C&C Trading Card Game 3.0 Rules

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C&C Trading Card Game 3.0 Rules



Premise

-This is a two-player game. It’s played with decks of cards based around the characters, locations and events of Cape and Cowl. Players take the role of building and defending a City of unpredictable superhumans dominated by an all-powerful Porter. Naturally they are in a pointless conflict with a rival City from a parallel universe.

-Each side starts with 100 City Points and a deck of fifty-one cards. CP represent the overall intactness and prosperity of your City, and function like the player’s health points. During the game both players take turns drawing cards into their hands, playing them into the field, using Character Attacks and Abilities, and discarding cards when they are taken out of play. Each player taking their turn is referred to as a round.

-There are three main ways to win a game.

Destruction: inflict damage on the opponent's City until their City Points reach 0. This represents the destruction of the enemy Porter and the ruination of their City.

Construction: increase your own CP to 200 or more. This represents a City progressing to a state of peace and prosperity where Imports can take control of their Porter and return home.

Attrition: Cards are discarded throughout the game as they are used or destroyed. When there are 25 cards (half a deck) in a player's Discard pile, that player loses the game. The 25 card number is called the Attrition Limit. Once that number is reached, the player's City is simply too exhausted to carry on the struggle, and collapses in on itself.

As cards are discarded, players come closer to the Attrition Limit, while cards and Abilities that draw cards out of the Discard pile can delay Attrition. Destroying enemy City and Character cards sends them to Discard and brings the opponent closer to the Attrition Limit.

There are ways to affect the Attrition Limit for yourself and your opponent. For example, Captain America has the passive Ability 'Heroic Resolve': while Cap is in play, that player cannot lose the game through Attrition regardless of how many cards have been discarded, because Captain America will never give up. On the other side of things, the 'Vulcanus Agents' Event forces the opponent to discard three cards from their hand, quickening their Attrition.

Time Limit (optional): Players may also agree on a set amount of time or number of rounds the game will last before it ends. Once time is up, victory is determined by previously-agreed conditions like who has the most CP or the least number of cards discarded.

-A deck contains three types of cards that are played to win the game: Character, City, and Event. There is also the Porter, a special City card put into play at the start of each game. Counting the Porter, there are fifty-one cards to a deck. Players draw five cards in a starting hand, and there are a maximum of ten cards in a hand.

-All cards are ranked by commonality, based roughly on how useful or unique they are. For example, I made Jack Bauer a Common card because he has relatively weak stats and an unreliable ability. The most powerful cards are always Rare.

-On the cards, Commonality is represented by the colour of the ‘C&C’ symbol to the beneath the picture: black is Common, silver is Uncommon, gold is Rare.

-When deck building, commonality keeps decks from being only made up of superweapons. Players can have a maximum of 10 Rares, 15 Uncommons, and as many Commons as they want in their decks. It generally goes 10 Rares, 15 Uncommons, 25 Commons, and 1 Porter in a 51-card deck.

-A maximum of five copies of each card are allowed in a deck. So for instance even though Nill is a Common card, you cannot have a deck of fifty Nills!

Player Actions and AP:

-At the start of a game, both players put their Porter into play as their first City card. Then the first round begins.

-The first player to move cannot directly attack CP on their very first turn, when their opponent probably has no characters to defend.

-Each turn the Porter generates three Action Points [AP], which are used by players to perform all game actions. They can be treated as representing any asset in-game: money, Porter energy, public support, advanced technology, mana, infrastructure, morale, plot items, you name it. AP is what determines what players can do on their turns. The default 3 AP per turn usually means players can do three things on their turn.

-To illustrate, Spider-Man costs 1 AP to play and has an Attack that costs 1 AP to use. So a player with 3 AP might spend 1 AP to draw a card into their hand, 1 AP to put Spider-Man into play, and 1 AP to use his Attack to inflict 10 damage on an opposing character, or on opposing CP if there are no opposing characters in play. The player would then end their turn with 0 AP left.

