Inuyasha Gameplay Rules

Inuyasha is a Trading Card Game (TCG). That means you and your opponent build customized decks from booster packs to battle each other in a game of wits and action.

This game has 4 card types: characters, items, locations and events.
Characters (white) are personalities in the Inuyasha storyline.
Items (red) are the things that they use.
Locations (green) are the places they go.
Events (blue) are the plot twists that push the story and game along.

Two Ways to Win:

#1. STEAL ALL 10 SHIKON JEWEL SHARDS!
You win the instant you control all 10 Shards. Shards are facedown cards that you both set aside when the game begins. You steal shards by defeating characters, attacking your opponent directly, and by using game effects.

#2. EMPTY YOUR OPPONENT’S DECK!
You win the instant your opponent tries to draw or discard a card from his or her deck and cannot.

GETTING STARTED: First you need a deck of exactly 60 cards. The rules for deck building are easy: Unless the card restricts itself, you can have as many copies of a card you want.

THE PLAY AREA: Each play area will have a deck, shard pile, captured shard pile and discard pile.

HERE'S HOW TO START A GAME:
1. Both players shuffle their decks and offer a chance to cut.
2. Both players take the top 5 cards off of their decks and set them facedown in their shard piles without looking at them. These are your starting jewel shards.
3. Both players draw 5 cards. Players that are not happy with their hand may swap it once for their 5 shards.
4. Flip a coin. The winner decides who goes first as the active player (that's the player whose turn it is).
HOW A TURN WORKS: A turn is made up of the 4 steps shown here. Both players will act in every turn. The active player goes first in every step. The opposing player follows the active player’s actions.

Step 1. Draw
ACTIVE PLAYER: As the active player, draw 3 cards from the top of your deck.
OPPOSING PLAYER: The opposing player draws 3 cards from the top of his or her deck.

Step 2. Setup
ACTIVE PLAYER: As the active player you may now play cards faceup as described below.

1. Play up to 2 character cards onto the table from your hand.
2. Put location cards in play faceup. You may have multiple locations in play, but only 1 copy of each. Locations sometimes affect the controller of the location, and at other times will affect both players. The location will let you know.
3. Attach items to characters. You play an item by attaching it face-up underneath a character card. Characters may only attach 1 item card each.
IMPORTANT: Except for the Shikon Jewel Shards you play at the beginning of the game, every card in the game will have a deck cost. What's that? It's the number of cards you must discard from your deck to play the card.

It looks like this:
Any time you play a card, you must FIRST pay the deck cost. If you steal a card that your opponent has in play, you do not pay the deck cost since it's already in play.
OPPOSING PLAYER: When the active player is done, the opposing player may now play his or her cards too. When he or she is done, the step ends.

Step 3. Battle
Both players alternate action phases with the active player going first. Each player may only do 1 of the following 4 actions at a time in an action phase: play an event card; attack; use an activated effect on a card in play; or pass. You can only play or use a card if it is your turn to act, unless the card changes the timing of play.

1. PLAY AN EVENT: To play an event from your hand, pay the deck cost of the card, play the card from your hand, resolve its effects, and discard it. Some effects on events last after the card is played. Such effects end when the Battle Step ends.

2. USE AN ACTIVATED EFFECT. Some cards in play allow you to do something other than the first 2 options. If so, using that card effect takes up 1 of your actions.

3. ATTACK! You may attack 1 of your opponent's characters. (You cannot attack your own characters.)

HOW TO ATTACK: Each character card has up to 3 out of the 5 attack colors. When a character attacks, you "expend" your character (turn it around 180 degrees), choose which character it is attacking, and choose a color that is on both characters. You cannot attack a character unless there is a matching color between them. You then compare the values of the chosen color for the attacking and defending characters. If the attack's color is equal to or greater than the defending character's color, the defending character is defeated and is turned facedown along with all of its attached cards, and you steal a Shikon Jewel Shard. When a character and its attached cards turn face-down; those cards are out of play, even though they are still on the table. If your opponent controls no characters, you may directly attack your opponent with any color on one of your characters to steal a Shard.

