Feralis: Obscure Land Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Game Overview
• Using This Book
• Components
• Card Types
  • Creature Cards
  • Aesyr Cards
  • Divine Skills Cards
• Resources
  • Catalysts
  • Defenders
• Setup
• Playing Field
  • The Golden Rule
  • Notes for Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator
• How to Win
• Turn Sequence
  • Loading Phase
  • Resolving Abilities
  • Main Phase
  • Attack Phase
    • Attacking a Creature
    • Attacking an Aesyr
  • Draw Phase
• The Action Stack
  • Advanced Strategy Tip: Ambush
• Deck-Construction
• Appendix
  • Activation Icons
  • Keywords
• Glossary
• FAQs

Game Overview

Feralis is a deck-construction card game. It can be played 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2. The ultimate goal is to eliminate your opponents, to do so you need to summon your creatures, mutate them, and use them to slay enemy creatures or your opposing Aesyr themselves.

In Feralis, you each have a deck of Creatures, an Aesyr, and a series of Divine Skills.

Creature cards have 2 states, Call and Awakening. To put them into play you have to wait for their cost in turns to elapse. Once Creatures in the Call state are defeated, they come back in their Awakening state. You may also play them directly in the Awakening state but you will miss the opportunity to use their Call abilities.

You may support your Creatures with Divine Skills, these powerful events need time to be ready but they can turn the tide of battle. Divine Skills will recharge once used.

Your main resource is time, each Creature has a cost in time and to create powerful combos you have to put Creatures into play at the right moment. You can reduce the time cost of your cards by using a limited resource called Catalyst. You only have a limited amount of this resource and you may use it at any time.

Using This Book

This book is written as an introduction to Feralis: Obscure Land for new players. We recommend that new players learn the basics of the game using the 1 vs 1 format, this format has the fewest steps, making it ideal for first-time players. The 2 vs 2 format will be covered in another booklet.

Components

• 20 Skreel Cards
• 20 Marall Cards
• 20 Valkun Cards
• 20 Gilmora Cards
• 4 Aesyr Cards
• 4 Help Cards
• 30 Divine Skills
• 30 Catalyst Tokens
• 18 D6 Dice
• 30 Stats Counter Tokens
• 2 Game Boards
• 2 D20 Dice
• 8 Card Standees
• 6 Defender Tokens

Card Types

Creature Cards

Creatures have both an Attack and a Constitution type:

• Physical: The natural form of every creature that inhabits the world of Feralis.
• Corrupted: Creatures awakened in a mutated form, incredibly powerful and bestial.
• Shadow: Creatures awakened in an almost ethereal and spectral form.

These types have an effect on damage dealt or sustained in attack, see Attacking a Creature.

Each Creature can be played in the Call or Awakening state, placing it in an available Incubator slot. Carefully choose which state you wish to place your Creatures in the Incubator, once chosen the state cannot be changed.

The Creatures are divided into 4 Breeds: Skreel, Marall, Valkun, and Gilmora. Each Breed has its own distinct characteristics and abilities.

Aesyr Cards

Each Aesyr has a Unique Ability in one of two types: a {One-Shot} can be used at any time during the game or a {Passive} remains active for the entire game.

Divine Skills Cards

The Aesyr card also shows a value, this is the maximum total Incubation time of all your Divine Skill cards.

Divine Skills represent the direct interventions of the Aesyr on the battlefield.

In setup you must select which cards you wish to use in this game. Your Aesyr card shows a number of symbols. These indicate the number and type of Divine cards you may use. Each symbol represents one card.

Each Divine Skill card has a turn counter die placed with it. When the turn counter of a Divine Skill reaches 0, it is considered charged and you may play it. Once a Skill is charged, it can be used at any time, even on your opponent's turn. You can use your Divine Skills in response to your opponent's activation of other Divine Skills. After use, reset the counter, this will count down the number of turns over which the Divine Skill recharges.

When the turn counters reach 0, you are under no obligation to use the Divine Skill. Individual Divine Skills can only be used once per turn.

