Mathemagician's Duel Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Cards
• Spells
• Score Cards
• Set-up
  • Example of Set-up
• Game Play
  • Who Goes First?
  • Starting the Game
  • The Incanquation
  • Pulling Energy From the Incanquation
  • Unable to Play
  • Casting Spells
  • Magical Misfire
  • Magical Deck Runs Out
  • Winning the Duel
  • 3 Player Rules
• Examples of Play
  • The Game Begins
  • Bill Can't Go
  • Pulling from the Incanquation
  • A Magical Misfire
• Card Distribution

Cards

There are 4 types of cards, explained in the sections below.

Magical Energy: These cards have blue backs and numerals (1 to 9) on their faces.

Magical Symbols: These cards have red backs and operators on their faces (+ or -). They are used between the numerals to help make the incanquation equal the casting value of the spell.

Spells

These cards are the spells to be cast by the mathemagicians against their opponents. Each card has the name of the spell, the Casting Value, the Minimum Incanquation, and the Effect of the spell.

• Casting Value: This is the value that the incanquation must equal in order to cast the spell. This is indicated by the number with the equals sign (=) next to it at the top left of the card.
• Minimum Number: This is the minimum number of numerals (blue Magical Energy cards) that must be in the incanquation before it can be cast. This is indicated by the number next to the picture of the cards at the top right of the spell card.
• Invocation: Written below the picture and between quotation marks, these are the words the player must say to declare that their spell has been cast.
• Spell Effect: This is the effect of a successfully cast spell. It indicates a loss of Magical Strength to the target. It is written at the bottom of the card.

Score Cards

These consist of a Current Magical Strength card and a Magical Strength card. The Magical Strength card has the numbers 1 - 10 on one side, and 11 - 20 on the other. The Current Magical Strength card has a wizard's arm pointing to show the remaining Magical Strength.

Set-up

Shuffle the Magical Energy and Magical Symbols decks separately. Each player draws a total of five cards from the combination of the Magical Energy and the Magical Symbols decks. They can choose which combination, and so can take three Magical Energy and two Magical Symbols, or vice versa, or even four from one of the decks and one from the other. The players should look at the cards before they draw their spells, because the cards they have in their hands may affect their spell choice.

Each player draws 3 Spell cards, chooses 1, and puts the other two aside to be played later. Both players reveal their chosen initial spell cards and place them on the table in front of them.

Both players start with 20 Magical Strength. Set your score cards with the fingers pointing to the circle marked "20".

Example of Set-up

The printed diagram labels the following areas: Score Cards, Magical Symbols Discard, Magical Energy Discard, Cards in hand, Magical Symbols Deck, Magical Energy Deck, Spell Deck, Current Spell, Spell Discard, and Stored Spell Cards.

Game Play

Who Goes First?

To determine who goes first, each player will cut the deck by lifting a random number of cards from the Magical Energy deck, revealing the bottom card of the lifted stack. The player who shows the higher value card will go first. In the case of a tie, both players should recut the deck in the manner described above.

Starting the Game

The first player must play a card either on their own or their opponent's incanquation. The first card in an incanquation must be a numeral. After playing a card, the player ends their turn by drawing a card from either the Magical Energy or Magical Symbols deck and bringing their hand back up to 5 cards. Then their opponent takes their turn.

The Incanquation

On each turn, players play one card. They may choose to play on the end of their own incanquation to progress toward the casting value of their spell, or they may play on their opponent's incanquation to try and prevent them from reaching their own spell's casting value. Be careful not to cast your opponent's spell for them!

A numeral can only be played after an operator, and an operator can only be played after a numeral. There should never be two numerals or two operators in a row in an incanquation. Also, when determining the value of an incanquation, it is always read and calculated from left to right. If a mathemagician plays a card that causes an incanquation's value to go below zero, a magical misfire (see Magical Misfire below) occurs.

The printed example for this section shows the cards Six, Plus, Three, Minus, Two, Minus, in that order.

