Everything vs. Everything

Everything vs. Everything Rulebook

Table of Contents

Assembly Instructions

What you will need:

Printed sheet of cards. Note that there are 3 sets of cards. You will need the character cards to play the game. You will also need the director's cards if you want to play solitaire. These second set of cards act as the artificial intelligence for the game. The third set of cards (the dice cards) are optional and are used to replace the large amount of dice that you will need to play the game.
1-2 decks of playing cards with the same card back.
About 40 dice (which will vary based on cards played). Note that as an alternative, you may use the dice cards to mark counters. This will drastically reduce the amount of dice needed to about 2 – 4 dice. But it will also make the game more fiddly.
Approximately 80 tokens of various colors. (Eurocubes will work just fine. Beads will also work. More colored dice work great also for counting multiple tokens of different types.)
These rules. (Note that there is a glossary at the end of these rules to clarify parts of the game. There is also a detailed play example to illustrate how the game is played and to clear up any ambiguities.)

How to set up the play area

Place 6 tokens in a row. These tokens are called FIELD TOKENS. They are used to denote FIELD SPACES. OPEN FIELD SPACES are empty spaces above and below these tokens. Both your characters and your opponent will be placed on these OPEN FIELD SPACES. You will place your characters below the FIELD TOKENS and your opponent will place them above the FIELD TOKENS. As an alternative, you can use the 12 dice cards to indicate position. Simply set them up in two rows of 6 cards each. See the diagram to show how a typical set up might be.

[Diagram: a sample layout showing the two rows of dice cards, the card energy decks, the character cards and their HP dice, and the director's cards. A labelled example character card (Dr. Doug Ross, Human type, with an ENERGY CARD cost on each of two abilities) is also shown.]

Character card anatomy (from the diagram):

Name of the Character.
Type of character. Note that there are four possible types: Human, Cartoon, Machine, and Other.
HP DICE that are to be placed on this character when he comes in play.
ENERGY CARD cost to activate an ability.
Two separate abilities of the Character. Note that the DIRECTOR only activates the top ability when he attacks. The DIRECTOR only uses the bottom ability if the ability is always active.

How to Draft Your Character cards and the Director Character Cards in the Solitaire Game

Shuffle the character cards and draw an amount depending on your desired difficulty.

Easier: Draw 36 cards and place them in piles of 6 piles of 6 facedown.

Medium: Draw 30 cards and place them in 6 piles of 5 facedown.

Harder: Draw 24 cards and place them in 6 piles of 4 facedown.

Choose one character from each pile. You must select a character from one pile before selecting from the next pile.

After you have selected your characters shuffle all of the character cards together and randomly select a number of them based on your desired difficulty. This will create the DIRECTOR's set of characters.

Easier: 6 cards

Medium: 7 cards

Harder: 8 cards

Set aside all remaining characters. They will not be used for this game with only a few exceptions. For example, Sherlock Holmes will randomly pull one of these characters into the game and Ratchet and Clank will randomly draw and use abilities from these removed characters. Each player should now have 6 character cards.

Each player will now need to create a CARD ENERGY DECK. The CARD ENERGY DECK must consist of 20 playing cards. Only the suit matters on these cards and how many cards of each suit is up to the players, provided the total card count is 20. It is entirely possible (but not recommended) that a player make a deck entirely of spades. Once you have created this deck, shuffle it and put it face down.

If you look at each of the character cards, you will notice that each card has 1-2 ABILITIES. There is a cost associated with most abilities. During your turn, you will spend ENERGY CARDS from your hand of ENERGY CARDS to activate most of these ABILITIES. You must play ENERGY CARDS matching the total number and type of suits listed on the card. When drafting your characters, you will probably want to take this into consideration.

Final player set-up

Each player places 5 of their characters onto OPEN FIELD SPACES. (Once placed, these spaces are no longer considered open). If you are playing 2 player, then you may place these characters face down. You must however keep (at least) one OPEN FIELD SPACE on your side of the board throughout the game. You will notice that you have one character remaining. He is your "SUB" and his identity is secret to you until you choose to reveal him.

Place HP DICE on all characters so that the face up side of the dice matches the side of the die shown on each of the character cards. These dice represent hit points of each character. See the HP DICE AND HEALING SECTION for more information about how the HP DICE work.

If you have chosen to use the Dice cards, then simply place eurocubes or any other token onto the appropriate space on the card to represent HP DICE. These spaces will track HP DICE just as using real dice would. If you need more spaces for dice, then simply add more cubes to a single column of HP dice.

The Director set-up (SOLITAIRE ONLY)

Next, you must create THE DIRECTOR DECK. There are 24 DIRECTOR cards and you will only need 10 of them to play the game. If you want a game with unpredictable difficulty, then just randomly pick 10 cards and you are set.