Resources

Catalysts

Catalysts are a way to directly and quickly affect the outcome of a battle. The value indicated on the Catalyst is the number of turns it can remove from a card's counter.

Catalysts may also be used in the Main and Attack Phases. Using a Catalyst cannot be countered as it takes priority over resolving any ability. Catalysts may interrupt other actions, after using the Catalyst, the action continues.

To use a Catalyst, select a Catalyst token and a counter to target. Reduce the counter by a value equal to the value of the Catalyst used. If this results in the counter reaching 0, that card can be used straight away. Once used, they are removed from the game (except for certain special abilities).

There is no limit to how many Catalysts you may use in one turn, but you cannot use two Catalysts on the same card in the same turn.

Defenders

The Aesyr's last resort is to select warriors from their armies to be assigned the role of a Defender.

A creature may only be declared a Defender in the turn it is revealed on the battlefield (from the Incubator, Graveyard, or Abyss) before the attack phase and cannot be removed as long as the card is on the battlefield.

A Defender can never declare an attack, but if a player has at least one Defender on the field, their opponent can't declare direct attacks on the player or any other creatures.

To declare a Defender, the player must place one of their 3 Defender tokens on the card as soon as it enters the battlefield. Defender tokens are removed if the creature leaves the battlefield.

Setup

Each player completes the following steps.

1. Select an Aesyr card.

2. Take the Catalyst tokens shown on your Aesyr card.

3. Take four Card stands, 1 d20 die, and three Defender tokens, with the active side face up.

4. Shuffle your deck and place it face down.

   Feralis is a deck-construction game. Each player has a deck of 20 Creature cards that they should construct before play. For rules on deck-construction see Deck-Construction.

5. Select the Divine Skill cards you wish to use in this game. Each Aesyr card shows the number and type of Divine Skill cards you may select, as well as a maximum total value. For more information, see Divine Skills Cards.

6. Organize your play area as shown (see Playing Field).

7. Randomly determine a first player (Unless players are playing a series of games, in which case the player who was defeated in the previous game chooses who is the first player).

8. Draw a starting hand of four cards. In turn order you have the opportunity to discard up to 3 cards and replace them with the same number of cards, drawn from the top of the deck. Shuffle any discarded cards back into the deck.

The game is now ready to begin.

Playing Field

The Game boards help you keep your cards organized during a battle. When using cards, place them on the Game board. Different types of cards should be placed in different areas of the board. You may play without the board, as long as you remember where to place your cards.

A. Your Deck always remains face down. If an effect requires you to search for cards in the deck, or reveal them, shuffle it immediately afterwards. If you run out of cards, you will lose 1 life point for each card you cannot draw.

B. Your Incubator is made up of 4 Incubation Slots on which the cards chosen from your hand must be placed. Each slot is made up of a card stand and a d6 die to act as a turn counter.

C. Aesyr card.

D. The d20 die is used to track your Life Points (LP). Set the die to 20.

E. Place your selected Divine Skills here. Assign each card a d6 die to act as a turn counter.

F. The Battlefield is where the Creature cards that come out of the Incubator end up, the creatures here activate their abilities and may declare attacks on your opponent. You may have up to a maximum of 7 Creatures in this area.

G. The Graveyard is your personal discard pile: creatures that reach 0 Constitution points in Awakening form or cards that are destroyed end up here, face up. Both players can see the cards in their own and their opponent's Graveyard at any time.

H. Place your Catalysts and Defender tokens above your deck.

I. The Abyss is an area shared by all players. If a Creature Card receives an 'Expel' effect, it is removed from play and placed in the Abyss.

The Golden Rule

If the text of a card directly contradicts the text of the rules, the text on the card takes precedence.

Notes for Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator

As the Tabletopia and TTS platform lacks a card holding system, it has been replaced by hidden areas.

You can insert the cards you want for your incubator here, taking care to insert the relevant token (Call or Awakening) on the outside and the corresponding die for the development rounds.

How to Win

Each player starts the game with 20 Life Points (LP). To win the game you must reduce your opponent's LP to 0. If both players reach 0 LP at the same time, the game ends in a draw.

