from) that card's influence. They modify the card's influence as long as they remain on the card.

If this changes the result of an encounter, move the signet to the card that now wins the encounter. In case of a tie, return it to the supply. Remember: The ability of the card that now loses is not activated.

Example: You activate your Juggler's (2) ability: Double all modifiers on one of your cards and move them all to a different one of your cards. You double the modifiers on your Juggler and move them to your Shipwright (7). The Shipwright now has 13 influence. Therefore you move the signet from the opponent's Tide Shifter (8) to your Shipwright (13). The Tide Shifter's ability is not activated.

Note: Tokens and modifiers are not limited. Should you run out, use any suitable substitute.

Move Ships

The island cards show 6 islands. You move ships from island to island by activating abilities of Archipelago cards. Two islands connected by a line are considered adjacent to each other.

The island cards are oriented in such a way that one of them is closest to you and one closest to your opponent. You can push ships away from you or pull them towards you.

Important: You can move any ship, no matter on which island it is.

• Push a ship: Move any 1 ship to an adjacent island away from you.
• Pull a ship: Move any 1 ship to an adjacent island towards you.

If there are multiple adjacent islands in the required direction, you decide which one of them you push or pull the ship to.

Example: You activate an ability that allows you to push a ship. You choose this ship and can move it to either island in the center. You pull a ship. If you choose this ship, your island is the only one you can pull it to.

You can move a ship to an island even if there are one or more other ships on that island.

Some abilities allow you to move a ship directly to a specific island. In these cases, the destination island does not need to be adjacent.

Island Effects

Your island: The island that is closest to you is your island. You cannot pull ships on your island any further. Similarly, you cannot push ships on your opponent's island any further.

Remember: You must always resolve abilities to the fullest extent possible.

Each island has its own effect. Each time you move one or more ships, you activate the effect of each island where at least one ship ended its movement.

If this allows you to activate more than one island effect, you choose the order. Always activate island effects after fully resolving all card abilities.

Your island: Each ship on your island is worth 1 signet as long as it stays there. Similarly, each ship on your opponent's island is worth 1 signet to them. Other than that, those two islands have no effect.

Example: You activate your Navigator's (3) ability: Push or pull any one ship. You choose a ship and pull it onto the adjacent island with the effect: Add +2 influence per ship to any one card. You activate the island effect and choose the NAVIGATOR. As there are 2 ships on this island, you give your NAVIGATOR influence for each ship (+2 per ship, so +4 in total). It now has 7 influence and wins the encounter against the opponent's Smuggler (6).

3. End of the Round

At the end of the round, draw 1 card from your deck into your hand. If your deck is empty, you cannot draw any more cards. Do not reshuffle your discard pile. You do not lose the game if you cannot draw a card.

Note: You always draw exactly 1 card in this phase. This means that over the course of the game, you can have more or fewer than 5 cards in hand.

Then start a new round with phase 1.

End of the Game

The game ends immediately and you win as soon as one of the following conditions is met:

• Phase 1: Your opponent cannot play a card.
• Phase 2: You activate an ability that says you win the game.
• Phase 3: You have 5 or more signets on your cards (incl. ships on your island) at the end of the round.

Remember: With Soft Breeze, you need 6 signets.

Tie: If in phase 3 both players have the same number of signets (and at least 5 each), continue playing until one player has more signets than the other or wins in another way.

Note: Abilities are activated before you count signets.

Special case: If both players cannot play a card in phase 1, the player with more signets wins the game. If players are tied for the number of signets, the game ends in a draw.

Now you are ready to start playing!

Your summary cards have infos and reminders to help you through your first game. If you have any questions, check the keyword section (p. 22-24) or the deck sections (p. 25-27).

Once you are familiar with the game, read on to learn about ways to switch things up.

Example of a Full Round

Phase 1: You and your opponent each place 1 card face down next to the previous encounter. Then you both reveal your cards. Your opponent's Colossus (15) has more influence than your Cartographer (10). So the Colossus gains 1 signet.