Note that you can choose a play style for THE DIRECTOR. There are 4 different types of DIRECTOR cards and there are 6 cards of each type. The four different types will give the director different powers. (There are actually 8 different types if you use the expansion). In each set of cards, there is also an uber card that gives the ability to all of THE DIRECTORS characters that he has currently in play. (The uber card for target icons does not affect all of THE DIRECTOR'S cards. Rather it forces you to discard your hand.)

To create a play style for THE DIRECTOR, randomly choose 5 out of 6 cards from two separate sets and mix them up. This will be THE DIRECTOR'S play style. If you want to make the game easier, remove the uber cards from each of the two sets and combine the remaining 5 cards from each set to make THE DIRECTOR deck.

Note: it has been my experience that difficulty of the game can be substantially improved when the cards taken are from 2 sets of cards, rather than randomly creating THE DIRECTOR'S deck. THE DIRECTOR does better when he has focused tactics.

HP DICE AND HEALING AND DAMAGE

Hit points in this game are handled a bit differently than other games. Each character has a specific set of dice written on their card. The total amount of pips shown is the character's starting HP.

But wait, it gets more complicated than that. If a character heals, then each die is adjusted so that the face value on the die reflects the new value. There is a limit however as to how much a character can heal. That limit is the number of HP DICE that the character has multiplied by 6. For example, Dr. Doug Ross (pictured earlier in these rules) has a starting value of 9 HP. His maximum HP would be 12, unless more HP DICE are added to his character.
Please note that some characters do not have the "6" pip side face up on their character card. This is intentional as some characters will mess with how much HP that character can have. For example, characters that heal other characters.
Note that there are special rules regarding taking damage. When a character has damage done to it, they lose the total amount of damage in HIT POINTS. These HIT POINTS are subtracted from the hit points represented by pips on the HP DICE. Specifically, HP DICE are removed from each character if they take damage that is more than the smallest HP represented on a specific die. More information can be found in the ATTACK ICON section of these rules.

For example, Dr. Doug Ross takes 5 damage. He has one HP DICE with 3 HIT POINTS and one HP DICE with 6 HIT POINTS. He removes the HP DICE with 3 HIT POINTS and reduces the HP DICE with 6 HIT POINTS down to 4 HIT POINTS.

Once an HP dice is removed, it is longer be added back to the character if the character is healed. In other words, there is a limit to healing abilities. Each character has a maximum amount of HP and this will change as characters lose HP DICE. (EXCEPTION: Watson)
If throughout the game, the final HP DIE is removed from the character, then the character is eliminated and removed from the game.

Playing the Game

The game consists of 10 rounds total. THE DIRECTOR'S phase behaves differently than the player.

The solitaire game plays as follows:

UPKEEP
DRAW A DIRECTOR CARD AND ACTIVATE ALL ACTIONS ON THE CARD
PLAYER DRAWS CARD ENERGY
PLAYER ACTIVATES ANY CARDS POWERS THAT HE CHOOSES OR SUBS

1) UPKEEP

Many abilities in the game allow a player to place tokens. Some of these tokens will stay on a character until the character dies. Boost tokens are the most common type of tokens that stay on characters. Boost tokens will be explained later in the rules. Other types of tokens are removed during the upkeep phase. The symbols below indicate which tokens stay and which tokens are removed.

[Icon: grey token with blue rim, captioned "Do not remove on upkeep."]

[Icon: grey token with blue rim and curved arrow, captioned "Remove on upkeep."]

Note that tokens are placed as a group and that groups are separate from each other. Only one token of each group of tokens is removed during the upkeep phase (if tokens are removed during the upkeep phase). In these cases, the token pile is acting like a timer and there is sometimes an effect for removing the last token (such as triggering an explosion). Dice work as a great substitute for these tokens as it may be easier to keep track of them.

Each group of tokens are kept separate from each other because the groups of tokens are not meant to affect each other. In other words, if an ability that places upkeep tokens is activated 3 times, then the groups of tokens do not stack on each other or effect each other. Rather, they remain distinct groups and are treated as separate groups of tokens. During the upkeep phase, one token from each group is removed. It may be advisable to use a die to represent these groups of tokens instead.

2) DRAW A DIRECTOR CARD AND ACTIVATE ALL ACTIONS ON THAT CARD

THE DIRECTOR is planning your doom! He has turned the good heroes of our times into mindless zombies. Though they have lost their intelligence, they have gained superhuman strength and unnatural abilities. THE DIRECTOR will use different tactics depending on how you have set up his deck. Each tactic will require different strategies to overcome. The odds are against you, but you may prevail just yet!

In most cases, THE DIRECTOR'S turn will occur before the player turn. You are required to draw a DIRECTOR card and then perform the actions listed on the card. Each of the actions are listed as an icon corresponding to one of the six field spaces on both THE DIRECTOR'S side and your side.

