Chaotic: The Very Basics (The Types of Cards and Apprentice Rules)

The actual game of Chaotic could be played in more than one way with different amounts of cards.

There was both the Apprentice Rules, pretty simple, easy to start with.

And then there were the Master Rules, which explored the vast complexity that Chaotic could be.

Classically, you could play in either a 1v1, 3v3, or 6v6 situation. I'll explain what that means in just a second.

An example of a Creature card.

There were 5 different types of cards.

1: Creatures: Think monsters from Yu-Gi-Oh, but MUCH more important to each game. Each player would either get 1, 3 or 6 creatures, depending on the game.

2: Attacks: Imagine what each creature would do to damage

An example of an Attack card.

each the other. Each player would get a deck of 20 attack cards, with some other restrictions.

3: Battlegear: Each creature would get an item that they could use to help them win the battle gear, hence, battlegear.

4: Locations: The place where each other battles

would be fought. Each player got a deck of 10 cards

An example of a Location card.

An example of a Battlegear card.

An example of a Mugic card.

5: Mugic: Lastly, there were Mugic cards. The name combines magic and music (crazy right). You would have as many as you had creatures. They were cards you could use to do all sorts of things.

With all of the different kinds of cards, there was an almost endless possibility of combinations and decks to try.

Apprentice Rules: 

These rules were fairly simple. There were no mugic cards, or the Burst (which I'll get to later) in apprentice, It was just a straight fight between the creatures with only the battlegear, attacks, and location to help them.

Basically, to set up the game, you would place your creatures out in a pyramid shape facing your opponent, so that that the setup looked like this: (Sorry for the quality, it's the best I could find)

Imagine that annoying textbox wasn't in the way and quality was 100x better

You can imagine how a 1v1 and a 6v6 would look, just add or remove a diagonal line of creatures.

Each creature's battlegear would be placed faced down under the creature it's equipped to, and you would only reveal and use the abilities of the battlegear once a creature has started combat You would place your attack deck and location deck face-down to the side and draw 2 attack cards. At that point, you'd be ready to start the game. Decide who gets the first turn and it's time to begin!

Starting Combat

The player who's turn it is (we'll call them the active player) will start the game by flipping over the top card on their location deck. This location is where the fighting for that turn will occur. We'll get more in depth on Location cards in another blog, but the important part is that location's decide which creature gets to throw the first attack, the Initiative. The active player will select 2 creatures, one of their own to attack, and one of their enemies to defend. These creatures will participate in the fighting (most of the time) for that turn. The players will look at the Initiative to see who gets to throw the first punch.

The very basics of combat are that when it's your turn to attack, you will draw an attack card (so you have 3 in your hand on your turn) and then play an attack card. Deal however much damage the attack will deal and then it's the next player's turn. The creature that reaches 0 energy (the creature's health that's printed on the card) is destroyed and moved to the discard pile. Then the surviving creature, if it was the attacker, takes the defender's spot on the map, and if it was the defender, get's to stay in it's spot.

Those are the very, very basics of combat. Decide who's fighting, see who attacks first, draw a card, play a card, repeat until someone's dead. Very simple, not not even close to what the game has to offer in terms of strategy.

Once that fight is over, the active player may move his other creatures into open spaces before ending their turn. Then the other player flips over a new location card and the process continues until only 1 player's creature(s) are left on the board.

In the next blog, I'll talk about Creatures, the most important part of the game!