4. PASS. You pass when you can’t or don’t want to perform an action. When both players pass one-after-another, the step ends and you go to Step 4. Recovery.

Step 4. Recovery

ACTIVE PLAYER ACTS:
1. Save or Kill Characters: As the active player, you may now save any of your defeated characters. To save a character, discard a character from your hand that has the same name of the one you are saving. (The name of the character must match exactly, but the surname of the character does not.) Afterward, turn the character and its attached cards faceup. All defeated characters that aren’t saved are killed and go to the discard pile with their attached cards.
2. Ready Cards: After you have saved or killed your defeated cards, all of your expended cards are now readied. To ready a card, turn it around 180 degrees so that the image and text is facing you.

OPPOSING PLAYER ACTS:
The opposing player now does the same things in the same order.
1. Save or Kill All Defeated Cards:
2. Ready All of His or Her Expended Cards:

THE TURN ENDS! THE ACTIVE PLAYER IS NOW THE PLAYER TO THE IMMEDIATE LEFT OF THE FORMER ACTIVE PLAYER.

Terms You Need to Know:
ACTION: A player’s chance to play a card, use a card or pass.
ATTACH: To place a card face-up underneath another card
CONTROL: To have a card in front of you, face-up, on your side of the table.
DEFEAT: To turn a card facedown because of an attack or effect.
DISCARD: To put a card into the discard pile.
EXPEND: To turn a vertical card around 180 degrees. Expended characters cannot attack.
KILL: To send a defeated character to the discard pile during Recovery.
READY: To turn an expended card around 180 degrees so that it faces its controller.
SAVE: To turn a defeated card face-up during the Recovery Step.
SURNAME: A title that follows the name of some characters.
STEAL: To gain control of an opponent's card and use it like it was your own.
TRAITS: A trait is a bold keyword on cards appearing in the box above the text. Each trait counts as a category that the card is identified with. Traits are capitalized in game text.
UNIQUE: This trait means a player may control only 1 copy of this card at a time.
Character uniqueness is based on the name of the character in the card's title, not the surname within the title.

Other Rules You Need to Know:
CARDS REFERENCING THEMSELVES IN ITALICS: Any card that references its own title in italics is referencing only itself, unless otherwise stated. Character cards that reference the name of the character on the card also refer only itself, even if the complete title isn't stated in the reference.
ACTIVATED EFFECTS: Some effects on cards are activated during the game. These effects end when the step in which they were created ends.
COLOR MODIFIERS: When an effect increases the color on a card, that card must first have that color to gain the increase.
DO WHAT YOU CAN RULE: Except for costs and effects that are conditional, if an effect tells you to do something you cannot (or can only partially) do, do what you can and continue play.
GOLDEN RULE: When a card effect conflicts with a rule, the effect overrides the rule.
NO NEGATIVE VALUES: No numbers in this game ever go below 0.
CHERRY PICKING RULE: When you search for a card, you always reveal the card you searched for, shuffle your deck and offer the chance to cut. Cards cannot search for themselves or copies of themselves.

Here is a Video made by TheDeadCardGamer Jason A. Hurley showing off a lot of the basics on how to play the game.
The Rulebook Flier is available for download below. It is a .pdf file.
The Current Rulings Document (CRD) is available for download at the bottom from the Inuyasha TCG Website. Only the most recent date will be made available.
The Advanced Rulings Document (ARD) is also available for download at the bottom from the Inuyasha TCG Website. Like the CRD, only the most recent date will be made available.

The Golden Rule:
The rules text of a card always overrides the rules printed in the latest version of the Inuyasha™ TCG rulebook.

Most Recent Printing Rule:
If two or more cards share the same title and version, then the text, the numbers, and all other symbols of that card are to read as they appear on the most recent printing (MRP) of that card with that title.