[Diagram: a sample DIRECTOR card ("The Director") with its Action Icon guide (Attack, Boost Token, Web Token) and action icons placed over field spaces. Callouts: each DIRECTOR card has action icons associated with field spaces; when you draw a DIRECTOR card, perform the associated action in each field space. Actions are performed from left to right and top to bottom, much like reading a book. The same character could be activated twice if the character moved during play. If there isn't a character card in the space where the action icon is located, then the action is not performed. Move on to the next action icon.]

IMPORTANT: If there is no character in the position where the action icon is found, then almost always the action is skipped. There is only one exception to this rule: If THE DIRECTOR is told to perform an attack action and there is no character in the corresponding space and THE DIRECTOR has 4 characters or less, then a new character is drawn from THE DIRECTOR'S pile of characters provided he still has characters in this pile. This will happen once in the easy game, twice in the normal game, and three times in the difficult game. Meaning that you will need to beat up to 6 characters in the easy game, 7 characters in the normal game, and 8 characters in the hard game.

Each icon depicts a specific action that a character in that field space takes. There are 8 specific icons that are possible. Each of the icons are described in the next sections.

Boost Icon

(Difficulty = 6)

BOOST TOKENS are special tokens that add damage to damage abilities on character cards. BOOST TOKENS are not removed during the upkeep phase. BOOST TOKENS effectively make weaker characters more powerful as the game goes on. If there is a multiplier underneath the BOOST TOKEN icon, then you will put that number of boost tokens on the associated character.

Boost tokens are the most common token placed in the game and are critical to winning the game. It will be difficult to win the game if you have no characters that place boost tokens. Boost tokens add a single point of damage to a characters damage ABILITY.
If a boost token is placed on a character that has no ability to do damage (eg. GlaDOS), the boost token will have no effect. NOTE: there is a distinct difference between an ability doing damage and a token doing damage. A token can never boost another token's ability to do damage. Effectively, this means that placing a boost token on a character like this is useless. Some examples include: 1) GlaDOS (Portal), 2) Warp Core (Star Trek) – see below, 3) The Hulk – see below 4) Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid) – see below
There are 6 characters that will only do damage if they actually hit their targets. In these cases, the boost tokens are only activated if they do actual damage to their targets. 1) Samus Arun (Metroid), 2) Mechwarrior, 3) Ratchet and Clank, 4) Mega Man 5) Le Chuck, 6) MewTwo
If the character's ABILITY does damage to multiple targets, then the player can choose one of those targets to do an extra single point of damage. The each boost token effects ONLY one of the targets, not all of the targets. If there are multiple BOOST TOKENS, then each BOOST TOKEN may be distributed as the player sees fit. If THE DIRECTOR is applying the damage, then THE DIRECTOR will always try to eliminate HP dice if possible. Characters that this rule applies to include the following: 1) Chun Li, 2) Super Mario, 3) Cyclops, 4) Strider 5) Ratchet and Clank, MewTwo, Le Chuck, and MegaMan when they use another character's power. 6) Dr. Octapus and Sephoroth (Note that THE DIRECTOR must damage his opponents, not his teammates with boost tokens.)
If the ABILITY hits multiple times, then each BOOST TOKEN adds a single point of damage to the total damage. (ref: Mechwarrior, Kratos, Le Chuck, Macross)
If the ABILITY is cast several times, then the boost token will be used every time the ABILITY is cast. (ref: Terminator, American Mcgee's Alice, Penelope Pitstop.)
Boost tokens do not affect other tokens. In other words, if an ABILITY says that a when removing a token, do damage to the opposing character, then it is the token doing the damage, not the ABILITY. The damage is not boosted. (ref: The Incredible Hulk, Warp Core, Solid Snake). Effectively, this means that placing a boost token on these characters is useless.

Attack Icon

(Difficulty = 7)

If the icon is an ATTACK ICON, then the character activates the first ability written on each card, regardless of cost. Specifically:

THE DIRECTOR only activates the first ability on each card, regardless of cost. In most instances, the first ability damages the opposing character. In quite a few instances, there are other effects as well.
If there is a multiplier underneath the character card, then when that character attacks, he also does an additional amount of damage just as though he had temporary BOOST TOKENS placed on him.
This activated action may trigger secondary abilities on this or other character cards that are ALWAYS ACTIVE. These triggered abilities may belong to different character cards, not just the current character being activated regardless of which side the character belongs to. For example, the Terminator always receives double magic damage. He never activates this ability. If the ALWAYS ACTIVE ABILITY cannot be performed by THE DIRECTOR, then it has no effect. However, if the ability can be performed by THE DIRECTOR, then it will always be triggered. (example: Watson, Samus Aran, Mr. Driller, Tetsuo)
It is possible that the same character will attack twice. This would occur if a character had an attack and move ability where moving the character into a new open field position, and that new OPEN FIELD POSITION also had an ATTACK ICON associated with it.

