Rules for Vita Luna
This game is played by two players and is a sequence of battles; if you win a battle, you get to move your counter, step by step, towards the opponent's heart. The winner is the player who moves their counter to the opposing player’s heart.
Creature cards
Cards, depicting animals, are used to fight the opponent and to determine the outcome of each battle. Each card has an attack and a health value. For example, the Wolf card has an attack of 3 and a health of 2. The latter value is shown within a heart symbol on each card.
The reverse of the card is coloured in either black, blue or red. The black cards are generally the weakest, the blue ones are more powerful, and the red ones are the strongest.
Some cards have special abilities, called epics. For example, the Gyr Falcon and the Cheetah both have the move anywhere epic shown between the attack and health value.
The epics in use are as follows:
1.Move anywhere - allows a creature to move to any of its own free, white positions or to swap with any of its own side (as long as they don’t have the anchor epic) before attacking.
2.Poisonous - inflicts a critical hit on the opposing creature, killing them instantly unless they are resistant or have any armour left.
3.Resistant- this gives the creature poison resistance, meaning any poison hit on them is just regarded as a regular attack.
4.Armour - allows a creature to absorb one hit with no impact to their health. Any hit removes the armour until the end of the battle. However, at the beginning of the next battle it rejuvenates.
5.Holds - this keeps the opposing creature from moving away.
6.Anchor- creatures with this symbol are unable to move at all once they have been placed on a white card position.
7.Retaliate - this epic means that when the creature is attacked, it hits back for one damage.
8.Pronged attack - this attack hits a possible two positions, for one damage each. The opposing card directly opposite is not harmed, but any enemy cards either side of it are hit.
Singular cards
These are cards are dealt out at the beginning of each game; they are not used to battle enemy creatures but instead can be used to alter the outcomes of battles in a different way. They can only be used once, and once they have been used, they are discarded for the rest of the game. Each player gets one of each (so four in total). The different cards effects are shown below:
Burn- you can use this to permanently destroy the opposing player’s card. The card selected must be on one of the white positions. Once it has been burnt, the creature card is removed from play until the end of the game.
Swap - this card can be used to swap one of your cards for one of your opponent’s cards. The opponent’s card and yours must be on white positions. Basically, the cards have switched sides, keeping whatever health they had at that point of the battle. At the end of the battle, you both keep whichever cards have been swapped.
Steal - this card is used to permanently steal an opponent’s card. The opponent’s card must be on a white position, and you must have a clear, white space opposite it for it to be moved into. At the end of the battle, you get to keep the stolen card. Of course, the opponent can always steal it back!
Heal - this can be used to fully heal one of your injured cards. It brings the card back to full health and armour. E.g. if the Anaconda was down to 2 health left, and you used this on it, it would go back to its original 5 health.
Basic game
Shuffle the black cards and the blue cards separately, so all the black cards remain together, and all the blue cards remain together.
Deal four black cards face down to each player and two blue cards face down to each player. Each player should therefore have six cards to begin the game with (not including their 4 singular cards).
Lay out the board. Place 10 hearts for each player on their heart symbol i.e. the one closest to the player. These are your lives that will be depleted during each battle. However, they will get refilled at the beginning of a new battle. Place the two player counters in the middle circle, within the white rectangle. Note: in the basic and advanced game, all the circles within the rectangle are counted as one circle, not three. Now choose who will attack first.
The attacking player must place their cards down before the defending player. If the attacking player is at the bottom, then they put their cards in the bottom half of the board. The ones marked in white are the cards that will be in play, the grey marked positions are for the reserve cards. You can place any of your initial six cards down in any position, and you don't even have to put all six cards down, but it is advised that you do. The ones on the white positions must be placed face up. The ones in the reserve (grey) positions must be placed face down. For example, you could place four of your cards in the white positions, and your two reserves in the grey. Once the attacker is happy with their positioning, then it is the defender's turn. The defender, in this example, will place their cards in the upper white positions, with their reserved cards in the upper grey positions. The defender has the advantage of seeing what attacking card is where and can place their cards appropriately to counter them. Once your starting card positions are chosen, place their health markers upon them for all the white position cards (but not the grey). Also place out any armour markers, if appropriate.
Initially, you will place all your cards on the board (though you don't have to). However, as you gain cards throughout the game, you may find you have more than eight cards. At this point you will have to decide which cards to leave out of the upcoming battle. Note: you may only have eight cards in play for any single battle.
Black to blue
Each game, both players are allowed to swap two black cards for one random, new blue card. This should be done after a battle but before the next one. This can be done multiple times.
Extended game
The extended game can be applied to either the basic or the advanced game. This simply means that the game will last longer as there are more steps to take before you reach the opposing player’s heart. If you look at the board, in the extended game the three circles within the rectangle are all now counted individually. This means that there is an additional battle to be fought before you can reach the opposing player’s heart.