-Action Points stockpile between turns to allow for more strategy: it’s possible to do nothing on a turn so you can do more next turn. If a player spends none of their 3 AP on their turn, they will start their next turn with 6. More AP means more options for play: more characters that can act, more powerful cards that can be used, more chances to draw a new card.

-There are cards and abilities that can affect AP, granting more or taking away your opponent’s. Example: The City card ‘Avengers Mansion’ generates 1 AP each turn per Hero character you have in play. The Event ‘Annual Blackout’ eliminates 3 opposing AP. Cards like ‘Annual Blackout’ still work if opposing AP is 0: the Points are just deducted from what the opponent receives on their next turn.

-When CP drops below 50, the Porter’s Emergency Overdrive kicks in and generates 5 AP per turn instead of the usual 3, granting a losing player more of a chance to turn the game around. The Overdrive shuts off if CP rises above 50 again.

Draw a card = 1 AP
Playing most cards = 1 AP. Note: only one Event and one City card may be played each turn regardless of AP, although some Abilities or cards can change this. A player can put multiple Character cards into play each turn, AP permitting.
Withdraw a card to your hand/Discard a card = 1 AP. Returning a character to your hand heals it of all HP damage. You can also just discard a card from the field or from your hand to free up space. You may not play and withdraw the same card in the same turn, or vice versa.
Most Character Actions (Using an Ability or Attack) = 1 AP. Most characters can only Act once a turn. Characters can Act the same turn they’re played, but not the same turn they’re withdrawn from the field- no Acting then withdrawing.
Particularly strong Act or Card = 2 AP. Most characters with 50 HP or Attack have a higher AP cost, as do the most devastating Events, potent Abilities, and valuable City cards. Some may even have 3 AP if they are particularly nightmarish.
Some cards and Character Actions = 0 AP. Having characters that can be played or act without AP cost can be a powerful asset, saving AP for other actions. A speedster character might have 0 AP to play to represent how quickly they can dash onto the field. A commander might have an ability to withdraw a friendly character to the player’s hand, saving the ordinary AP cost. Most passive Abilities have 0 AP cost.
-One example is that Mirror Master’s card costs 0 AP to play to represent his mirror travel ability and also has an Ability that costs 0 AP, Mirror Trap, so he can always be played and can always Act regardless of the player’s available AP. Cards like this keep options open in case the opponent depletes your AP somehow.

-While spending AP, most turns follow this sequence: Draw cards, put cards in play, withdraw or discard cards, then perform character Actions. This procedure can be altered sometimes.

Characters and Classes



-Character cards are the backbone of the game. Characters are ImPorts, our characters both past and present, although there are a few NPC character cards. Dropped characters and players are very welcome!

-Characters screen CP from direct attack: to attack opposing City Points, you must first remove your opponent’s characters. To protect your CP, you must have characters in play. There are cards and Abilities that can affect CP directly, however.

-Ordinarily, a player can have up to three characters in play at any given time. There are cards and Abilities to alter this limit, like the MAC City card, which allows four characters in play at a time.

-Characters are sorted by Class into Hero, Anti-Hero, Civilian, Government, Anti-Villain, and Villain. Character Classes interact with certain cards and effects, and are an important part of the game.

- For example, the ‘Federal Sponsorship’ City card gives Hero characters an attack bonus while in play, while the ‘Media Inquiry’ card cuts down on Anti-Hero attack strength. Many cards can alter Character Classes to add or remove an advantage. Some characters have the ability to alter their Class or the Class of others, adapting to the situation.

-Character cards are colour-coded by Class. It goes as follows:

Hero [Blue]: Morally upstanding and righteous characters who directly participate in superhero activity via fighting crime, assisting disaster response, saving the innocent, and protecting the City.

Anti-Hero [Grey]: Characters with similar goals to Heroes, but with a darker edge. They may have cynical and selfish motives for helping people, or use methods that are ruthless, controversial, and illegal, or they may simply be very socially unpleasant.