This is the hardest step in the solitaire game to enforce. A few characters have ABILITIES that are difficult to interpret because THE DIRECTOR cannot choose. When this is the case, you may make active choices for THE DIRECTOR. For example, Sam and Max says to "Do 1 damage to any opposing character." It does not say specifically which one. In this case, you (the player) may choose the target.

If the ability is still impossible to perform, such as Le Chuck or Professor Xavier, then THE DIRECTOR'S character simply does 3 magic damage. One of the most common reasons for this is that the AI does not have a ENERGY CARD DECK, and therefore cannot draw a card. If there was space, this is denoted as SOLITAIRE: DO 3 DAMAGE TO OPPOSING PLAYER. In some cases, this was written on the card. If there is any doubt, then assume this rule.
Hit points work as follows: When assigning damage: if the hit would result in the loss of an HP DIE, then that DIE must be eliminated before any more damage can be assigned. In other words, the damage must assigned to the HP DIE that has less hit points on it than the damage that is being inflicted before any other damage is assigned.
Otherwise, the defender chooses which die the damage can be assigned to provided the damage is assigned to one HP DIE. To clarify, you cannot spread out the damage among multiple HP DICE. They must be assigned to a single HP DIE.

For example, if you had three HP DICE with the values 4, 2, and 1, and you have three damage being done to you, then you would be forced to eliminate the 1 and 2 HP DICE. If the values were 3, 2, and 1, then you could choose to eliminate the 2 and the 1, or just eliminate the 3 instead. If the values were 4, 5, and 6, then you could choose any HP DIE you like, but all the damage must go to one HP DICE.

If a card says to do damage to a "neighbouring character" card or a card that is "next to" a character, the card must be on the OPEN FIELD SPACE that is directly adjacent to that character. If there is an OPEN FIELD SPACE adjacent to the character, then there is no effect. (ref. Strider, Cyclops, Dr. Watson, Dr. Octopus, Captain Jack Sparrow) If the ABILITY says to do damage to more than two characters, then the acting player may decide which character takes the damage first. (ref Dr Octopus)

Finally, don't forget to add characters to the DIRECTOR's side if there is more than one OPEN FIELD SPACE and the DIRECTOR still has characters that he can place.

Web Icon

(Difficulty = 7)

When this is activated on a player place the number of Web Tokens as indicated by the multiplier under the Web Icon. If a character already has web tokens place the new tokens in a separate pile, the piles of tokens should NEVER be combined. A single Web Token is removed from each pile at the upkeep phase.

A character cannot use any of their abilities during their turn if there is a Web Token on that character, including Always Active abilities.
Any other tokens on a character continue to be active and behave as normal.
Other characters can still effect the character with Web Tokens on it. The webbed character can still be healed, damaged, moved around, etc.

Full Heal or Add 1 HP DICE

(Difficulty = 9)

Please note that this icon has changed from its original form. The original rules for this icon said "Each character associated with the HEAL ICON first receives a single HP DICE. Then that character's HP dice are all reset to full HP."

The new rules for this icon allows you to choose at the beginning of the game whether the characters receive a new HP DICE with its value set at six HIT POINTS or resets all of the characters HP DICE to full health. Full health in this case is not the original HP DICE printed character card. Rather, convert all of the HP DICE sitting on the current character to six HIT POINTS.

Note that this action does not affect Arthus Menethil as it is not a character that is healing. Rather, it is THE DIRECTOR himself that is healing the character. THE DIRECTOR himself is not considered a character for gameplay purposes.

Counter Strike Icon

(Difficulty = 4)

When this icon is activated, place the number of Counter Strike Tokens as indicated by the multiplier under the Counter Strike Icon. If a character already has Counter Strike tokens place the new tokens in a separate pile, the piles of tokens should NEVER be combined. A single Counter Strike Token is removed from each pile at the upkeep phase.

When there are Counter Strike tokens on a character and the character takes damage, this character does 2 damage to the source of the damage. Note that tokens doing damage are not countered. For example, The Hulk activates his rage token doing 6 damage to the character with a single Counter Strike token. Because the token itself is doing the damage, The Hulk does not take any damage for taking this action.

Resistance Icon

(Difficulty = 3)

When this icon is activated, place the number of Resistance Tokens as indicated by the multiplier under the Resistance Icon. If a character already has Resistance tokens place the new tokens in a separate pile, the piles of tokens should NEVER be combined. A single Resistance Token is removed from each pile at the upkeep phase.