Pulling Energy From the Incanquation

Instead of playing a card, a player may choose to remove cards from their own incanquation. They may only do this if their incanquation contains at least as many numerals as double the minimum printed on their current spell. For example, if the spell has a minimum amount of 3, the incanquation must contain at least 6 numerals to perform this move.

To perform this move, the mathemagican takes a numeral and one operator adjacent to that numeral and returns them to their hand. This will bring their hand to 7 cards. The player plays subsequent turns as normal, except they may not draw new cards at the end of their turn until they are down to 4 cards at the end of a turn. They also may not do this move again until their hand contains 5 cards. (For example, see Pulling from the Incanquation under Examples of Play.)

Unable to Play

A mathemagician must play a card on their turn if they can, even if it might be beneficial to their opponent; they may not pass their turn.

However, two circumstances could occur which will prevent a player from being able to play a card:

1. Their hand consists entirely of one type of card (operators or numerals) and the other type needs to be played next on both incanquations.

2. They realize that any card they play from their hand will cause a magical misfire. In either case, the player shows their cards to their opponent and discards their hand, drawing a new set of 5 cards instead of playing a card for their turn. Taking advantage, their opponent may choose to remove the last card on either player's incanquation. This is not mandatory; the opponent may choose not to.

Casting Spells

At the end of each turn, a player should check to see if their spell has been cast by calculating the value of their incanquation and seeing if it equals the Casting Value of their spell, and the number of numerals in the incanquation is equal to or greater than the minimum on the Spell card. If a player believes that these conditions have been met, the player declares the spell to be cast by reading aloud the invocation text on the card. The opponent should then double-check the incanquation. If it does meet the conditions, the spell is cast and their opponent suffers the effects.

If the opponent determines that the incanquation value does not meet the required conditions, a magical misfire occurs and the caster suffers the effects of the spell.

Regardless of whom the spell affected, the casting player should discard the spell and the cards from their incanquation back into the appropriate discard piles, but they keep their hand of cards. They should draw a new spell, adding it to their stored spells, and from there choose one to play.

After noting the effect and subtracting the Magical Strength from their current total, the next player takes their turn. They do not lose anything from their incanquation if a spell is cast on them.

Magical Misfire

If a player plays a card that causes an incanquation to go below zero, a magical misfire occurs. The owner of that incanquation has their spell cast immediately, except the target of the spell is the player who caused the magical misfire. Playing a minus sign on an incanquation whose value is already zero will immediately cause a magical misfire, because that player cannot play on their own incanquation without the value becoming negative. A player cannot force another player to cause a magical misfire.

Magical Deck Runs Out

If either the Magical Energy or Magical Symbols deck is depleted, both mathemagicians lose 1 Magical Strength and the discard pile of that deck is shuffled to form a new draw deck. The current spells are not discarded, and this does not affect the cards in the players' hands. This happens as soon as a player draws the final card in either deck.

In the unlikely event that there are no cards in the discard pile when the draw pile runs out (because all of the cards are in players' incanquations and hands) then both players' incanquations are returned to the draw decks and they both suffer the loss of 1 Magical Strength as normal.

Winning the Duel

Play continues back and forth, one player at a time until one mathemagician's Magical Strength is reduced to 0 or less. That mathemagician is knocked out and the other is victorious!

3 Player Rules

When playing with 3 players, play continues to the left after the first player's turn. Any spell that is successfully cast will affect both opponents. Misfires still only affect the player that causes the misfire. A player wins when both opponents are reduced to 0 Magical Strength.

Examples of Play

The examples below are the printed play examples. The coloured letters in the printed diagrams are callouts to the card images and are omitted from the text; the card names and values are given in full.

The Game Begins

Bill and Scott choose a total of 5 cards from the Magical Energy and Magical Symbols decks. They look at their hands of cards, and then take 3 Spell cards from the deck.