Civilian [Yellow]: Characters who are largely neutral in the City's struggles, just trying to live peaceful and ordinary lives. They are usually noncombatants and often have lower HP and offensive capability compared to other characters, but can help out in other ways through useful Abilities.

Government/City Hall [Green]: Someplace in-between Heroes and Civilians, these characters try to help the City and the world by lending their hard work and leadership to local governance. Like Civilians, they are often noncombatants, using Abilities that tend to be protective and supportive. City Hall consultants, security personnel and their allies can also fall under this Class, as can non-City Hall officials like Department of Integration members.

Anti-Villain [Orange]: Antagonistic characters with sympathetic, redeeming, or ambiguous traits that make them more complicated than straight-out Villains. Nonetheless, they usually operate on the wrong side of the law, against heroes.

Villain [Red]: The bad guys. The megalomaniacs, gangsters and serial killers who plague the City. These are clearly antagonistic characters who are defined by doing bad things for bad reasons, often deliberately causing great harm and suffering and having fun doing it.

-Many characters could fall under more than one Class due to moral complexity, shifting allegiances or multiple identities. It is encouraged to create multiple Character cards for characters like this: for example, Bruce Wayne is a Civilian card and the Batman is an Anti-Hero card.

Attacks, Combos, Abilities and Hit Points

-Most Characters have hitpoints (HP), a special Ability, and an Attack strength. Hitpoints are depleted as a Character takes damage from opposing actions. When a Character's HP reach 0, that Character is discarded.

-Attacks do not have any spillover damage: if the Sentry [50 Attack] annihilates Cityzen Bob [5 HP], the remaining 45 Attack is not applied to CP or to other opposing characters. Attacks deal HP damage to opposing Characters, and when there are no Characters to screen they deal CP damage to the opponent’s City.

-Attacks have Types which can affect certain things. For example, a character with the intangibility Ability might not be affected by Physical attacks, a character with Power Nullification could be affected by nothing but Physical attacks, and a Magic character could gain an attack bonus from the ‘Well of Eternity’ City card.

-Different Attack Types unlock different Combo effects. A character using the same Attack three times in a row gains a powerful Type Effect on the third attack. Combos build by level, so using the same Attack twice in a row builds the Combo to the second level, and a third attack will bring it to the third level and unleash the Type Effect. A Combo doesn’t necessarily have to be directed at the same target, nor does the Effect have to strike the same target as the third attack.

-All Attack Types are capable of Combos except the Physical Type.

-Combos are broken if the character doesn’t attack on a turn for whatever reason. An attack still counts toward a combo if it’s ineffective.

-Attack Types include but are not limited to:

Physical- shooting, punching, things that ordinary people and conventional weapons could do. The most common Attack Type, and the only one without a Combo effect: the punishment for being mundane.

Tech- attacks featuring advanced science, elite computer skills, and damage inflicted by manipulating machinery. The Tech effect is Hack: reveal a card of your choice in opponent’s hand.

Psychic- attacking with the power of the mind, whether through telepathy, telekinesis or another means. The Psychic effect is Confusion: select an opposing character in play. The next time they try to Act their action will fail and hey will inflict 5 HP on themselves, unless they are taken off the field or receive healing. Confusion only lasts until that Act.

Fire – pretty much what it sounds like. The Fire effect is Firestorm: inflict 10 damage on opposing CP.

Ice – attacks focused around intense cold. The Ice effect is Freeze: choose an opposing character in play to be incapable of Acting this round.

Electric – lightning, electric blasts, zappy guns and the like. The Electric effect is Shutdown: your opponent receives 2 fewer AP at the start of their turn.

Magic – using supernatural sorcery and enchantments in combat. The Magic effect is Banish: choose an opposing character in play to return to opponent’s hand.

Toxic- chemicals, gases, acids, venoms and plagues. The Toxic effect is Poison: choose an opposing character in play to receive 1HP damage per turn until they are removed from the field or healed.