Turn Sequence

The game is played over a series of turns. Players alternate taking turns until at least one player is reduced to 0 LP. The player taking a turn is referred to as the active player. Each turn consists of 4 phases:

1. Loading phase
2. Main phase
3. Attack phase
4. Draw phase

Loading Phase

(skip this phase on your first turn)

Active player: reduce the value of each turn counter in your Incubator and on your Divine Skills by 1.

All players: Divine Skills or Catalysts cannot be played.

Example: The active player has 2 cards in their Incubator, one has a turn counter showing 1 and the other 3, and 3 Divine Skill cards with turn counters of 3, 3, and 1. During this phase, they subtract 1 from all the turn counters on these cards.

This results in the 2 cards in the Incubator being 0 (ready to enter in the battlefield) and 2, and the Divine Skill cards to 2, 2, and 0 (available to be played).

Resolving Abilities

Divine Skills and Creatures have abilities that can be resolved during the Main and Attack phases.

To resolve the ability of a card follow the text written on it. Resolve each ability or card played one at a time. Your opponent has the opportunity to counter an ability, if card text states it. If your opponent cannot or chooses not to counter, resolve the ability.

Main Phase

Active player: If you have any Creature cards in your Incubator with a turn counter showing 0, they enter into the battlefield.

Once per turn, you may play a card from your hand and place it into an Incubation Slot. Place the card the right way up when putting it in the card stand to show your chosen state. Set the d6 die to match the Incubation Time shown on the card. When the value on the die reaches 0, the card will enter the battlefield in the chosen state.

All players: May activate Divine Skills or play Catalysts.

Example: The active player has a Wispering Gilmora in the incubator with a turn counter showing 0, they put that card onto the battlefield and return the die to the supply. They then choose to put a Deserter Marall in the free slot in their Incubator, they choose the Awakening state. The player also places a d6 die set to 3 representing the Incubation value shown on the top right of the card.

Attack Phase

(skip this phase in the first turn of the game)

Active player: You may declare an attack for each creature in the battlefield. The attack may be directed at an enemy creature or directly at the enemy Aesyr's life points.

If your opponent has at least one defending Creature, you must attack that Creature before any other target. If your opponent has more than one defending Creature, you may choose which to attack.

If your opponent has no defenders, you may attack any Creature or the Aesyr.

To show which Creature is attacking, slide it down slightly.

All players: May activate Divine Skills or play Catalysts.

Attacking a Creature

First Attack - Compare the Speed of both Creatures. The Creature with the higher Speed deals damage to the opposing Creature's Constitution. If both Creatures have equal Speed, damage is dealt simultaneously. The damage dealt is equal to its Attack but is modified by the Attack and Constitution types of both cards.

Creatures of a Physical Constitution type always suffer full damage. Creatures with Corrupted or Shadow Constitution types may take full or half damage, depending on the Attack type of Creature dealing damage to them. This is shown in the Damage Scheme below. All halved damage is rounded down.

Damage Scheme (attacker's Attack type, against defender's Constitution type):

Attack type	vs Physical	vs Corrupted	vs Shadow
No attack symbol (Physical)	Full damage	1/2 damage (rounded down)	1/2 damage (rounded down)
Corrupted	Full damage	Full damage	1/2 damage (rounded down)
Shadow	Full damage	1/2 damage (rounded down)	Full damage
Both Corrupted and Shadow	Full damage	Full damage	Full damage

If a Creature is dealt damage that matches or exceeds its current Constitution, it is defeated. If a Call creature is defeated, the card returns to the Incubator in the Awakening state. If all the Incubation slots are full when a Call Creature is defeated, the Creature will not be able to go into the Awakening phase and will instead go into the Graveyard.

A defeated Awakening creature dies, and must be placed in the Graveyard.

If the Creature has a higher Constitution than the damage dealt, place Stats counters on the card, showing equal value to the damage dealt. It is now considered to have a Constitution of its original value minus the value of any Stats counters placed on it.