Bill chooses to cast Burning Sparks, and Scott chooses to cast Summon Bees. The other Spell cards are set aside to be used later. After cutting the Magical Energy deck, it is determined that Scott will go first. He needs to get his incanquation to 7 to cast his spell, and in his hand he has 8, 4, 1, +, +. He plays the 4 in front of him, and then picks up a card to end his turn.

Bill needs to get to 9 to cast his spell, and he has in his hand 9, 3, +, +, -. He can't cast the spell by playing his 9, because the spell has a minimum of 3 numerals required. He plays his 3, then draws a Magical Energy card to end his turn.

(The printed diagram marks Bill's hand as hidden from Scott and Scott's hand as hidden from Bill.)

On his next turn, Scott plays a +, and then draws to end his turn. Bill plays his 9 on Scott's incanquation, to bring the total up to 13. Scott will need to play a minus sign to get his incanquation to the right number. Bill draws a Magical Energy card.

Remember after every play Scott and Bill are replenishing their hands of Magical Energy and Magical Symbols up to 5 cards.

Scott doesn't have a minus sign, so he plays a +, thinking that he can play his 1 next turn, and hope for a minus sign when he draws. Bill plays a + on his own incanquation, and then draws a card. Play continues in this manner.

Bill Can't Go

Several turns later, Bill can't play a card because the numerals he has in his hand are large, and both his own and Scott's incanquations end with a minus sign. Playing any of his numerals would result in the value of either incanquation being negative, which would cause a magical misfire. As his turn, he shows Scott his hand of cards and declares that he is trading them in. He puts the cards from his hand into the discard piles of the appropriate decks and draws 5 new cards. As he is doing this, Scott decides to remove the last card of his own incanquation, the minus sign. This, too, gets discarded beside the deck. It is now Scott's turn.

Pulling from the Incanquation

Scott is still attempting to cast Summon Bees. His incanquation looks like this: 4+9+1-8+7+3+2-4. To pull cards from the incanquation, it must have at least double the minimum amount of numerals indicated on the spell card. The minimum number of Summon Bees is 3, so there needs to be at least six numerals in the incanquation to do this move, and in this case there are, since there are eight numerals in Scott's incanquation.

Scott notices that his incanquation's value is 14, and he needs to get it to 7 to cast his spell. There is a 7 in his incanquation with a + in front of it, so he figures he can pull that and it should get him to his Casting Value. He checks to be sure by recalculating the value of his incanquation without the + and 7 in it. The incanquation would look like this: 4+9+1-8+3+2-4, which equals 7! Also importantly, the value of the incanquation never becomes negative as it is calculated from left to right. If it became negative at any point, a magical misfire would occur.

Scott picks up the 7 and the + and puts them in his hand and declares his spell cast.

(The printed diagram marks the 7 and the + as moved back into Scott's hand.)

Bill double checks by calculating the value of the incanquation and agrees that it is correct. Bill then adjusts his Magical Strength, reducing it by 4, as Scott discards his incanquation back into the matching discard piles and draws a new spell card and chooses his next spell to cast.

(The printed diagram marks the reduction of Bill's Magical Strength as the damage Bill took because of Scott's successful spell.)

A Magical Misfire

Bill is attempting to cast Burning Sparks. His incanquation currently has a value of 5, and looks like this: 3+4+2-4-. Bill, temporarily forgetting how to do math, plays a 9 on his own incanquation and picks up a card to end his turn. Scott then points out that his incanquation has a value of -4, which is not allowed. Bill's spell is cast, but Bill suffers the loss of 4 Magical Strength, since he caused the misfire by reducing his incanquation's value to less than 0. Bill discards the cards from his incanquation beside the appropriate decks, puts his Spell card into the Spell deck discard pile and then draws a new spell and chooses to cast Knock Back, from the new spell and the two he saved from before.

(The printed diagram marks Bill's Magical Strength loss as the damage Bill took because of his magical misfire.)

Card Distribution

It may help you to know how many of each card there are in the Magical decks. Distribution is on this card.

Card	Count	Card	Count
1	4	7	2
2	4	8	2
3	4	9	2
4	3	+	13
5	3	-	12
6	3