Rules

How to Win (or Lose)

• The Monarch rule: If you start your turn with 8 or more Victory Points, you win. You earn VP when you finish Objectives. Some Assets are worth VP while they're in play, and some Assets can generate VP when their rules say so.

• King Slayer rule: The last player who still has any cards on the table (Assets) wins. If you have no Assets on the table when your turn ends, you’re out.

Deck Construction

In Strife each player has a Main deck, and a side-deck of Objective cards. How you build these decks and what cards you include is up to you, but they must follow these rules:

• Main Deck:
  • 30 - 50 cards
  • Includes 1 Lesser Structure
  • A limit of 3 copies of any given card
• Objective Deck:
  • 3-5 Objective Cards

Getting Ready

1. Pick one small building (a “Lesser Structure”) from your deck and put it face‑down on the table.
2. Choose 3 cards from your deck – these are the first cards in your hand.
3. Shuffle the Main deck and draw 3 more cards
4. Pick one Objective card, put it face‑down, and then shuffle the rest of the Objective deck.

What Happens on Your Turn

1. Start of Turn
   1. Turn any exhausted cards upright (they’re no longer exhausted).
   2. Do any “Start” actions written on your cards.
2. Draw
   1. If you have fewer than 3 cards, draw until you have 3.
   2. If you have more than 7 cards, throw away cards until you have 7.
   3. Refer to the Glossary if you run out of cards to draw.
3. Fight – see the Fighting rules.
4. Deploy – see the Deploying rules.
5. End of Turn
   1. Do any “End” actions on your cards.
   2. Reset the defense numbers on all cards for every player.
   3. You can keep up to 3 Material (the round‑shaped resource) left over.

Fighting (You can skip this and draw a card instead.)

General rules

• You can fight more than once in one turn.
• Machines can only hurt Structures, can’t be blocked, can’t defend, and they deal damage after all characters (even ones with zero Prowess).

Steps for a Fight

1. Attack
   1. Say which characters or machines are attacking
   2. The other players pick which characters will try to defend.
2. Choose Targets
   1. All players pick who their fighters will hit.
      1. The defenders pick first.
   2. Lots of characters can hit the same enemy.
   3. Defenders with high prowess can force attackers to fight with them instead of the target that attacker wants.
3. Deal Damage
   1. Start with the highest‑Prowess characters and work down.
   2. Characters with the same Prowess act at the same time.
   3. If a card takes damage equal to or more than its defense number, it’s destroyed (goes to the Boneyard).

Deploying (You can skip this and draw a card instead.)

You can do any of these actions in any order, as many times as you like during the Deploy step:

• Play a card from your hand
  • Pay the resource costs by Burning or Harvesting
• Move a character or machine to a teammate’s side of the table.
  • Pay the Move cost shown on the card (if none is shown, the cost is [1]).
  • When you move a card to a teammate, they become the new owner.
• Reorganize the left‑to‑right order of your characters and machines.
• Replace your Objective card: pay [4] Material, discard the old Objective, then draw and show a new one.

Actions and Effects

• Actions are things you do like playing a card, or moving a card.
• Effects are what happens because of an action, like gaining a resource or destroying a card.

Every action creates an effect, but some effects happen automatically like “Start” or “End” effects, and some effects may be persistent.

When it’s your turn, after each step you get a chance to add one effect to the Chain (a list of things to resolve). Players go clockwise, each adding at most one effect per pass. The chain stops when nobody adds anything new.

Effects have a tier number printed on the card; higher‑tier effects happen before lower‑tier ones.

Glossary