Air – attacking through mastery of the weather, wind, and sky. The Air effect is Perfect Storm: granting a +5 damage bonus to all friendly Ice, Air, Water, and Electric attacks this turn.

Earth – focused around manipulation of ground, rock, and plant life. The Earth effect is Elemental Force: destroy an opposing City card.

Energy- manifestations of energy, light, heat and force, whether from powers or energy weaponry. The Energy effect is Pulse: this attack does 10 extra damage to a target of your choice.

Speed- attacks based around superhuman speed, for characters like Quicksilver and the Flash. The Speed effect is Hyperspeed: cancel the AP cost of the last attack, and allow the character to Act again this turn.

Shadow- attacks defined by the dark and demonic, by terrifying, paranormal, and monstrous forces. The Shadow effect is Sinister: your opponent chooses a card to discard straight from their hand.

Sound- Attacking with noise and sonic energy. The Sound effect (heh) is Discordant: deals 5 extra damage to any Character card of your choice.

Water- Dousing the enemy with hydro-weaponry, direct control of water, or fighting from the waves. The Water effect is Flood: all opposing City cards stop having their effect for this round.

Magnetic- Attacks based around manipulation of magnetic fields, whether through powers or technology. The Magnetic effect is Mend: you gain 10 CP after this attack.

Gravity- The Attack Type for characters fighting through gravity manipulation. The Gravity effect is Summon: draw a card from your deck without AP cost.

-if none of these Types fit your character, go ahead and make up one more suitable!

-Characters who aren’t much for combat may have two Abilities and no Attack instead. Characters can also have no Abilities at all and just different Attacks, opening up new Combo possibilities. The card for Tony Stark has two Abilities revolving around his innovation and wealth, while the card for Iron Man has the standard Attack and one Ability.

-Character Abilities are active by default; players must deliberately choose to use them on their turn, usually at an AP cost, counting as a character Act. It is important to specify if an Ability is passive (always in effect).

Power Scale for HP and Attacks

-In terms of power scale, Bob the NPC Cityzen has 5 HP and 5 Attack as an ordinary untrained human. Poor Bob essentially represents the bottom of the heap in this game, and serves as a baseline for comparison when determining who can take and dish out the most punishment in this game.

- Someone more dangerous than an ordinary person without being really superhuman might have 10 HP and 7 Attack. Medium-level ImPorts- members of the Bat or Spider families for instance- generally have 15 HP and 10 Attack. The higher these values, the tougher the character in combat.

-Generally HP is higher than Attack to prevent lots of fights being over in one hit, but this is not a hard and firm rule, but more a suggestion of puddinglike consistency. The scale for characters can vary greatly as different people interpret character strength in different ways when making cards.

-The maximum strength for a character is 50 HP and 50 Attack; an astoundingly powerful character that could level a City in two rounds and stand up to absurd punishment. These top-tier characters are almost always Rare cards. Such characters require some kind of drawback to balance them. For instance, the Sentry has 50 Attack, but every time he uses it the player must roll a die to see if the Void will emerge and turn him against his allies.

-Top-tier characters always have a higher AP cost for playing and attacking. Their stats cannot be boosted by any bonuses from other cards or abilities- 50 is the absolute max.

-Hitpoints can represent defensive powers in addition to a character’s general durability. If a character capable of defensive shields or regeneration has no Ability slot free, that capability is shown via higher HP. For instance, all of Danger’s toughness is represented by her 40 HP.

City and Event Cards



-City cards are persistent status effects representing places and organizations in the game world. Once played, they remain in play until discarded. Most City cards have a CP value and raise your CP when they are played, which makes them essential to winning by Construction.

-City cards can’t be targeted by standard character attacks. Particular cards and Abilities can destroy or disable City cards.

