These rules will provide you with all the information you need to play the Let's Play! Overlord Game.
Your deck of cards contains Overlords, which are essential for summoning your "warriors", the spirits, and scene cards that allow you to influence what happens during the battle. The deck must be composed of a minimum of thirty cards and a maximum of sixty, and is completely customizable: you can have a maximum of six copies of each card and incorporate cards from each Overlord expansion into the game!
The best way to
learn to play the Let's Play! Overlord TCG is to use the "Green
With Envy" print-to-play ready Promotional set (COMING SOON!) that will have examples of funny and interesting Overlords,
spirits and scenes and that will allow you to familiarize yourself
with the game while having fun (and, above all, it's free!).
Basics
Types of cards
There are three types of cards in the Let's Play! Overlord TCG:
1. Overlords
The most important cards for the battle are the Overlord cards! Without an Overlord, it is impossible to summon any creature, and it is the type of an Overlord and its level that decides what types of spirits you can summon! Look in the upper left corner of the card to find the symbol that represents the Overlord's domain: you will be able to summon all the spirits of that type, once you have chosen and played your Overlord.
Some special
Overlords even have two different symbols, and thanks to them you can
use dual-type spirits like them, or summon creatures from one of the
two domains!
2. Spirits/creatures
They are the ones
who fight bravely on the playing field, protecting the Overlord from
the enemy! Creatures have a domain symbol, a life bar and an attack
value. Many spirits also have special effects, which allow you to
create fantastic custom combinations. Play with your style!
3. Scenes
A 1 vs 1 fight can be interesting, but with scene cards it can become even better! Scenes add that little bit of spice to the fight, making unexpected things happen with their effects. Just read the card text to find out what!
How to win
In the game Let's Play! Overlord (from now on we can simply abbreviate it as "Overlord"), your creatures (mostly spirits, but in very rare cases you can find fantastic creatures from other worlds!) face your opponent's creatures in battle.
There are two game modes:
Phantom Fight (short mode)
The first player to defeat three of the enemy's creatures wins the game! In addition, you can also win if your opponent cannot draw a card at the beginning of their turn or if they leave the Overlord uncovered for a full turn (not being able to play spirits to protect them). In short, even if you happen to have no spirits to play in your hand, after drawing a card at the beginning of the turn, you lose!
Kill the Overlord (long mode)
In the long mode, the goal is to defeat all the creatures that the enemy puts in front of you, until they no longer have any that can be summoned and you can directly attack the opponent's Overlord.
Obviously, the first to defeat the enemy's Overlord wins.
In this mode, even if at the beginning of the turn, after drawing a card, you have no spirits to play in your hand, you don't lose instantly! The enemy must defeat your Overlord to win, and Overlords are usually pretty sturdy, so you'll have some time, a few turns, to be able to draw new spirits.
How to set up a game
1) Shuffle your deck.
2) Draw cards until you get a Overlord.
3) Place the Overlord you drew in front of you. All the creatures and spirits you summon depend on their domain (the symbol in the top left) and their level (the spirits' level must not exceed that of the Overlord).
4) Whoever has the slowest Overlord summons second (and attacks second), but has the advantage of surprise! In fact, they can choose which spirit/creature to summon after seeing the one chosen by their opponent.
5) And now the game begins!
The Turn
Each turn consists of three main steps:
1) Draw a card.
2) Between these actions, perform the ones you want, in the order and quantity you prefer:
A. Play a Spirit.
You can do this to replace the active one at any time (except in special cases, such as due to the ability of certain cards) or to take the place of a spirit that was defeated during the opponent's turn. Normally, there can only be one (1) active spirit on the field!
You cannot summon two spirits at the same time, one next to the other, so choose your champion carefully. However, there are some special spirits that can be played together, and they are those that have the "swarm" or "schooling" ability.
Some Overlords also summon multiple creatures at the same time, a very rare and very advantageous effect!
In general, however, unless it is explicitly written on the card you are playing, or on the Overlord you have on the field, you cannot play more than one spirit at a time.
B. Play scene cards
The effect of scene cards will be immediate (except in special cases) and can change game conditions, strengthening your spirits, negating the effects of your opponent's cards or even introducing new rules!