To surmise: all three circles are in play in the extended game. In a non-extended game, these would count as only one circle.
Advanced game
They key difference from the basic game is the addition of bidding for your starting deck of cards and for the chance to attack first.
Give the two players 15 health markers each, these will be used just for the bidding phase.
Next agree who will bid first.
Now start the bidding. Your first bid is to choose who will begin as the attacker. Player one may bid one marker. Player two can then bid two if they wish to attack first, or nothing if they want the other player to attack first. Whichever markers are bid, they are removed from the players pile and the bid now moves onto the cards themselves.
The black cards are bid for first. Take out eight random cards from the black card deck, keeping them face down at first. Whichever player bid second when bidding for being the attacker, places the first bid in this round. Turn over the first of the black cards. A round of bidding then takes place to see who wins that card. Note: only one bid each per card. If player two bids 2 markers and player one bids 3 markers, then player one gets the card and both players lose their respective bid markers from their pot. Now we turn over the second black card, and now it is player one’s turn first to bid. It should be understood that each player must end up with four black cards each. If player one had bid enough to win the first four cards, then the next four black cards must be given to player 2. Once all the black cards have been handed out, the bidding moves on to the blue cards. Here you must take out four random blue cards from the blue card deck, and then turn them over face up one at a time during the bidding process. It follows the same pattern as for the black cards and each player must end up with two blue cards each. Once both players have two blue cards and four black cards, the bidding is finished and the markers are now used as health markers for the cards. Note: if both players run out of bidding markers before all the cards have been bid for, then the remaining cards are shuffled and dealt out randomly to each player, so that you always end up with 2 blues and 4 blacks each.
Sequence of bidding
1. Agree who will bid first.
2. Bid for the right to attack first.
3. Bid for the black cards.
4. Bid for the blue cards.
Remember to alternate who bids first each time! Once all the bidding is finished and the cards have been distributed, the game follows in exactly the same manner as the basic game.
Fighting
A card uses their attack to hit the opposing cards health. When you attack, go through each of your white position cards in turn from left to right. An example, the Wolf is attacking the Gyr Falcon. That is 3 attack against 2 health. Therefore, the Wolf kills the Gyr Falcon and the Falcon’s card is removed from the battle. Another example: the Rat attacks an Anaconda. This is 1 attack against 5 health. So, one health is removed from the Anaconda’s health, leaving it with 4. Another example with the Rat; it attacks a Porcupine (4 health), who has the Retaliate epic. The Rat removes one health from the Porcupine, leaving it with 3 health. However, the Retaliate epic means one health is also removed from the Rat, killing it, and removing it from the battle. In this last example, you may think that you don’t want the Rat to attack, however, if it is in the white position then it must attack on its turn. The only creatures that don’t attack are those with a zero attack rating e.g. the Rock card.
If your card is attacking an empty white position ( e.g. the creature who was there has already been killed), then any damage done goes against the opponents heart. If their heart drops to zero, they have lost the battle, even if they still have cards in play.
Moving
You can move one card in the white positions (or swap two cards around if one of them has the move anywhere epic) and you can move one card in the grey positions. However, additionally you can promote any card from the reserve, grey positions if there is a space free in the white positions e.g. one of your cards has been destroyed, leaving a free space in a white position. Note: cards with the anchor epic cannot be moved or swapped, but they can be promoted to the white position.
Sequence of play
Each battle is initiated by the attacker, and at this point both the attacker and the defender have placed all their cards out.
The sequence of play is as follows:
1.the player decides if they wish to play any singular cards.
2.the player decides if they wish to move any cards (if they can).
3.the player then attacks using the cards in the white (active) positions.
Once these three steps have been completed, the play then switches to the defending player who then follows the same sequence. Once the defender has finished, the play switches back to the attacker, who goes through the same sequence and so on. The battle is finished when either one of the players has no cards left or one of the players has no lives within the heart left. Whoever this is has lost the battle.
Both the winner and loser collect one random black card.
If the attacker wins, they advanced their counter one circle closer to their opponent’s heart. If the defender wins, no counters are moved.
For the next battle, the attacker and defender are reversed i.e those who were attacking last time becomes the defender, and the defender from last time becomes the attacker. A new battle is then initiated. The cards can then be placed out differently, if wished, to the previous battle; you can change before each battle.
If the attacker wins and is moving to the circle closest to the heart (shown with a red circle) then they get to receive a red card instead of a black one. In this situation, the other player gets a blue card, instead of a black card.
If an attacker is within the red circle and wins their next battle, then the game ends as they advance to their opponent’s heart, with them victorious.