Second Attack - If the Creature survives the attack, it can respond by dealing damage to the Creature that attacked it, following the same rules as explained above.

Example: The blue player's Elusive Gilmora attacks the red player's Young Marall. Elusive Gilmora has a higher Speed, so it will attack first. It has no attack symbols and the Young Marall has Constitution, so it will only deal half damage. 3 Attack halved, is rounded down to 1. Young Marall has a Constitution of 2 so survives. Place a -1 Stats counter on the card to represent the damage, it now has a Constitution of 1. Young Marall has survived so it will respond, dealing 3 points of damage. This is enough to defeat Elusive Gilmora. The Elusive Gilmora is on the Call side, so it will go back to the Incubator on the Awakening side.

Attacking an Aesyr

The Creature deals damage, equal to its Attack, to the enemy's Life Points. Your opponent reduces the value of the d20 to reflect their new LP value. If your opponent's LP is reduced to 0, you have won the game!

Example: The red player has 2 Creatures on the battlefield, one with 3 attack points and the other with 5. The blue player has 5 life points remaining and all of their Defender tokens have been removed from the game. The red player chooses to attack the blue player's Aesyr with both Creatures for 3 and 4 points of damage. The blue player's life points have been reduced to 0 or less, so they lose the game.

Draw Phase

(The first player skips this step in the first turn of the game)

Active player: Draw 1 card. If you now have more than 4 cards in your hand, discard down to 4 cards.

All players: Divine Skills or Catalysts cannot be played.

After the Draw Phase, play passes to the next player who starts their turn as Active player.

The Action Stack

The stack is an imaginary area of play shared by all players where Divine Skills, Catalysts, and abilities wait to resolve. Resolving a Divine Skill, Catalyst, or ability simply means that its effect occurs.

When you play a Divine Skill, use a Catalyst, assign a Defender counter to a creature, or a creature enters the battlefield, the action goes on the stack, where it waits to be countered or, if your opponent decides not to do anything, resolved.

A general rule is that Divine Skills, player actions (playing a card in the incubator, putting a card onto the battlefield, assigning a Defender), and abilities (of either creatures or Aesyr) on the stack resolve one at a time, starting with the last one put on the stack.

Using Catalysts, however, has priority on this stack (they resolve before all other actions).

Advanced Strategy Tip: Ambush

Feralis contains a lot of possible advanced strategies for you to discover, but we wanted to introduce this key one here.

You may combine the use of a Catalyst with the use of a Defender counter to interrupt and redirect an opponent's attack onto a defending Creature. This is known as 'Ambush'.

Example: The red player's Veteran Valkun declares an attack toward the blue player. They have a Marall Assassin in their incubator with a turn counter of 3. They choose to use a 3 value Catalyst to bring the creature into play and immediately add a Defender token on it. The attacking creature will have to fight against this Defender instead of targeting the Aesyr.

Deck-Construction

A deck may be constructed using various Creatures at your disposal. Each player may have a unique deck that is completely different from the other players' decks. Each deck must be constructed following these rules.

The deck must have exactly 20 cards and obey the following limits:

Rarity Limits

• Common - no maximum number of cards
• Uncommon - maximum of 16 cards
• Rare - maximum of 8 cards
• Legendary - maximum of 4 cards

Single card: Maximum of 3 copies of a single card.

Breeds: No more than 2 Breeds.

Sideboard: You may have a maximum of 10 cards as a sideboard. These cards may be swapped into your deck, when playing in multiple games or tournaments.

Appendix

Activation Icons

• When revealed: The ability is activated when the card enters the battlefield.
• Passive: The ability is active as long as the creature is on the battlefield.
• Perish: Ability activates when this card leaves the battlefield.
• Rage: The ability activates when the card survives an attack.
• Killer: The ability triggers when the card kills a creature.
• Direct assault: The ability triggers when the creature directly hits the opponent's life points.
• Healer: The ability triggers when the player gains life points.

(The printed manual shows an icon before each entry; the names above are the ones given in its text.)