C. Use any ability you want among those written on the card of your Overlord and/or spirit
Spirits or Ovelords often have special abilities: each of them is different, so read their text carefully each time. Some abilities will only work if a certain condition is met, while others are always active, even outside of your turn.
Also remember that abilities do not count as attacks, so if you use them during your turn, you can still attack after doing so!
3) Attack and end your turn.
When you attack, your turn is over and you cannot go back! So remember to do all the actions you need before attacking!
How the attack works
The attack is a very simple phase, which you will learn in the blink of an eye!
You only need to look at two numbers: the one on the life bar and the one on the attack power.
Subtract the number of points of the attack power of your spirit from the number on the life bar of the opponent's spirit and that's it!
If your attack power is greater than the life bar of the opponent, then that spirit/creature will go into the discard pile (along, possibly, with all the scene cards that were assigned to it) and you will have scored a point (if you are playing the "short" version of the game, otherwise you will have simply eliminated an enemy and will be closer to victory!).
The spirit that has been attacked, if it is not discarded, will have to take into account the damage that has been done to it: you can write how many life points it has left on a piece of paper, or use damage tokens (each token is worth ten damage points, special tokens can be worth five points). And now it's the opponent's turn, so hold on tight!
LET'S PLAY! OVERLORD!
Glossary
Assign: take a scene card from your hand and place it on one of your spirits in play (when required by the card text). The assigned cards are discarded along with the spirit, when it is defeated.
Life bar: statistic present on creature/spirit cards, it is found more or less in the center of the card, immediately below the image. The number written on it represents the amount of "life" of a spirit, or the number of damage it can take before being defeated. Overlords have one too, at the bottom of the card.
Change-side: when due to an effect, or a scene card, a spirit "changes loyalty" and is used by the opposing Overlord, physically changing side of the playing field (it is moved in front of the opponent). Be careful not to have spirits that are too powerful, they could turn against you!
Catastrophe: a card so powerful that you can only have one in the deck. They have a red border, instead of the classic black or brown color.
Damage: when a spirit attacks another, it inflicts damage. A spirit is defeated and placed in the discard pile if it takes damage greater than or equal to the points on its life bar.
Domain: indicated
by the symbol in the top left, it represents the element to which a
spirit is related. Overlord can only summon spirits to which they are
related, therefore they must share the same domain.
Some of the commonly seen domains include:
Secondary Overlords: some Overlords have the power to be played together with other "friends", Overlords different from them who can extend their domain (summoning spirits of a different type than that of the active or primary Overlord) or use special abilities. These Overlords summoned alongside the active one are called "Secondary Overlords".
Phantom Fight: Short game mode, in which the winner is the one who manages to defeat three opposing spirits.
Possession: When a creature that is not a spirit is put into play, a spirit can "possess" it, causing it to switch sides and allowing the opposing player to use it. For possession to work, the spirit must be a higher level than the creature it is supposed to possess.
Prismatics: Overlords who can summon spirits from any domain.
Discard: Put a card into the discard pile.
Scene: Card that makes "something happen", with a variety of effects. Just read the text to find out what it is! Scenes include all the buff cards, or those that summon particular types of spirits, or also those that allow you to change Overlords.
Scenario: A scene card that stays in play after you use it, but is not connected to any particular spirit or Overlord. It can only be replaced by another scenario card or by an effect that specifically targets scenarios.
Swarm: special ability of some small spirits, allows them to be summoned at the same time, if you have them in your hand, and to attack by adding their attack values. They create particularly effective combos if you manage to summon six copies (the maximum number of copies of a card that can be present in a deck).
Tag-team: special cards that have the image and powers of two Overlords inside. In play they are worth as a single Overlord, but they cannot be played normally like the others: you must pay a cost. The cost is described in the text of the card and can be for example a sacrifice of cards (such as discarding all the other cards that the player has in their hand), a sacrifice of spirits (such as discarding from the playing field spirits above a certain level), the fulfillment of certain conditions (such as as the presence on the field of a specific Overlord in combination with a scene card) or others. They are generally very rare cards!
?: domain of mysterious creatures, which are not spirits, but can be somehow summoned by the Overlords.
