Gameplay
This section gives an overview of what is involved in playing the Morphyry Card Game.
Materials Needed to Play the Game
Each player will need a pack of 60 Morphyry playing cards.
A token will be required to represent the players Avatars during the game. The token must be capable of representing a facing direction - a fantasy Miniature is ideal, but the cap of a highlighter-pen or any other suitable token may be used.
There is some scorekeeping involved, and some means of counting the 20 spirit points for each player will be needed - pen and paper or 20 small chips could be used, although a rotary counter or 20-sided dice (d20) is probably most convenient.
Additionally depending on the gameplay, counters may be needed for various effects during the game. Usually these only need to count up to 10 - again pen-and-paper, chips or coins will do, but probably a 10-sided dice (d10) is most convenient. Each player will probably need 3-4 such counters.
D20 dice
RPG miniature
Fantasy miniatures, d10's and d20's are available at Fantasy Role-playing, Wargaming and other hobby stores.
The Aim of the Game
As described in the intro, players in the Morphyry CCG are the immortal souls of heroes, cast back to earth by the Gods, forced to take an Avatar, and battle to prove their worth.
Your soul may be immortal, but the Avatar - the body which currently is playing host to your character - can die. You may have the opportunity to move to a new Avatar if your current one is in danger of dying, depending on how you have structured your deck and the luck of the cards.
If not, you lose the game, and are removed from play. The game is won by the last player standing.
Beginning the Game
At the beginning of the Game, players each deal themselves 10 cards from their own deck of 60 cards. Players roll dice, the player with the highest score starts. On their first turn a player commences by taking a card from the top of their fate pile.
Cards are placed out on the table to form the Morphyry card tableau. The player may place out on their first turn any or all Scenario cards in their hand. If an Attribute card is in their hand, it must be placed out.
The player then places a token on the tableau to represent their current Avatar. This Avatar takes on the Attributes of the three Attribute Card positions. While a position in the main Character Attribute set is empty (there will be either 2 or 3 empty positions at the start of the game) Default Attributes are used instead.
Then a technique card may be placed out, and if sufficient Attributes are available to successfully do so, it may be advanced.
Gameplay
The basic flow of gameplay involves taking a card from your fate deck, playing Techniques, and at various times inflicting and taking damage, and enacting effects that result from those Techniques.
Phase One: Maintenance
Any Effects are enacted on the player. If the player is Petrified or any magical state is current, roll or calculate these effects now.
Phase Two: Draw
Player draws a card from their Fate Pile
Phase Three: Play cards
Player may put out one Scenario card; and any one of the following cards:
new Technique to be bought into play,
any new Attribute card,
any Artifact card.
If resources are required for any Timed Actions (such as advancing Techniques in play) the relevant attributes must be Invoked to provide those resources now, at the end of the play cards phase, but before Timed Actions are done.
Phase Four: Timed Actions
Any Technique Cards in play are advanced. If resources are required they should have been obtained by comitting the appropriate Attribute at the end of the Play Cards phase.
Phase Five: Resolve Combat
Any action enacted as part of a Technique, is assessed. In particular if damage is done to an opponent as a result of a combat technique, or a spell going off, that damage is applied to the opponent.
Alternatively a technique may cause some other effect, modifying an Attribute, an Artifact or a Scenario - this often causes a counter to be applied to that card.
The Morphyry CCG tableau showing a 2 player game in progress
Damage
The way to win the game is to do Damage to your opponent's Avatar Characters. You as the eternal spirit of a hero, cannot directly attack your opponent. You advance attacking techniques so that your Avatar (or spell or creature) attacks that of your opponent, causing damage.
There are three different types of damage, corresponding to the three Attributes. Draining Damage affects only the Electra attribute; Wounding damage only affects Corpus, and so on, as per the following table.
If an attack causes a type of damage which reduces one of a defender's attributes to zero, the remaining unapplied damage is ignored. For example if Connor has Corpus 4 and someone does 5 Wounding damage to him, the other 1 point of damage is ignored. For this reason it is often beneficial to have a weapons enabling a greater range of damage.
