How to play the Cyberpunk TCG

How you win

You win by starting your turn with 7 or more Gig dice in your Gig area. You own six dice of your own, so the winning one has to be taken from your rival. That is the whole shape of the game: you cannot simply build up in your own corner, you have to attack.

The count is taken before you gain your Gig for the turn, so the seventh die has to already be there when the turn opens. Surviving your rival's turn on 7 is what wins, not reaching 7 on your own.

There are two other ways a game ends. If you are ever required to draw from an empty deck, you lose immediately and your rival wins. And if neither player has won by the time both have finished seven turns, the game goes to Overtime: sudden death, where the first player to hold 7 Gig dice on the table wins.

Setting up

Before the first turn, in this order:

1. Shuffle your deck, and place your three Legends face down beside the board in random order. They stay hidden from everyone, you included, until they are Called.
2. Both players roll a d20, rerolling a tie. The higher roll decides who takes the first turn.
3. Draw six cards each. You may mulligan once: shuffle your hand back and draw a fresh six, or keep what you have.

Going first is not free. That player spends their two leftmost Legends and does not ready them on their first turn, so they open with one Legend to spend as €⁠$ where their rival has three.

Your half of the table is then laid out in eight areas, and this simulator arranges them the same way. Your rival sits opposite with their half turned around,their Gig area is in the middle next to yours.

What happens on your turn

The start phase resolves on its own, in this order:

1. Ready every spent card you own. Units, Legends and Eddies all turn upright again.
2. Draw one card. If your deck is empty, you lose here.
3. Gain a Gig: take a die from your Fixer area, roll it, and put the result in your Gig area. You choose which, except the d20, which is always last.

The d20 arriving last is worth planning around: your biggest die, and the one most worth stealing, is not on the table until late.

Then the main phase, where you may do any of these, as many times as you can afford, in any order:

• Sell one card from your hand that prints the €⁠$ sell tag. Only tagged cards can be sold, it is worth 1 Eddie whatever it cost, and you may do it once per turn.
• Play Units, Programs and Gear by paying the cost printed in their top left corner.
• Call one Legend for 1 Eddie, flipping it face up at random for its effect. Once per turn, and it can also be done in the React step when a rival attacks.
• Attack with any of your ready Units.

Eddies (€$) and Street Cred (☆)

Eddies (€⁠$) are the currency, kept face down in your Eddies area. A card costs whatever the plaque in its top left corner says, and you pay by turning that many Eddies sideways.

Legends are resources too. You may spend any number of them as 1 €⁠$ each, face up or face down, as long as they're in the Legend zone. A face-down Legend spent this way is still yours to Call later: the Call flips it face up and it simply stays sideways. Legends are not Eddies, they just pay like one.

Street Cred is the sum of the values showing on your Gig dice, and cards print it as ☆ (Street Cred). It is a threshold that some cards check, so a lucky roll is worth more than the die count alone suggests.

Selling cards for Eddies

Your Eddies area starts empty, and selling is the only thing that fills it. Once per turn you may sell one card from your hand: reveal it to your rival, then place it face down in the Eddies area, where it is worth exactly 1 Eddie regardless of its cost.

Not every card can be sold. Only a card printing the €⁠$ sell tag beside its cost may go to the Eddies area, and the tag is not spread evenly across the card types: a hand of Units is a hand you cannot turn into resources.

Attacking

Each Unit attacks on its own and finishes every step before another may start. An attack runs like this:

1. Spend the attacking Unit by turning it sideways. That is why a Unit attacks once per turn.
2. Declare the target: either a spent rival Unit, or your rival’s Gig area. A ready Unit cannot be attacked.
3. Your rival reacts, and may do any number of things here: Call a Legend, use a Quick effect, or spend a ready Blocker to pull the attack onto that Unit instead.
4. Resolve. Against a Unit: compare powers of both Units. The highest value wins and the loser is defeated, if both are equal, both get defeated. Against the Gig area: it is a raid and the attacker steals Gig dice.

A Blocker redirects onto itself and nowhere else, and spending it is the cost, so one that is spent cannot save anything.

Stealing Gigs

A raid steals one Gig die, plus one more for every full 10 power the attacking Unit has. The attacker chooses which dice to take, which matters more than it sounds: taking the d20 moves the largest die on the table, and some cards care about exactly which die was taken.