When there are Resistance tokens on a character and that character takes damage from an activated ability, then you (the player) will remove from the game an ENERGY CARD that you used to activate the ability. You (the player) should always remove the first suit listed on the the activated ability. This will start to thin out your ENERGY CARD DECK and make it more difficult to use abilities as the game progresses.

If this icon activates the Borg character card, there is no effect. The Borg maintains his ALWAYS ACTIVE ability as though nothing was played on it.

Target Icon

(Difficulty = 9)

When this icon is activated, place the number of Target Tokens as indicated by the multiplier under the Target Icon. If a character already has Target tokens place the new tokens in a separate pile, the piles of tokens should NEVER be combined. A single Target Token is removed from each pile at the upkeep phase.

When the last target token is removed from a pile of tokens and the character is still alive, then do 3 damage to all of the characters on your side. In other words, kill the target character before the tokens run out or all of your characters take 3 damage. OUCH!

Note that the uber version of this card only effects 3 DIRECTOR character cards. It does force you to discard your hand though.

Move Boost Atack Icon

(Difficulty = 4)

When this icon is activated, add a boost token the associated character. The character will then move the corresponding character to an OPEN FIELD SPACE that has a character on the opposite side. Finally, it activates the first ability on the card as though it was just given an attack order.

If the activated character can choose between two targets, then it will choose the character with the lowest HP. If there is still a tie, then it is the player's choice.

If there are no OPEN FIELD SPACES that have an opposing character, then the activated character will just try to attack the character in front of him. If there is also not an opposing character and the activated character has an ability that can only attack the character in front of him, then the character damages the character that is closest to the OPEN FIELD SPACE in front of him. Ties are broken as above.

3) PLAYER DRAWS CARD ENERGY

The player now draws 3 ENERGY CARDS from the top of his ENERGY DECK.

If the character has run out of cards from his energy deck, he takes his discard deck and shuffles it and places it face down to reform his ENERGY DECK.

EXCEPTION: Certain characters allow the player to draw one more card each turn. If you have multiple characters with this ability, then this ability can stack.

4) PLAYER ACTIVATES ANY POWERS HE CHOOSES

The character cards that the player has in play have ABILITIES. These ABILITIES usually cost ENERGY CARDS. The ENERGY CARD costs are written to the left of the ABILITY. To activate an ability, the player must spend (discard) all of the ENERGY CARDS listed on the energy card cost from his hand. On each of these ENERGY CARDS is a card suit. The number on the playing card is not relevant to the gameplay. After the player has spent the ENERGY CARDS, the ABILITY is activated.

[Diagram: the Dr. Doug Ross character card again, with the same callouts as before: name, type, HP DICE, ENERGY CARD cost, and the two abilities (the DIRECTOR only activates the top ability when he attacks; he uses the bottom ability only if it is always active).]

The player may activate any ABILITY of a character on his side of the board. He is not required to activate an ABILITY. He may activate an ABILITY multiple times (if he has the CARD ENERGY and the ABILITY does not say he cannot activate it multiple times). He may activate several different ABILITIES provided he can pay the CARD ENERGY costs.

Some abilities are ALWAYS ACTIVE. These abilities do not have a CARD ENERGY cost associated with them and can be activated throughout the game as many times as possible unless the text says that there is a trigger to activate the ability.

The player is never required to discard cards (unless an ABILITY says other wise). He has a hand limit of 20 ENERGY CARDS (Which is also the maximum amount of ENERGY CARDS he may have in his deck).

Most characters in the game will have abilities that do damage. If one of these abilities is activated, then damage must be applied to the appropriate characters. Please note that there are special rules that apply as to how to inflict that damage. That information can be found in these rules in the section talking about THE DIRECTOR'S attack icon. The only difference in a two player game is that the defender gets to decide which dice the damage is assigned provided that he eliminates HP DICE if at all possible before assigning damage to new HP DICE.

Please note that there are few other timing issues that are addressed in the FAQ section of these rules.

Many of the characters abilities have other effects as well such as adding boost tokens or healing other characters. If there is a question about how these work, refer to the appropriate icon in these rules or look at the FAQ section of these rules or ask the question in the forum on www.boardgamegeek.com under the game listing for EVERYTHING VS. EVERYTHING.

SUBBING

At any given time during this phase of your turn, you may replace any of your characters with the SUB character. There is no cost to replace a character with the SUB character. Characters cannot be subbed in the last turn of the game. The replaced character is removed from the game. Also, certain characters cannot be used as a SUB. The card will say if this is the case.

If a character was not used during the game, then add the total amount of hit points on the HP DICE to your score at the end of the game.

SQUAD MOVEMENT

Characters are usually stuck in the field spaces where they are located unless an ability allows specific characters to move around. To prevent the game from stagnating, you may at any time during this phase perform a SQUAD MOVEMENT.