-For example, the ‘Import Clinic’ card has a CP value of 10, so if your CP was 100, putting the Clinic in play would raise it to 110. ‘ImPort Clinic’ heals an in-play Character by 10 HP each turn it is active, but an opponent can use the ‘Bomb Plot’ Event card or Ladd Russo’s ‘Arson’ Ability to destroy it and send it to Discard.

-Destroying a City card does not lower CP: while ‘Import Clinic’ raises CP by 10 when it’s played, CP does not fall by 10 when it’s destroyed.

-Not all City cards have a CP value. One example of these is the ‘Ninja Death Cult.’ This is a City card that exists to guard other City cards, attaching to them as a defense, and so does not raise CP when put in play.

-A player may have only one of each City Card in play at a time- no playing five MACs or ten City Halls! Multiple copies of the same card are allowed though, so a player can replace their City Hall when the opponent destroys it. Ordinarily one new City card may be played each turn.



-Finally, Events are powerful one-time effect cards that are usually discarded when played. They’re generally based on plots and in-game happenings. For example, ‘Port-In Wave’ allows a player to draw three cards when played, while ‘Carnivorous Plants’ deals 10 damage to a target character, and ‘Construction Project’ immediately grants 10 additional CP to the player’s total. Ordinarily one Event may be played each turn.

-Event cards have a big impact on the game, representing as they do the unpredictable and changing world of C&C, but they also have their drawbacks. Since almost all Event cards are discarded immediately after play, every Event added to your Discard pile brings you closer to your Attrition Limit and losing the game.

Making Your Own Cards and Decks

Britt is a flawless person and has actually made up a downloadable template for editing your own card images- you can see the results of her work here. The colour code is Blue = Hero, Gray = Anti-Hero, Yellow = Civilian, Green = Government/City Hall, Orange = Anti-Villain, Red = Villain, Black = City and Event cards. The previous meme is here for reference.

Older card images are available on Google Drive, and also on the Tumblr. Iola has also prepared an album of Event cards.

Thanks to Iola and Dalrint, there are also organized master text lists for Character, City and Event cards.

-Many older cards have been modified from their initial draft to conform to rule updates or to clarify wording. When there’s a contradiction between what a card image says and what the list says, generally go with what’s written on the master list.

-If you are making a card image, please also fill out the form for card text so the details can be added to the card master list! If you don’t want to make an image, go ahead and fill out the form anyway and an image may be made for you!

Character Cards
Characters <b>Card title:</b> what the card is called. <b>Action Points:</b> The cost of putting this card into play. Most cards cost 1 AP to play, but especially powerful ones may cost more, while others may cost no AP as one of their special features. <b>Hit Points:</b> <b>Class:</b> Hero, Anti-Hero, Civilian, Government/City Hall, Anti-Villain, Villain <b>Sub-Class:</b> Optional descriptor like ‘Mutant’ or ‘Justice League.’ <b>Quote:</b> Something brief and descriptive for flavour text. <b>Attack:</b> Attack strength and type if applicable, with AP cost. <b>Ability:</b>ability(ies) description, with AP cost. <b>Commonality:</b> Common, Uncommon, Rare <b>Other notes:</b> For talking about additional stuff. How is this card used in play? Why did you pick these effects? Any suggested images, if you’d like a card image made?

Event Cards
Event cards <b>Card title:</b> what the card is called. <b>Action Points:</b> The cost of putting this card into play. Most cards cost 1 AP to play, but especially powerful ones may cost more, while others may cost no AP as one of their special features. <b>Sub-Class:</b> Optional descriptor like ‘Demon Dimension’ or ‘Porter malfunction.’ <b>Quote:</b> Something brief and descriptive for flavour text. <b>Effect:</b> A concise description of what the card does. <b>Commonality:</b> Common, Uncommon, Rare <b>Other notes:</b> For talking about additional stuff. How is this card used in play? Why did you pick these effects? Any suggested images, if you’d like a card image made?

