How Does It Work

You are the sovereign of your hold. Your goal is to outlast your enemies and lead your people according to your vision. You do that by raising structures, deploying your denizens, and relying on your core resources to keep it all going. At your disposal are treasures, strategies, fortifications, and arcane arts that draw upon your hold's foundations to bring your enemies to heel.

In Holdfast, there is no life total. As long as your hold still exists, you remain in the game. Victory comes from outlasting others as their holds collapse under pressure, upkeep, and conflict. The simple win condition is to be the last player standing - to end your turn with at least one denizen and one structure.

The Cards You Control

• Denizens are people. They move, assault, and use abilities. Denizens are the backbone of your hold and without them you structures would fall to aggressive foes while your enemies' walls remain upright.
• Structures protect your hold and can define its borders. They serve a myriad of purposes but are not half as useful without denizens to operate them and keep them unharmed.
• Belongings can be any number of tangibles - from treasures to consumables to gear you arm your people with.
• Fortifications improve structures by bolstering their strengths, providing ways in which they can fight back, and instilling them with old magics that help them survive.
• Traps are devices, magics, and strategies you can trigger during assaults. They can end an overzealous enemy before their turn is over.
• Mysticisms are a variety of magical arts. Some help, some harm, and all give you distinct advantages over the other enemy holds.
• Resources are the backbone of your civilization, producing bounty you can use to deploy everything else.

Bountiful Harvests

Bounty is the basic unit of the game. As a sovereign, you collect bounty in your stores until you're ready to spend it. There are five different kinds (for now), each representing something distinct you can use to maintain your hold. While all civilizations use all bounty in some sense or another, the more spread out your production is the hardier it will be to maintain a necessary balance.

• Current — water, weather, blood, pressure, and flow.
• Material — stone, timber, ore, and other unrefined sources.
• Production — skilled labor, production, and refinement.
• Stock — crops, bodies, sustenance, and death itself.
• Wealth — currency, valuables, persuasion, and trade.

Your capacity for bounty in a standard game is 20. Some cards can change this for better or worse. When you harvest bounty, it does not leave your store until you spend it. The only other option is to flush your store entirely at the start of your harvest phase.

The Field and Perimeters

At the start of the game, all cards exist in a single shared zone called the outland. But by connecting two or more structures you control, you can build a perimeter. This separates the outland from the inside of your hold - the courtyard. When you erect a perimeter, anything behind it becomes out of range from anything on the other side.

This division is not permanent however. If a structure on your perimeter gets removed, then for the rest of that turn, your side of the field is considered "breached" and the courtyard and outland become the same zone again. Only by placing a new structure in that gap can you rebuild your perimeter and separate the zones once more.

When you have no connected structures anymore (parts of your perimeter remain connected even after it's been breached), you can connect two or more together and declare a new perimeter once more.

Other Zones in Holdfast

Besides the outland, perimeter, and courtyard, there are five other places that cards can be. The first two are your hand and deck. Your hand is the collection of cards that are immediately available to play. Your deck is the remaining pile of cards that are not yet playable. Cards move from the deck to your hand each draw phase until the game ends or your deck reaches zero. You do not lose the game for having no cards in your deck.

The other three places are discard piles all - but the rules for accessing those piles differ for each. The first is the standard discard pile called the rubble. When something on the field falls, or when you have to pitch a card from your hand, it goes here automatically. Things commonly move out of the rubble in a game. The second place is the void. Things that go here you never gain access to again. Traps and Mysticisms go here by default after you play them.

The last place for cards to be discarded is the middling. This is a shared discard zone where you can access cards your enemies move to it. So why ever use it? Because it's the only other safe harbor for mysticisms if you want to play them more than once. You can fill a game with your arcane arts many times over, but the more you play the more your enemies possibly gain access to. Sorcery is a double-edged sword.

How To Play

Each sovereign starts with a deck of 48 cards (with another 24 in reserve if you're playing a set of three matches). You shuffle your decks and agree on who goes first. Then, each sovereign draws 16 cards for their starting hand and puts down all resource cards they have. The turn order follows like such.

1. Harvest Phase — Harvest up to your capacity of bounty from all your cards that have a "harvest" effect. This will mostly be resource cards. Optionally, use the one-time "deplete" effect instead of the "harvest" effect for any of these.
2. Mainenance Phase — Count up your field's total maintenance plus maintenance from any other sources. If you would be unable to pay specific maintenance, offer cards from your side of the field in any order until you can afford it or until you have no more left to give. Then pay the maintenance from your store of bounty.
3. Command Phase — Play whatever cards you want in whichever order you like as long as you meet their deploy cost. Each of your cards can act once (move, activate an ability, or assault - explained next).
4. Assault Phase — Assault targets in range one at a time with groups of one or more denizens.
5. End Phase — Check if you have at least one denizen and one structure. If you do not, you lose the game. Otherwise, draw eight cards and put down any resource cards in your hand. Then you pass your turn.

How Assaults Work

When you declare an assault, you must declare your assault group (even if it's only one denizen) and your assault's target. The sorts of targets you can choose depend on what's in range. By default, two denizens in the outland are in range of each other. But if a perimeter goes up, then structures on that perimeter are in range but things behind it are not. Denizens outside of structures are in range, but if they occupy a structure they are not.

After declaring a target, the next steps depend on if the target is a structure or not. If it's a non-structure, the following happens.

1. Reveal Step — If the card is face-down, you turn it face-up. It may have effects that can be activated at this time.
2. Damage Step — The group deals their total strength in damage to the target. At the same time, the target deals its strength, distributed as its controller wishes, across the assailants.
3. The game then checks which cards have 0 or less fortitude. The ones that do fall and go by default to their owner's rubble. The rest remain with their damage on the field.

If the target is a structure, there is slightly more to it.

1. Reveal Step — If any occupants are face-down, they are turned face-up They may have effects that can be activated at this time. The defending player chooses which are activated in which order.
2. Morale Calculation Step — The total strength of the assault group is checked against the total morale of the structure and its occupants. If it meets or exceeds, the assault progresses to the next step. Otherwise, the assault stops here.
3. Falter Step — Occupants are ousted from the structure and moved to the courtyard. Traps that are ousted go to the rubble instead.
4. Damage Step — The group deals their total strength in damage to the structure. At the same time, the structure deals its strength in damage, distributed as its controller wishes, across the assailants.
5. The game then checks which cards have 0 or less fortitude. The ones that do fall and go by default to their owner's rubble. The rest remain with their damage on the field.

Other Special Rules

You do not lose the game by running out of cards in your deck, but you do begin mounting additional maintenance cost. For every turn with an empty deck, your maintenance increases by two arbitrary bounty. Eventually, there will be more maintenance from the game than you can produce. This is the game's way of preventing standstill and forcing things to a close.

Each card can take up to one action a turn. Moving around the field, assaulting, and activating an ability are all actions.

Resources, fortifications, and belongings armed to denizens cannot be targeted during assaults. This is not explicitly stated in the assault rules.

When cards reference "the courtyard" while you don't have one, they apply to the outland instead. But if they reference "your perimeter", they don't apply instead. This is called zone collapse.

Mysticisms go to the void by default when they're played. Traps go to the void when they're ousted face-up or when they're activated.