To perform a SQUAD MOVEMENT, you must discard your entire hand of ENERGY CARDS. You are required to have at least 1 ENERGY CARD in your hand to perform a SQUAD MOVEMENT. When you perform a SQUAD MOVEMENT, you may move each character in any order left or right to an OPEN FIELD SPACE. Each character may move only once.

Note that THE DIRECTOR does not perform SQUAD MOVEMENT.

Game End

The game ends at the end of the round that the last DIRECTOR card is played. In other words, the game ends after 10 rounds.

Two Player Rules

There are only a few changes in the two player rules compared to the solitaire rules. The biggest difference is that there is no DIRECTOR. Therefore all rules applying to the DIRECTOR are now irrelevant. The players draft characters as follows:

How to Draft Your Character Cards in the 2 Player Game

Shuffle the character cards and draw an amount depending on your desired difficulty.

Easier: Draw 36 cards and place them in piles of 6 piles of 6 facedown.

Medium: Draw 30 cards and place them in 6 piles of 5 facedown.

Harder: Draw 24 cards and place them in 6 piles of 4 facedown.

Each player then randomly chooses three piles.

Each player chooses one character from each of their three piles. They must select a character from the pile that they are currently looking at before selecting one from the next pile.

They then pass each pile to thier opponent and select three more characters in the same way.

There are still 10 rounds. Each player grabs 10 random DIRECTOR CARDS (not the uber cards).
The two player game plays out as follows:
1. UPKEEP PHASE
2. EACH PLAYER DRAWS A DIRECTOR CARD AND PLACES A BOOST TOKEN AS LISTED ON THE BOTTOM ROW OF THE CARD
  - Ignore all other effects of the DIRECTOR cards.
3. BOTH PLAYERS DRAW CARD ENERGY (normally, three cards)
4. PLAYERS ROLL A DIE TO SEE WHO GOES FIRST
  - Reroll ties.
  - Penelope Pitstop breaks this rule.
5. THE PLAYER WHO WON THE DIE ROLL PLAYS HIS FULL TURN
6. THE PLAYER WHO LOST THE DIE ROLL PLAYS HIS FULL TURN
Otherwise, all standard rules are in play.

Final score

Sum up the HIT POINTS left on all played characters (both sides). Then add the HIT POINTS left on each of the characters that have not been played. Who ever has the higher amount of HP wins. The score is the amount of HP left of the winning player minus the amount of HP left of losing player. There is no tiebreaker.

Solitaire scoring ranks:

Basic victory: 1 point! Advanced victory: 20 points! (Yes, you can in fact lose if you have less HIT POINTS than the director.)

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (new)

Q: Could you please add (insert new character)? A: Possibly. Before you ask though, please play the game a few times. The replay value on this game is quite insane. More characters adds more instability and reduces the balance that I have spent a year and a half trying to achieve. If after this you really think that the game needs even more variety, then I will consider it.

Q: I really want to play with (insert character). Can't I just choose which characters at the start of the game? A: Well, it is your game. I won't stop you. But I would suggest this variant to keep the game balanced. Instead of making six piles, just make five piles. Then each player chooses a character and announces that character to their opponent. That character becomes one of the six characters for that player.

Q: What is "Magic Damage"? A: Magic damage works just like normal damage. Or almost. There are certain characters that can affect or be affected by magic damage. The card text will say. (e.g. Mickey Mouse, Terminator, Superman, etc.) If there is no character that mentions this, just treat it like normal damage.

Q: Do effects and abilities (such as always active abilities) happen simultaneously? What if a character is eliminated? Does his effect still apply? There are a few always active abilities that will cause some fairly strange effects in the game. One of the hardest things to figure out is what happens when things are happening simultaneously. For example, what happens when a character does damage to another character based on the number of boost tokens and another character gives boost tokens to different characters when that character gets hit?

This situation should happen rarely, but it is difficult to resolve when it does. So how do you resolve it? The active player activates all of his ALWAYS ACTIVE abilities in any order that he chooses as they apply. Then the defensive player activates all of his ALWAYS ACTIVE abilities that he chooses. Note that if a character is eliminated, that character's ALWAYS ACTIVE ability will still activate one final time if applicable.

The same rule applies to tokens with one small exception. You must always be aware of when a token is on a character or if it is on a field space. If a token is on a character, the effect of the token will still be active as long as the character is still alive. However, if a character is somehow eliminated, then all tokens on that character no longer have any effect. This happens as soon as the character is eliminated. For example, if the Warp Core has tokens that cause it to do damage to all characters on the board and it is somehow eliminated, then those tokens no longer have any effect.

As a rule, character abilities take place before tokens take place.

Q: In the upkeep phase, there are several effects that can happen. Who decides what order these effects happen? A: This should be extremely rare, but it still could happen that these effects will matter. If they do, then each player can roll a single die to see who goes first. The player that goes first can activate all of their ALWAYS ACTIVE abilities in any order that they choose. This would be followed by the the player that went second. This may seem like it is powerful, but most likely there is only one ability that will really matter so far as which ability goes first.