When one of the defender's attributes falls to 0, they will enter a relevant state, limiting their actions. If all of the the defender's attributes are reduced to zero at one time, that defender's Avatar dies. Unless the player has managed to move to another Avatar, this will mean that the player with that character loses and is removed from the game.
Doing Damage
Damage is typically done when an attacking player deploys a Technique that has an attack component as its pay-off. Each Technique card with an attack component will give an damage value which relates to how potent the attack is - usually a longer, and/or more difficult technique will be more effective in delivering damage. Quick techniques may have a negative value.
For combat techniques, the damage figures are effectively a modifier for the attacking characters Power, a derived attribute of Corpus. A few techniques will cause damage by modifying derived attributes other than Power � eg wrestling techniques which rely on Strength instead.
Spell techniques may rely on the Spiritum attribute, but in general if the attacking character is skillful enough to get through the Spell Technique without failing an action, the Damage caused will depend wholly on the Power of the spell, not on any attributes.
Damage may also be done by falling foul of a hazard on a Scenario card - the card will describe exactly the type and amount of damage caused.
Modifying Damage
Some artifacts and Spells, and other things modify damage. Most typically however a weapon artifact will be used to convert some of the damage into a more effective type, or range of types, and usually to add to it.
All combat Techniques performed without a weapon do Crushing Damage. Weapons as listed in the table above will convert the damage to that type. Some weapons can produce more more than one type of damage - for example a Barbed Sword produces Draining and Wounding damage. See the section on Weapons in Artifacts.
Defending characters can have Armour Artifacts and other affects which reduce damage, usually restricted by type or amount.
All these effects are discussed in the section on Artifacts.
Taking Damage
Below is an example of the Damage play for a Combat Technique with the attacking player using a Slash technique with a Barbed Sword 2, against a defender who has a Breastplate 2.
An attacking player advances a Slash Technique so that a Damage is done to the defending player. The Slash Technique card specifies 2 points of damage...
..which is added to the Power Attribute of the attacking character, to give 7 points of damage.
The attacking character wields a Barbed Sword 2; this converts 2 of the damage into Draining and the remaining 5 into Wounding.
The defending player has a Breastplate which can block 2 pts of Wound damage, reducing the Wounding damage to 3. The Draining remains at 2.
At the end of the attack (in the attackers turn) 2 pts of Draining damage are done to the Electra attribute of the Defender, shown by putting a 2 counter on on the card (a d6 set to 2). 3 pts Wounding are done to the Corpus attribute, shown by a Covering-card covering 3 of the 5 pips.
In the Defender's turn she or he may Absorb some of the damage shown on the defender's attributes, by reducing the Spirit Points counter by 1 for each damage pt taken off an Attribute. One pt can be Absorbed off each Attribute per turn.
Absorbing Damage
In the Morphyry Card Game you are the immortal soul of a hero, and as such you have the power to heal your Avatar's body by absorbing the damage which has been done into your spirit. However the extent to which you can do this is limited.
In gameplay this is represented by keeping score of the 20 spirit points you start the game with, and reducing them by one, for each point of damage that you heal from your Avatar. Of course, you don't have to heal the damage, you may be able to win the game with your avatar still carrying injuries (although this will severely limit their power) or you may even abandon your injured Avatar for another.
You can heal a maximum of one point of damage off each of the three attributes, per turn. When your spirit counter is on 1 you cannot reduce it any further.
Example: Hognoth has taken a beating and his Attributes have taken damage of Electra 2, Corpus 2 and Spiritum 4. Your spirit points are on 18. This turn and next turn you take one damage point off each. This leaves Spiritum with 2 damage, Corpus and Electra 0 damage, and you have 12 spirit points left.
You must take two further turns to reduce the Spiritum damage to 0 - even tho' you can reduce a total of 3 across the 3 attributes, you may only reduce the damage on each attribute by a maximum of 1 per turn. It takes 4 turns and reducing your spirit points to 10, to restore Hognoth to full health.
Next: Techniques