Unition Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Setup
• How to Win
• How to Play
• Card Types
• Card Layouts
• Playing Cards
• Unition
  • MEGAUNITION
  • Rainbro!
• The Forum
  • Clan Leaders
  • Card Breakdown
• Card Symbols
• Forum Actions
• Conditions
• Clan Strengths
• Tricky Specifics
  • Absorption Vacuole
  • Arm Chare
  • Choppa Pan
  • The Crumper
  • Deepwell
  • Doop
  • Emerald Auberge
  • Fius the Reforger & Bolaars the Vanguard
  • Glidderfut
  • Glom
  • Goldheart Bastion
  • Grand Arbalest
  • Harvester Silo

Setup

1. Hand out to each player their deck of 10 Starter cards:

   • 5 Gleam
   • 1 More Gleam
   • 1 Whomp or Gleam
   • 1 Whomp or Cool
   • 1 WHOMP or Cool
   • 1 Rainbro!

   The letters in the upper right corner of your starter cards are designed to make it easier to keep track of a full set for one player.

   Each player shuffles these cards and places them facedown to the left of their player screen. This is their draw pile. Behind their screen, they draw 5 cards to form their first hand.

2. Hand out 8 large health tokens and 10 small health tokens to each player, for 50 total health, to be placed behind their screen.

3. Place the cool tokens and shield tokens in the middle of the table.

4. Shuffle the deck of Forum cards and place them facedown in the middle of the table.

5. Draw 5 cards from the Forum deck, place them face up in a row of three and a row of two to make the Forum itself.

6. Place the deck of Extra Gleam cards next to the Forum deck.

How to Win

There are two ways to win. As soon as either of the two conditions below occurs, the game ends and a winner is declared.

1. Be the last person with health tokens.
   • Everyone starts with 50 health tokens. Each time another player uses a card with whomp (an attack), you lose a certain amount of health and must take that many health tokens from behind your screen and place them in a pile in the center of the table with everyone else’s spent health tokens. When you have no more health tokens to hand in, you are knocked out of the game and can no longer take actions. When every player has been knocked out and only one player remains, that surviving player wins.
2. Be the first person to gain 50 cool tokens.
   • Every time you play a card with the cool symbol, take that amount of cool tokens from the center of the table and place them behind your screen to keep them secret. As soon as a player gains 50 cool, they reveal their tokens to the table and they win.

Everyone starts the game with a set of ten starter cards. These cards grant whomp and cool when played, but in small amounts. There are also starter cards that have gleam, the world currency. Use gleam to recruit new, stronger cards from the Forum into your collective.

There’s also the Rainbro Starter Card; more on that guy on page 12.

How to Play

The person who most recently united a kingdom goes first. Interperet that as you will.

Once the first player has been determined, that person will draw five cards from their facedown draw pile into their hand (if they have not already done so), and then proceed with their turn, which has 5 parts:

1. Reveal their hand of five cards in front of the screen for everyone to see.
2. Play each card in the order they choose.
3. Recruit any cards that they want (and can afford) from the Forum by spending gleam earned that round.
4. Place any played cards and recruited cards face up to the right of their player screen to form (or add to) their discard pile.
5. Draw five new cards from their draw pile to form their next hand, and keep them behind their screen. In the event that there are not enough cards for a full five-card hand, they draw however many cards are left, shuffle their discard pile, place it facedown to their left to form their new draw pile, and continue drawing until their hand contains five cards.

This turn order continues until one of the two victory conditions are met. If a player at any point drops below 0 health tokens, they are out of the game while the remaining players continue.

Players are encouraged to plan ahead by looking at the hand they drew at the end of their turn, instead of agonizing over their options purely on their turn.

Card Types

There are several basic card types.

• Starters: The cards you start the game with. They may not be strong, but they can inch you closer to your goal, and allow you to recruit stronger cards from the Forum. Several will give you a choice of two resource options when played.
• Extra Gleam: Available for purchase at the Forum at any time. These cards give you more gleam and help you afford more expensive cards, but are not as strong as heroes or strongholds.
• Heroes: These vertical, colored cards work like starter and extra gleam cards. They are drawn from your draw pile, played once per turn, and then go into your discard pile to be drawn again in a future hand.
• Strongholds: Once played, these horizontal cards stay out in front of your screen, giving bonuses each round as if played from your hand. Other players can attack your strongholds, and once a stronghold is destroyed, it goes into your discard pile to be drawn again.