Q: I am playing against the Director and an impossible situation has come up. What do I do? A: If a Director card is asking one of the Director's characters to perform an action that it cannot do such as draw a card, then simply ignore the action and perform the rest of the action. If the entire action cannot be performed, then look on the ability on the card. There are a quite a few cards that tell you how to modify the ability so that the Director can use the ability. If the action to take is still vague, then it becomes the player's choice with one exception. Only a few characters were meant to switch sides: Captian Jack Sparrow, The Joker, and Jack Torrence. Any other character that is told to move to an open field space is assumed to move to an open field space on the same side. If the ability cannot be performed, but is an "ALWAYS ACTIVE" ability, then treat the ability as no effect. If after all the above modifications have been checked and the ability still cannot be resolved, then change the ability to "Do 3 magic damage to the opposing character."

Q: My character has swapped sides. What happens to the tokens that were on it? Do they still effect me or do they effect the opponent? A: All the tokens that were on the character stay on the character. All the tokens that were on the field space (such as a Mine Token) stay on the field space. All tokens still effect the person or character that is listed on the ability. So boost tokens still effect the character that they are on. Note that Target Tokens specifically state in the rules that they effect you the player, regardless of which side the character is on. This is not the same as the Marked Tokens listed on Agent 47 (Hitman).

Q: The Director has an ability that causes his character to move to an open field space. Can I bring that character to my side? A: No. See above. The card must specifically state on the card switches to the opposing side. At the time of this writing, there are only 3 characters that do this: Captain Jack Sparrow, The Joker, and Jack Torrence.

Q: How do boost tokens work? A: See the boost section listed under the Boost icon.

Q: How do web tokens work? A: See the web section above listed under the Web Icon.

Q: Do target tokens still effect me if the character switches sides or if the token is removed by alternative means? A: Yes. The only exception is if the character itself is removed.

Q: My character has a token that is not listed in the above token list. Am I supposed to remove it or does it stay on the character during the upkeep phase? A: There should be an icon attached to the ability that indicates if the icon is removed during upkeep.

Q: If I damage an opponents character, who decides which HP DIE the HP come off of? A: In the 2 player game, the defender. In the solitaire game, the player does. In both cases, if an HP DIE can be removed, then it must be. Also, all of the HP lost must be assigned to 1 die if possible. The player cannot spread the damage around.

Q: What happens when an ability causes several things to trigger, such as causing a character to be eliminated that had an effect that would activate? A: This is covered above in the forth question of this FAQ. To recap, all abilities still activate. The order which they activate is decided by the active player, followed by the defending player in a process listed in the above question. Tokens will then activate once the abilities have activated provided the character that the token was on did not cause the character to be eliminated.

**Q: I have a character that steals/removes other characters tokens. If the last one is removed, does the effect still trigger? A: Yes. Certain characters such as Warp Core Breach tokens (Warp Core) that cause lots of damage. Removing those targets by an alternative means does not prevent the effect from going away. In much the same way, removing a Mine Token or a Rage Token causes the effect to happen much faster.

Q: If a character is removed, do any of the abilities of the tokens on that character trigger? A: No. This is the one and only way to get rid of certain tokens such as Target Tokens. If the character is eliminated, all tokens on that character now have a null effect. Note that there is a difference between a token being located on a character and a token being on a field space. Also note that there are a few characters that will potentially do something with the lost tokens. For example, Agent Smith gains all of the removed characters boost tokens.

Glossary

Basic game terms

FIELD TOKEN – This is a token that is used to mark the six positions that characters can be placed on the board. Characters are placed above and below these tokens. They are not used if you are using the dice cards.

FIELD SPACE – This is the space above or below the field token (or dice card). It is called a field space regardless of there being a character on it or not.

OPEN FIELD SPACE – An open field space is a field space that has no character on it. Many character's abilities will allow that character to move to an open field space.

THE DIRECTOR – The primary opponent in the solitaire game.

THE DIRECTOR CHARACTER DECK – The stack of character cards that THE DIRECTOR is putting into the game each turn. Note that only one character can be put into play each turn. Also note that there must be no more than 5 characters per side in play each turn and that a character can only be put into play if there is an open field space on THE DIRECTOR'S side of the board.

ABILITY – An action that a character performs. Most abilities require the player to play energy cards as a cost of activating the ability. The player must play ENERGY CARDS matching the total number and type of suits listed on the card.

ENERGY CARD – A playing card that the player uses to activate an ability. THE DIRECTOR does not have energy cards and just activates the first ability of each card automatically. The suit is the only thing that matters on the playing card. Roughly, each suit represents a certain type of energy. Hearts represent comical energy. Diamonds represent mystical energy. Spades represent gun energy. Clubs represent technical energy. This representation really doesn't effect gameplay but rather effects how a card was constructed.