City Cards
City cards <b>Card title:</b> what the card is called. <b>Action Points:</b> The cost of putting this card into play. Most cards cost 1 AP to play, but especially powerful ones may cost more, while others may cost no AP as one of their special features. <b>City Points:</b> How much playing this card raises your CP. The standard value is 10 CP. Not all City cards contribute to building a City. <b>Sub-Class:</b> Optional descriptor like ‘Building’ or ‘Alternate universe.’ <b>Quote:</b> Something brief and descriptive for flavour text <b>Effect:</b> A concise description of what the card does. <b>Commonality:</b> Common, Uncommon, Rare <b>Other notes:</b> For talking about additional stuff. How is this card used in play? Why did you pick these effects? Any suggested images, if you’d like a card image made?

-Note: Make sure you’re brief but precise in your card descriptions! Specify if an ability is passive, if cards are discarded from the field or from the hand, if City effects take hold right away etc. Trust me on this, it comes up a lot in playtesting. By default, descriptions refer to cards currently in play and City effects take hold the same turn the card is played.

-Multiple versions of the same card are allowed and encouraged. If you think you’ve got another idea for a NOHoPE card, go ahead and make NOHoPE (2.0).

-When building your own deck, think about what the deck will be focused around. Is it a ‘theme’ deck bringing together characters from a certain Class, Type or CR circle? Is your deck meant to play matches according to a certain strategy? One deck may strive to maximize damage to opposing CR with powerful Events and Characters, another may play defensively by building up City cards with support from Civilian and Government characters. There are many gaming styles possible.

- Again, there are a maximum of 10 Rare and 15 Uncommon cards allowed in a deck, and no more than five copies of the same card. There are no rules for how many of each card type are allowed in a deck. Go ahead, make a deck consisting solely of Event cards, see what happens.

-For those without the time or inclination to create their own decks, customizable ‘Starter Decks’ are going to be made available on Google after new cards from this meme are done being made.

Forces of Justice: Hero-themed deck focusing on building and supporting an unbeatable team in the field.

Forces of Corruption: Villain-themed deck focused around sabotaging and frustrating the opponent.

Forces of Peace: Civilian and City Hall-themed deck focused on building and maintaining a prosperous City.

Forces of Punishment: Anti-Hero themed deck focused around hurting the opponent’s characters very, very badly.

Forces of Mystery: Supernatural-themed deck focused around changing play conditions in bizarre and unexpected ways.

Playing Through Google

The C&C TCG doesn’t have any physical cards (yet), but it’s still possible to play the game through the Internet! The way it usually works is through Google Documents- now Google Drive. Players create a word processing document and share it between themselves, then set it up so it looks roughly like this:

Player 1

Discarded cards
Defeated Character, Destroyed City Card

CP = 100 AP= 3
City Cards
[The Porter] [City Card] [City Card ]

Character Cards
[Character HP=] [Character HP=] [Character HP=] ++

----


[Character HP=] [Character HP=] [Character HP=]
Character Cards


[The Porter] [City Card] [City Card ]
City Cards
CP = 100 AP= 3

Discarded cards
Discarded Card, used Event Card


Player 2

-On their own ends players have a document open with the cards in their decks listed and numbered, 1 to 50. They also have a tab open to a Random Number Generator set between 1 and 50. The RNG is used for drawing cards. For instance, at the start of the game, each player clicks the RNG five times to determine their first five-card hand. It's recommended that players have another doc open to keep track of what cards they have in hand.

-Players then communicate with each other through an AIM chat or other means, describing their moves and what they are doing, and edit the document to reflect what is happening. In this example, Player 1’s third Character has been bolded to show they’re under a status effect, and has two symbols next to it to show they have a level 2 Combo building.

-If it’s Player 2’s turn here and they play the Vanished Cops Event card, they would edit their AP to 1 to represent spending 2 AP to play that card. Vanished Cops inflicts 20 CP, so Player 1’s CP would be edited from 100 down to 80 to reflect that damage. Vanished Cops would then be added to the list of Discarded cards for Player 2.