Phase 2: You activate your Cartographer's (10) ability: Activate the ability of one of your played cards that has less influence than this one. You choose the Shanty Singer (9). You activate its ability and place an ongoing token on it. Its ongoing ability is in effect from now on.

Phase 3: You each draw 1 card from your decks.

Deck IV

Instead of Deck III you can play with Deck IV. The new faction Expedition uses wind phials to activate powerful abilities.

Deck IV Setup

1. Place deck III, the island cards, the ships and the Archipelago summary cards back in the box.
2. Take the 32 cards marked with a IV and split them into two decks as usual.
3. Take 4 phials each and place them in front of you as a personal supply.
4. For your first games with deck IV, we recommend you play with the Soft Breeze location as well.
5. Take an Expedition summary card each.

The rest of setup remains the same.

Expedition

Each Expedition card has 2 abilities:

• The upper ability is an instant ability that you activate as usual when that card loses its encounter.
• The bottom ability is a phial ability that you activate by placing a phial on that card.

Place a phial: Take a phial from your supply. Place it on a card according to the ability you just activated. If you have no phials left in your supply, you must move a phial from one of your other cards.

Steal a phial: Take a phial from one of your opponent's cards or from their supply and place it according to the ability you just activated.

Note: There may be more than one phial on a card.

Special case: If you or your opponent do not have enough phials on their cards or in their supply, you do not place or move a phial.

Phial Ability

There are two types of phial abilities. Both follow the usual rules for abilities, but they are activated only by phials. You activate a card's phial ability immediately when placing a phial on that card.

• Phial instant ability: Every time you place a phial on the card, you activate the ability.
• Phial ongoing ability: The ongoing ability is in effect as long as there is at least one phial on this card. Place the phial with the ongoing icon face up to indicate that this ability is in effect.

Example: You activate your Falconer's (4) ability: Place a phial on one of your cards that loses its encounter. You place the phial onto the Falconer itself, activating its phial ongoing ability: The previous encounter is a tie. You remove the signet from the Usurper in the previous encounter.

Card texts shown in the Deck IV examples on pages 18-20:

• Spy: Your opponent discards the top card of their deck. Copy and activate its instant ability.
• Scoundrel: Discard the opposing card. Your opponent replaces it with a card from their hand.
• Falconer: Place a phial on one of your cards that loses its encounter. The previous encounter is a tie.
• Usurper: Discard up to 2 of your opponent's played cards. Replace each of them with a card you randomly draw from your opponent's hand.
• Scout: Place a phial on this card. Add +5 influence to this card.

Locations

After you have played a few games, you can spice things up with locations. Each location has a rule that applies for the entire game.

If you are playing with the Archipelago, use Uncharted Waters, with the Expedition use Flying Islands. We recommend playing with Soft Breeze as well.

The difficulty of each location is indicated by the number of skull icons in the upper right corner.

Note: Alternatively, you can play with any location from Duel for Cardia.

Combining Decks

Once you are familiar with both decks and are looking for a new challenge, try combining them with each other or with decks from Duel for Cardia. Deck III has 2 skull icons, deck IV has 3 skull icons.

Note: Make sure that you are always playing with two identical decks with exactly one of each value 1-16.

When playing with the Archipelago or the Expedition, you must include all 8 cards from that faction.

For scenarios with combined decks, check out: www.hans-im-glueck.de/en/cardia-en/dlc

Keywords

Influence

• If at any point during the game, a card's influence (incl. modifiers) exceeds that of the opposing card, place a signet on the card with the higher influence and return any signets from the opposing card to the supply.
• Multiple modifiers (positive and negative) on the same card are added together immediately. Place only the sum on the card. The total influence of a card can be negative.
• If an ability adds a modifier to the "next card you play", place that modifier next to your card in the current encounter in the direction of play. As soon as you reveal your next card, place that modifier on it. The modifier is immediately added to the new card's influence and already counts when comparing cards in phase 1.

Example: You activate the Shipwright's (7) ability: Add +3/-3 influence to the next card you play. Add +3/-3 influence to the next card your opponent plays. You place the modifiers next to your card and next to your opponent's card in the direction of play.