ENERGY CARD DECK – This is the deck of cards created for each player at the beginning of the game. It requires 20 energy cards and can be consist of any combination of suits that the player chooses.

SUB – The character that the player can use to replace another character in the game. Each player has only one sub. Certain characters such as the Death Star and Frodo cannot be used as subs. Draw a different character if the DIRECTOR draws one of these cards.

SQUAD MOVEMENT – The action of discarding all of the player's hand of energy cards to move each of the player's characters exactly one field space left or right. At least 1 energy card must be discarded. Note that THE DIRECTOR does not perform squad movement.

TOKENS and notes about tokens - One of the key parts of this game is the concept of tokens. A large part of the characters have lasting effects. Tokens are one of the ways to keep track of these lasting effects. Tokens do NOT effect each other. (see boost tokens)

Also note that when placing tokens as a group, they do not interact with other groups of tokens. In other words, if an ABILITY that places tokens is cast two times in a row, then the tokens are treated as separate groups and will trigger twice independently from each other.

Tokens NOT removed during upkeep

BOOST TOKENS
ACID TOKENS
SPEED TOKENS
BLOB TOKENS

Tokens that ARE removed during upkeep

WARP CORE TOKENS
CHAIN TOKENS
WEB TOKENS
RAGE TOKENS
MINE TOKENS
BAT TOKENS

Example of a full turn

It is the third turn. The DIRECTOR has Chun-Li, Sonic the Hedgehog, Professor Charles Xavier, Kratos, and Mario. You as a player have Spiderman, The Joker, Macross, The Witch-King of Angmar, and Dr. Doug Ross. On a previous turn, 2 web tokens were played on Spiderman as a group. 1 web token was already placed on Spiderman at that time. Also, Dr. Doug Ross and Chun-Li have two boost tokens each.

During the upkeep phase, 1 web token is removed from each group of web tokens on Spiderman. In other words, 2 web tokens are removed (1 from each group). Since there is still one web token remaining on Spiderman, he still cannot take actions this turn. The boost tokens on Dr. Ross and Chun-Li are not removed. In your hand, you have the spade and the club ENERGY CARDS saved up from a previous round.

The DIRECTOR'S card is drawn and it is the web card shown in the picture diagram. The actions are executed as listed on the diagram, starting from the top left and working to the bottom right.

Chun-Li makes the first attack. Her ability is listed as "Move Chun-Li to the farthest open field space left or right of her current field space. Do 2 points of damage to each opposing character that she touches." Chun-Li also has 2 boost tokens. She moves to the only space open on her side of the field: 1 space to her left. She then does two damage to both Spiderman and The Joker. Two damage is applied to each of these characters. Since both characters are at full health, it does not matter which HP DICE is reduced. There is also an additional 2 damage from the boost tokens that is applied to a character of your choice, or it can be spread among each character since only two of your characters took damage. You choose to spread the damage evenly: so each character receives 3 damage instead of 2.

A single boost token is added to Professor Charles Xavier.

Kratos is instructed to attack the opposing character. As there is no opposing character, Kratos does no damage this turn.

Next, the Joker receives 3 web tokens as a group. All his abilities are defunct for the next three rounds. Macross also receives 3 web tokens and cannot use any of his abilities, even his reactionary abilities. Note that his reactionary ability only redirects damage, not web tokens, so it could not be used even if you had the proper energy cards.

Finally, Dr. Ross receives another boost token, upping his total boost tokens to 3. The DIRECTOR'S turn is now finished and your turn can begin.

You draw 3 ENERGY CARDS: a diamond and two hearts. (Note that you had a spade and a club from a previous round).

You can now activate abilities. You would really love to activate Spiderman's Web ability as it would prevent Chun-Li's move and do damage ability. You cannot do so though because Spiderman, The Joker, and Macross currently have web tokens and cannot do anything until these web tokens are removed.

Instead, you choose to spend a club, spade, and a diamond ENERGY CARD to activate Dr. Doug Ross's attack/heal ability. The ability reads "Do 1 damage to the opposing character. Heal 4 damage to your human characters. Heal 1 damage to your cartoon and machine characters. This attack ability is boosted so it does an additional 3 damage for a total of 4 damage to Mario. This is applied to a single HP DICE, reducing it to 2 HP. This ability also fully heals both Spiderman and The Joker as they are both considered human in this game. Note that it does not add more HP dice to any of these characters nor does it Heal HP for Macross or The Witch-King of Angmar. The Witch-King is not classified as human, machine, or cartoon, so he never heals under these conditions. Macross does not heal because he is already at full HP and therefore does not receive more HP dice.