Two exceptions. A Unit with 0 power steals nothing at all, so debuffing an attacker to zero blanks the raid entirely. And an attack redirected by a Blocker steals no Gigs at all, even if the attacking Unit wins the fight that follows: anything that redirects or stops a direct attack takes the theft with it.

• Power 0: steals nothing.
• Power 1 to 9: steals 1 Gig.
• Power 10 to 19: steals 2 Gigs.
• And upwards with no ceiling: one more Gig for every further 10 power, so 20 steals 3 and 30 steals 4, etc.

The four card types

Everything in the game is one of four card types, and each one behaves differently once you have paid for it.

Units

Units are your crew, and the only cards that fight. You play one from your hand onto the Field, where it stays until it is defeated, and everything its text says is about itself.

A Unit arrives with Lag: on the turn you play it, it cannot attack and cannot use an ability that costs . Lag expires at the end of that turn rather than at your next ready step, so a Unit played this turn can already react with a Quick ability while your rival attacks.

Almost no Unit prints the €⁠$ sell tag. A hand full of them is a hand you cannot turn into resources, which is the tension every deck is built around.

Programs

A Program resolves once from your hand and goes straight to the Trash. It is never a card on the table, so nothing on the board can target it, buff it or defeat it: what you pay for is the effect and nothing else.

Every Program carries the €⁠$ sell tag, so each one is also a card you can sell for an Eddie instead of playing. A Program marked Quick has a second use: it can be played from your hand when a rival attacks.

Gear

Gear is never on the Field in its own right. You play it by paying its cost and attaching it to a friendly Unit or face-up Legend, and from then on it sits with that card and goes wherever it goes: when the host is defeated, the Gear is trashed alongside it. A host can carry any number of Gear.

The power printed on a Gear is added to its host. A Unit of 4 power carrying a Gear of 3 fights as a 7 and raids as a 7, so Gear is also how a Unit reaches the 10 power that steals a second Gig die.

That host is also what the Gear’s text is talking about. When a Gear says “this Unit”, it means the card it is attached to, not the Gear itself. A Defeated printed on a Gear fires when its host is defeated. A Blocker on a Gear is a keyword the host gains. An Attack on a Gear fires when the host attacks.

Every Gear in the set is written that way, even though all of them may equip a Legend as well. The two whose text really does mean either say so: they read “this Unit or Legend”.

Legends

Your three Legends are not in your deck. They sit beside the board from setup, face down, and you never draw one: Call one per turn for 1 Eddie to turn it face up for its effect. A Legend’s text does nothing while it is face down.

They are your resources as well: face up or face down, any number of them can be spent as 1 €⁠$ each. A face-up Legend can also carry Gear, exactly as a Unit can.

A Legend beside the board is out of reach, since an attack can only be aimed at a rival Unit or a rival Gig area. Go Solo is the exception that puts one on the Field, where it is a Unit and can be attacked and defeated like any other.

Card text beats the rulebook

Every rule on this page can be overridden by a card that says otherwise, and that is the intended way to read them. A card that lets you attack a ready Unit does exactly that. A card that says a Unit may attack the turn it arrives removes the restriction that normally stops it.

When the two disagree, the card is right.

What this simulator does for you

The rules above are the game anywhere. A few things are easier in ChoomBattler than across a table, and they are worth knowing before your first game rather than after it.

None of it changes a rule. The board does the bookkeeping and offers you only legal moves: if a card cannot be played, its option is simply not there.

• Sellable cards wear a €⁠$ tab in your hand. The printed mark is too small to read at board scale, so a card that can be sold shows a yellow tag behind it and one that cannot shows nothing.
• Costs are paid for you, cheapest first: Eddies, then Legends you have not Called, then Called ones. Hovering the move highlights exactly what is about to turn sideways.
• When the choice matters, take it yourself. A second menu item, "Play (choose €⁠$)", opens a picker, and it appears only when you have more resources than the cost: with exactly enough there is nothing to decide.
• Undo takes back a misclick. It is instant while the move told you nothing new, and needs your rival’s agreement once it did: any move that rolled a die, or that showed you a card you had not seen.
• Every ability that resolves says so, including one that found no target and did nothing. The game log keeps the whole match, so you can check what a card cost two turns ago.