Card Layouts

While cards all vary in their resources, abilities, and values, the layout of each card is consistent.

• Recruitment Cost: The total gleam needed in a turn to recruit the card from the Forum; more on page 13.
  • Since starter cards cannot be purchased, their value is 0. This is important for some abilities of hero cards.
• Primary Abilities: Abilities and resources granted by playing the card. These values are always granted as long as a card is played.
• Unition Abilities: Unition occurs when two cards of the same clan are played in the same hand. Doing so activates the abilities and resources on the bottom half of the card.
  • Not every hero or stronghold has a unition ability.
• Clan: This symbol (and overall color and image) indicate which of the five clans the card belongs to.
  • Each clan has a unique set of strengths; more on page 20.
• Stronghold Health: The amount of damage needed to be dealt to a stronghold to return it to its owner’s discard pile.
  • Strongholds are NOT removed from the game when destroyed. Moving one to the discard pile means it can be drawn again when the deck is shuffled.

Playing Cards

When playing cards on your turn, place them one by one on the table in front of your screen, activating abilities as you do so and keeping a running tally of resources gained, like whomp, cool, gleam, and others. Once all of your cards have been played, resolve your resources by specifying who you will attack, taking cool tokens and/or shield tokens (more on page 16), and deciding what cards will be recruited from the Forum with the total amount of gleam earned that round. After all resources have been resolved, take your played cards and recruited cards and place them in your discard pile. Draw five new cards for your hand that will be played on your next turn.

In this example hand, the player has a total of:

• 2 Cool (from starter cool and Seedling)
• 3 Gleam (from Nurturer and Seedling)
• 8 whomp (from starter WHOMP and Lumphed)

They also get an additional 2 cool from Nurturer through the unition with Seedling, totaling 4 cool.

Since Lumphed has no clanmates this hand, his unition ability does not activate.

With the gleam played this round, the player could recruit A) Delver, or B) Aegis + Gob, or C) Extra Gleam + Gob, but cannot afford Batris Rang or Grimjawl. They can also opt to not spend any or all of their gleam, and purchase only Extra Gleam, or recruit Aegis or Gob if they so chose.

Note that the player could have chosen different resources from their starter cards. Doing so would have changed the amount of cool and whomp they would have recieved, but not what they could afford.

Unition

As you may have guessed, Unition is an important part of the game. In these trying times, it’s good for your heroes to have fellow clanmates by their side. Their teamwork and natural affinity will unlock better resources and abilities. However, the strongest kingdom will have more than one clan. You’ll need to determine the best combination of different clans to achieve your sovreignty. And who knows, if you bring in every clan, you might just be lucky enough to witness...

MEGAUNITION

Legends speak of epic leaders who were able to achieve moments of cross-cultural alignment that could turn the tide of fate. If you play one member of each clan in a single turn (strongholds included), MEGAUNITION occurs, and you may take an additional turn immediately after resolving the current turn, drawing five new cards. You may not achieve MEGAUNITION again in this extra, bonus turn.

Rainbro!

One of your starter cards is Rainbro.

Who is Rainbro? What is Rainbro? Why is Rainbro?

Nobody knows. But he will lend his might to you in two ways, mortal.

1. A Spectrum of Beautiful Color: For one round, Rainbro can act as a clan of your choosing, granting unition to any other cards of the same clan played.
2. A Rain of Destruction: Remove all cards of a specific clan from the Forum and replace them with new cards from the Forum deck. This does not include clan leaders.

The Forum

As the central location for inter-clan meeting, trading and general mingling, the Forum plays a very important role in day-to-day life. Here is where the peoples of Disserei gather to hear out the ideas of new leaders, and decide where to put their services to use... for the right price.

In the upper left of every Forum card is its recruitment cost. On each turn, tally up the total gleam across all of your cards played (including strongholds). This is the total gleam you have to spend for this round. You may spend this gleam across as many cards from the Forum as you wish. Each time a card is recruited, refill it from the Forum draw deck. When a card is removed from the Forum, place it face up in the Forum Discard pile. You’ll shuffle and reuse these discarded cards if the Forum draw deck ever goes empty.

Clan Leaders

At 8 gleam, the strongest and most expensive cards to recruit are clan leaders. Each leader is unique, and their unition ability also becomes stronger the more members of their clan you play. When a clean leader is drawn from the Forum Deck, they are not placed in the Forum itself, but alongside it in their own row. They may then be recruited at any time, and cannot be affected by the three Forum Actions (listed on page 18), or Rainbro’s Rain of Destruction.