Card Eligibility:
All cards that have been previously produced by Score Entertainment for a particular card game will be considered viable for tournaments sponsored by SEVEN for that game 2 week (14 days) after the official release date of the product or expansion that a card was released in.

Autographed Cards:
All cards that have an Autograph Sticker over their text box will have the same text as their previous card.
EX: FV3 Sesshomaru, Wanderer will have the same text as the Sesshomaru, Wanderer from Jaki 

Keywords:
Some of you might be wondering what a Keyword is in Inuyasha.  These are an effects that a character or an event might have to give them a little boost.  There are three different Keywords for both character and event cards. 

The three Keywords that appear on character cards are Aggressive, Defensive, and Regeneration.
Aggressive: When a character has this Keyword you may only activate it when this character attacks by discarding a card from your hand.  Then you add the cost of that card to the attacking color of that character for the attack.
Defensive: When a character has this Keyword you may only activate it when this character is attacked by discarding a card from your hand.  Then you add the cost of that card to the attacked color of that character for the attack.
Regeneration: When a character has this Keyword you may only activate it during the recovery phase.  It that character is defeated you may discard a card from your hand to save them.  This is the only Keyword that works when a character is defeated.

The three Keywords that appear on events are Modifier, Draw, and Shuffle.
Modifier: When an event has this Keyword and is in your hand.  You may remove it from the game when a character you control is attacked or attacking to add the events deck cost to that attacked / attacking color.
Draw: When an event has this Keyword and is in your hand.  As an action in battle you may remove it from the game to draw cards equal to the events deck cost.
Shuffle: When an event has this Keyword and is in your hand.  As an action in battle you may remove it from the game to shuffle a number of cards from your discard pile equal to the events deck cost.

Kaitou Deck:
Kaitou cards were introduced with the release of Yokai expansion. These cards were Yellow colored and do not act as other cards. Essentially, your Kaitou Deck is your side deck in the Inuyasha TCG. The number on the card dictates how many cards you can place facedown underneath it. Between rounds, you can switch cards between your Main Deck and Kaitou Deck. While you do not have to show the cards you swapped, you do have to inform your opponent of how many cards you swapped.

Kaitou Decks are, like Main Decks, bound by the rules of the game. This means you cannot place 1 copy of a Limit 1 per Deck card in your Deck and an additional copy in your Kaitou Deck.

Some Kaitou cards allow you to use their effects throughout the game. Like above, these effects are bound by the rules of the game.

The cards in your Kaitou Deck do not count towards the 60 card limit that your Main Deck is restricted by, but after switching cards between your Kaitou Deck and Main Deck, your Deck must be the same size you started with. Additionally, cards in your Kaitou Deck cannot be targeted unless a card specifically says it can target cards in the Kaitou Deck.

Players are allowed only 1 Kaitou card per Deck.

Demo Deck:
Attached at the bottom are the cards needed to build your very own Inuyasha TCG demo decks in PDF format. The cards are divided into two (2) separate deck types (the Heroes deck and the Villains Deck). Download both files (Villains and Heroes) for a complete set of demo tools. (Note: It seems the video with this is long gone)

Follow the deck format below:
40 Card Hero Deck:
Inuyasha™, Kagome's Protector x5
Kagome, Kikyo Reincarnated x5
Shippo, the Shapeshifter x5
Kaede, Village Priestess x5
Militia x5
School Girl Outfit x2
Tetsusaiga x2
Hospital x2
Medic Kit x1
This Human's Going to Kick Your... x2
Enchanted Sleep x2
Inuyasha™'s Destructive Path x2
Tag Team x2

40 Card Villain Deck:
Sesshomaru, Aristocratic Assassin x5
Jaken x5
Yura of the Demon-Hair x5
Imps x5
Demons x5
Yura's Sword x2
Yura's Hair x4
Resting Place x3
Medic Kit x1
See You In Hell x2
Energy Whip x2
Charge x1