Keywords

• Injection (N): Upgrade your catalysts by N.
• Scavenger graveyard: Increases the creature's statistics by the number of cards in your graveyard.
• Fierce: You can choose to return a "defender" token from a creature to its owner.
• Jumper: The creature cannot be blocked by defenders.
• Reverse (N): Add progress turn counters to your opponent's creature equal to N.
• Enhance (N): Removes progress turn counters from a creature in your incubator equal to N.
• Silence: Opponents cannot use their catalysts.
• Evolve: Turn the card without going through the incubator.
• Enchain: The opponent cannot play cards from the hand.
• Reconstruct: This allows you to recover a lost "defender" token.
• Crawling: The card cannot be chosen as the target of a Divine Skills.
• Double clash: This creature can attack 2 times per turn.
• Shard (N): Recharge by N an exhausted catalyst.

Glossary

• Battle Damage: Battle Damage is damage inflicted by Creatures on an opponent's LP. It's different from Effect Damage.
• Card effects: the effect of a card is the special ability written on it, such as the effect of a Divine Ability, an Aesyr, or a Creature. The cost of activating the effect is not part of the effect itself. The conditions for an effect to occur are also not part of the effect itself.
• Cards in the Incubator: when "cards in the Incubator" is indicated in the text of a card, it refers only to the cards in the Incubator.
• Cards on the field: when "cards on the field" are indicated in the text of a card, it refers only to cards on the Battlefield.
• Combat: a Creature "combats" when it attacks or is attacked. This includes both attacking other Creatures and attacking directly the opponent's LP. When an effect requires a Creature to have "fought" (past tense), the attack must have reached the damage calculation step for the Creature to have "fought". If the attack is stopped before the damage calculation, the Creature has not "fought". (NB. The attack was declared anyway, so in most cases, if it is canceled the Creature cannot attack a second time).
• Destroy: a card is destroyed when it is sent to the Graveyard by the effect of another card. A card sacrificed due to the effect of another card is always considered destroyed.
• Direct Assault: direct assault means that a Creature attacks a player instead of another Creature. In this case, the damage to the player will be equal to the full value of the Creature's attack. Some Creatures can directly attack the opponent even if a Defender is present, some abilities are activated when a direct attack is successful.
• Discard: discard means to send a card from your hand to the Graveyard. This can happen by effect or by exceeding the limit of 4 cards in your hand at the end of the Draw Phase.

FAQs

What does "change breed" mean? Breed is the name of the race. This skill allows you to change that Breed, for example turn a Skreel into a Marall.

Is a card ability or Divine Skill that gives a modifier to a stat on a Creature (e.g. +1 attack) permanent or just for the current round? Modifiers are permanent unless "until end of turn" is specified.

Does "Shard 1" mean you get to place a 1 value Catalyst token back onto your board? What if you don't have a discarded token? Yes. If you don't have a Catalyst token available, it has no effect.

Does "Injection" mean you increase the value of all Catalysts on your board or increase the value of one Catalyst token? All the Catalysts on your board.

When can Catalysts be used? You may only use Catalysts in the Main Phase and in the Attack Phase.

If used outside of the Loading or Main Phase do Creatures enter battle immediately if they reach 0 Incubation or do they need to wait until the next Main Phase? If a card reaches 0 Incubation outside of the Main Phase, that card will wait in the Incubator until your next Main Phase.

If an ability says something like '+1 attack for each Gilmora on your side' does the card with that ability count as a Gilmora card? Yes, if it's not counted the text will usually read "any other creature on your side".

Does the 'Vital Transfusion' Divine Skill allow you to subtract and add Constitution from an enemy? Yes, you may choose an enemy creature.

If a card says "-1 Constitution to an opponent's creature" and it results in that creature now having 0 Constitution, is it defeated? Yes, if a creature reaches 0 Constitution, it'll be considered defeated even outside of battles.

Is the 'Injection' keyword applicable to exhausted Catalysts? No.

What is the side of the Battlefield? The Battlefield is composed of your side, where you put your cards, and your opponent's side where they put their cards.