Card Breakdown

For you folks interested in numbers, each clan has 14 hero cards that can appear in the Forum. At cost 1, there are two different cards with one copy each. At cost 2, there is one card with one copy. Costs 3 and 4 each have two unique cards. Costs 5, 6, 7, & 8 have one unique card.

Each clan also has 3 unique strongholds at costs 3, 4, and 5.

Card Symbols

• Gleam: Gleam, the world currency, is represented by a pentagonal coin with a number on it, denoting the amount the player recieves by playing that card. Gleam is used to recruit heroes and strongholds from the Forum. On each turn, tally up the total gleam across all of your starters, heroes, and strongholds played. In the upper left of every card is its recruitment cost. You may spend your gleam across as many heroes, strongholds (or More Gleam cards) from the Forum as you wish. Once those heroes or strongholds are recruited, they go face up into your discard pile. They will be shuffled into your lineup once you’re out of cards from your draw pile. (More on page 13)

  • Gleam is important, as it will let you recruit stronger cards. Be careful, though: it becomes less useful later in the game.

• Cool: Cool is represented by a star with a number on it, denoting how much cool the player receives by playing that card. Tally up the cool displayed on each card, and take that many cool tokens from the center of the table, keeping them in an ongoing tally behind your screen. The first player to accrue 50 cool establishes a new center of society and wins the game. Cool tokens come in values of 5 (large tokens) and 1 (small tokens).

• Whomp: Whomp are your attacks, represented by a number next to a sword, denoting how much whomp a player gets for playing that card. Whomp can be used to attack another player or their strongholds.

  • If a player is whomped, they must give up the amount of health tokens equal to the whomp you directed at them, and place those tokens in the center of the table. If a stronghold is the target, the whomp must equal or exceed the stronghold health (located in the bottom left of the stronghold card). If it does, the stronghold is put in the owner’s discard pile. Any excess whomp directed at the stronghold is passed onto that player’s health pool.
  • You can choose to whomp any combination of player or stronghold, but they must be done in the whomp groupings listed on the cards. For instance, if you had 3 whomp, 2 whomp, and 4 whomp, you could whomp a stronghold for 4, and its player for 5. Or you could whomp a player for 3, another player for 2, and a third player for 4 and ignore the stronghold entirely. Or just whomp one player for 9.

Forum Actions

There are three abilities that affect the cards in the Forum.

• Add Forum Card: When played, draw a card from the Forum deck and add it to the Forum as an extra option that turn. With each recruit, refill the Forum as normal, counting the added card out if it hasn’t been recruited. If no cards were recruited, the added card goes back onto the top of the Forum deck at the end of the round.
• Consume Forum Card: When played, you may choose one card in the Forum to be removed from the game. Replace it with the top card from the Forum deck.
• Swap Forum Cards: When played, you may choose up to two cards from the Forum and switch them with the top two cards of the Forum deck.

Forum actions give you more recruitment options, particularly useful when all cards are too expensive to recruit. Forum actions can also mess with opponents who have strong economic power and want to recruit the best cards available, or prevent players from getting the specific cards they want.

Conditions

Some abilities aren’t as simple as others and require you to do something before gaining a specific effect.

• When there are two icons with an arrow between them, you must perform the first requirement before gaining the second as an effect. Conversely, you must do the second after doing the first. For instance, discard a card from your hand in order to draw a new one, or draw a card and then consume a card.
• If there are two icons with an “OR” between them, you can choose one of the two abilities to use. You can make this choice each time the card is played.
• Some cards give you the option to self-consume in order to gain a one-time ability, after which the card is removed permanently from the game. If choosing this ability, you only get the result listed at the bottom of the card, and not the one above it.
• Some strongholds allow you to place cards on them for specific effects. Each stronghold has an explanation of what to do with the cards when the stronghold is destroyed. Most place all the cards into your discard, but destroying the Harvester Silo will consume all cards instead.

Clan Strengths

The clans of Disserei are varied in their specialities, and each one will bring a different flavor and strategy to your team. Each clan specializes in one major area, with some smaller specialties thrown in.

