Runewars

I made this so I could play a TCG with my friends for free still working on this trying to hammer it out

Multiplayer Requires Hamachi or works on Lan

Runes — How to Play

A 1v1 deckbuilding card game. Think Hearthstone tempo with MTG color identity, minus the mana screw.

The 30-second version

Reduce your opponent's hero from 30 HP to 0. Each turn you flip a rune to gain a permanent mana slot, then play creatures and spells from your hand. You'll never miss a land drop — the rune deck ramps for you, one per turn, every turn.

Your two decks

• Main deck — 30 cards. Creatures, spells, secrets, equipment. Max 2 copies of any card (1 for legendaries).
• Rune deck — 10 runes in any mix of the 6 elements: Water, Fire, Earth, Air, Light, Dark. One flips at the start of every turn.

The rune deck is your mana base. No "shuffle and hope" — you'll always hit your curve. The interesting choice is which colors you commit to.

The 6 elements

Element	Plays like
🔥 Fire	Burn, tempo, reach
💧 Water	Spells, card draw, control
🌍 Earth	Big bodies, ramp, outlast
💨 Air	Speed, evasion, glass cannons
✨ Light	Defense, healing, sustain
🌑 Dark	Attrition, removal, sacrifice

A turn at a glance

1. Flip a rune → +1 permanent mana slot (alternating colors when possible, so you won't get color-screwed by clumps).
2. Refresh all mana to full.
3. Draw a card.
4. Play stuff — drag creatures from your hand to the board, drag spells onto their targets, drag your creatures onto enemies to attack.
5. End turn when you're done.

Combat is simultaneous — attacker and defender both deal damage at once. Choose your trades carefully.

Keywords you'll see

• Rush — Can attack creatures the turn it's summoned (not heroes).
• Charge — Can attack anything the turn it's summoned.
• Guard — Enemies have to attack this before anything else.
• Stealth — Untargetable until it attacks.
• Pierce — Excess damage to a Guard hits the hero.
• Lifesteal — Damage dealt heals your hero.
• Venom — Any damage destroys the target outright.
• Ward — Absorbs the first instance of damage, then breaks.
• Spell Damage +N — Your damage spells deal +N.

Plus triggered abilities: Battlecry (on summon), Deathrattle (on death), Echo (when you cast a spell), Awaken (start of your turn), and Secrets (hidden traps that fire on opponent actions).

Status effects

Cards can apply Frozen (can't attack, ticks down), Wound (start-of-turn damage, stacks), Silenced (strips keywords and abilities), or Bound (can't attack, permanent). Cleanse removes all four.

Modes

• Hotseat — Two humans, one device, pass-the-screen between turns.
• VS AI — Solo against a heuristic-driven opponent that plans one turn ahead, hunts for lethal, and tracks the threats you haven't shown yet.
• Online vs Friend — 1v1 over LAN or direct IP. Host shares their IP, friend joins, both pick decks, play. Lockstep deterministic — no rubber-banding.

Building your own

Open the Card Catalog to browse all ~210 cards by element, type, cost, or keyword. Open the Deckbuilder to assemble a 30-card main + 10-rune deck — it'll validate rune coverage so you don't ship a deck full of cards you can't actually cast.

Controls

• Drag a card from hand → play it. If it needs a target, an arrow appears.
• Drag a creature on your board → onto an enemy to attack.
• Hover a card for 0.5s → zoomed view.
• End Turn button or auto-end at 90 seconds.
• F3 during an online match → netplay debug overlay.
• F12 brings up debug menu for testing purposes.

That's it. Have fun, and tell me what's broken.