Light
Seraphine, Dawncaller
Unbroken Vigil
Hold your hand and your Minions shrug off damage. Swing, and the protection is gone until you next stand still.
The core rhythm
Commit, spend, wait.
Every Realm you control is a switch you can throw once. Turn it sideways — commit it — and it pays you one Power of its Affinity. It stays sideways until your own Restoration Stage. Try it.
Energy Battery
0
Empty. Commit a Realm.
That gap is the whole game. Power spent holding a trick on somebody else’s turn is Power you do not have on your own.
Five Affinities, five Adepts
Pick one. Nobody else can have it.
Your Adept is your avatar and a real creature on the board. It starts face down and useless. Pay its cost to flip it and it hits the table with a bang — and from that moment it can be attacked, blocked and killed like anything else.
Dark
Morvath, Soulbinder
Harvest
Your own dead pay you. The first Minion you lose each turn draws you a card, and somebody across the table loses Life for it.
Solar
Kaelis, Sunforged
Forge-Heat
Everything you summon can attack the moment it lands. No waiting, no build-up, no mercy.
Frost
Medalin, Iceweaver
Deepening Cold
Enemy Minions arrive already committed. They turn up to the fight lying down, and there is nothing they can do about it.
Earthen
Bertha of Girthwall
Deep Foundations
The first Realm you commit each turn pays double. Slow to start, impossible to out-resource.
One turn, in order
Six stages, and a second bite.
A turn is one player’s pass through these. A round is everybody taking one. Every card in the game is written in turns — at a five-player table, that is a fivefold difference.
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01
Restoration
Your committed cards stand back up. Every Minion on the table — not just yours — heals every wound. A cut lasts until the next Restoration, whoever’s turn that is.
-
02
Draw
One card, and you choose blind which deck it comes from: Spells or Realms. Seven to open the game. Whoever goes first skips this on turn one — that is the price of the seat.
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03
Operations
Play a Realm, summon Minions, cast Sorceries, equip Relics, flip your Adept face up.
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04
Combat
Attack a player, or attack their Adept directly. Anyone at the table may intervene — on either side.
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05
Second Operations
A second window after the dust settles, so you can act on what actually survived rather than on what you hoped would.
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06
End
Discard what you did not want — and it is offered to whoever is on the lowest Life, to take or refuse. Then trim to seven, and any Power you did not spend is gone.
Two to five players
The duel is fine. The table is the point.
Three to five players is a free-for-all, and conversation, trading, bargaining and betrayal are part of the rules rather than something that happens around them. You may only open a negotiation if you hold the live decision — you are the active player, or somebody has just aimed something at you. Bystanders can answer an offer. They cannot start one.
Promises are not binding. An agreed trade is.
Starting Life by table size
| Players | Life | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 20 | The duel |
| 3 | 17 | Politics begins |
| 4 | 15 | Crowded |
| 5 | 13 | Full table |
Life drops as the table grows so every size lands in roughly the same thirteen-round game. At a flat 20, a five-player game runs half as long again.
Where it is up to
Honest build status.
Void Wizards is being built by one person in the evenings. Nothing below is a promise with a date on it.
- Working The game. Full rules engine, five Adepts, 113 cards, AI opponents that assess the whole table before choosing who to hit.
- Working Play over a local network. Host on one machine, join from another, up to five seats with humans and AI mixed.
- Working Card art. Every card in the shipping set is illustrated.
- In progress Play over the internet. A dedicated server is running in Sydney. Matches do not run on anybody’s home PC.
- Planned Accounts and profiles. Sign in, a match history, wins and losses, friends and private groups.
- Planned Custom modes. The two-player and big-table variants as a per-game choice rather than a build.