• You cannot place modifiers on cards in a hand, a deck or a discard pile.

Discard Cards

Some abilities force you to discard played cards, or cards from your hand or your deck. Discarded cards can not be played.

• Place cards you discard face up into your discard pile. Return any tokens on a discarded card to the supply. You can look through your and your opponent's discard piles at any time.
• If both cards in a past encounter are discarded, shift all cards in later encounters against the direction of play to close the gap.
• If you are forced to discard a card from your hand, you choose which card to discard.

Copy and Activate

Copy and activate: You copy another card's ability and activate it as if the copied ability were printed on this card.

Activate

Activate: You activate another card's ability (at the position of that other card). If you activate an ongoing ability, place an ongoing token on the card as usual.

Positions

Diagram on page 24: the direction of play runs from the previous encounter through the current encounter to the next encounter. Your cards are on your side and your opponent's cards are on the opposite side of each encounter.

Played card: A card that is face up in the play area (including the current encounter). Discarded cards no longer count as played cards.

"One of your played cards" must be a card that is on your side of the play area. "Any card" can be one of your cards or one of your opponent's.

Previous encounter: The encounter next to this one against the direction of play.

Past encounter: All encounters in play before this one against the direction of play.

Following encounter: The encounter in play that follows this one in the direction of play (not the next encounter, which has not yet been played).

Deck III Clarifications

• Ferryman: You may also choose to move a ship from one center island to the other center island.
• Juggler: You first take all modifiers from the chosen card, double them and then place all of them onto a different card. If you double negative influence, it stays negative.
• Smuggler: Your opponent's side is made up of the two islands on the card that is closest to your opponent (see page 3).
• Tide Shifter: You may pull the chosen ship once or twice. In any case, you only activate the effect of the island the ship ends its movement on.
• Shanty Singer: You place the +2 modifier immediately after moving one or more ships, before activating an island effect. You only place these modifiers once, even if you move ships multiple times in the same round.
• Cartographer: You resolve the chosen card's ability as usual. Any positions referenced in that ability are resolved in relation to that card, not to the Cartographer (see p. 23). You may choose to activate an ongoing ability.
• Mentor: You activate your card that has an ongoing ability and is closest to the current encounter. "Last" references the position of the card, not the point in time it was played. If the target card already has an ongoing token, place another one onto it. If you have no played card that has an ongoing ability, nothing happens.
• Siren: You can only choose 1 island, and you must move all ships there as a group to 1 other island. You activate the destination island effect only once, even if you move more than one ship with this ability. The "per ship" part of the effect is resolved as usual. You are allowed to choose your island.
• Goddess of the Sea: As this is an ongoing ability, you also win any encounter (where you played an Archipelago card) to the left and right of this encounter; including ties. If both players have activated the Goddess of the Sea's ability and both have played an Archipelago card in the same encounter, both of those cards win the encounter. If this ability ceases to be in effect, remove all signets placed due to this ability.

Deck IV Clarifications

• Forger: Do not activate the new card's ability. Place the -3 modifier on the new card.
• Mesmerizer: Tokens on the swapped cards stay on their respective card.
• Scoundrel: If your opponent does not have a card in hand, you win the game.
• Spy: You cannot copy and activate a phial instant ability. If the discarded card does not have an instant ability, nothing happens.
• Wind Whisperer: With this phial ability, you cannot activate a phial ability on your previous card.
• Shapeshifter: You cannot copy and activate a phial instant ability. If the opposing card does not have an instant ability, nothing happens.
• Matriarch: You place both phials first, then you resolve the activated abilities in any order. You cannot place both stolen phials on the same card. Phial ability: each phial on your cards is worth +5 influence regardless of which side faces up.
• Usurper: The new cards' abilities are not activated. If your opponent does not have enough cards in hand to replace both, you win the game.

Summary: Game End Conditions

From the summary card printed on the last page of the rulebook (see page 16).

The game ends and you win when:

• your opponent cannot play a card (phase 1)
• an ability says you win (phase 2)
• you have 5 or more signets (phase 3)

With Soft Breeze: 6 signets