• The Commune: The Commune spend their days in peaceful recreation. They harvest crops, nurture their young ones’ growth, sing and dance, and create sculptures of stone and wood. The Emerald Grotto is their home, and when threatened, they prefer to hide. Their society is self-sustaining and grows quickly, making them an excellent addition to your kingdom if you want to remain peaceful. Commune heroes and strongholds excel at amassing cool, and have some small ability to defend themselves as well as draw more cards.
• The Gloop: The Gloop are an interconnected organism that breed uncontrollably in the fecund Stickmuck Mire. They operate as a collective, splitting off pieces of themselves when needed, or amassing as a larger creature for heavier tasks. Curious and adventurous, the Gloop have been seen spreading out into the world now that their homeland is too small to contain their rapid growth. If you’re looking to add more cards to your hand each round, Gloop heroes and strongholds will let you draw additional cards when played. They also have a small amount of cool generation and can consume cards to lean out your deck.
• The Protectorite: Not much is known about the Protectorite—not even what they are. They seem to be a mix of stone and metal, and rumors say they increase their ranks by chiseling new members out of the rock of the Aureate Highlands. Whatever they are, they’re known for their fierce loyalty and sense of honor, protecting those in their charge, even if it means putting their own lives in danger. Protectorite heroes and strongholds will give you the ability to shield yourself from attacks—useful for both war and peace. They also have a limited ability to gain both whomp and cool, and as well as the power to upgrade your cards.
• The Bruud: If the Protectorite are mysterious, even less is known about the Bruud. Shifting and stealing in the Darkcandle Chasms deep below the surface, the Bruud bide their time by mining and perfecting their efficiency in all ways. They are known to exile their own kind if it means a better functioning of their society, and their methods are cold, calculating, and efficient. Bruud heroes and strongholds will allow you to consume weaker cards from your hand to make a stronger deck overall, and have some degree of both attack and defense.
• The Stompede: Nothing compares to the raw power of the Stompede. Moving as a herd across the Blistered Plains, the Stompede are known for their unquenchable thirst for destruction. It is said that the plains were once a land of plateaus and rock formations before the Stompede ground it to dust, and considering that they grow massively in size as they age, this is not unlikely. Stompede heroes and strongholds will secure you tons of attack power and means to decimate your foes. They also have a limited ability to cull your deck of unwanted cards or draw more into your hand.

While every clan has its own strength, the key to victory is knowing what you need in order to win as quickly as possible. If you’re trying to win by combat, cool won’t serve your cause. Similarly, while shields will help any strategy, they can’t win you the game on their own.

Tricky Specifics

Cards are tiny things. While each of our heroes and strongholds tried to explain themselves as succinctly as they could on their cards, sometimes it’s not enough. If you’re looking for a more specific explanation of how some cards work, read on.

Absorption Vacuole

Once per turn while this stronghold is in play, you can choose to take one card in your hand and, instead of playing it, place it on top of this stronghold. During any future turn, you can retrieve the cards on this stronghold and add them to your hand to be played. If an opponent destroys this stronghold, it and all cards on top of it go into your discard pile.

Arm Chare

Once per turn while this stronghold is in play, you can place any Stompede hero on this card. The Arm Chare will then do damage equal to the Gleam value in the upper left of the placed card when played. You can swap the Stompede hero on this base with another Stompede hero in any future rounds, and you can play a hero card before adding it to the base and then play the base. If an opponent destroys this stronghold, it and the card on top of it go into your discard pile.

Choppa Pan

Choppa Pan, when played, will allow you to search your current discard pile to choose one hero to be played as part of your hand that turn. Unition will allow you to choose a second hero to play that turn. You can use Choppa Pan to play a discarded Commune hero to trigger his unition ability and play a second hero from your discard.

The Crumper

The unition ability of the Crumper allows you to acquire one card from the Forum worth 4 gleam or less for free and add it to your discard pile as if you had recruited it. Like when recruiting a card normally, the card is immediately replaced in the Forum by one from the Forum draw deck.

Deepwell

Once per turn while this stronghold is in play, you can choose any number of cards from your hand, and instead of playing them, place them on this card to take them out of your deck. It’s a quick way to remove weaker cards in a shorter amount of time. If the base is destroyed, all cards placed on the base go back into your discard pile.

Doop

Doop will allow you to duplicate (dooplicate!) a card in hand worth up to 4 (or 6) gleam as if you had two of those cards. These duplicated cards will trigger the unition abilities of the other as if they were two separate cards. Doop essentially becomes an entirely different card for one turn when played.

Emerald Auberge

The unition ability of the Emerald Auberge allows you to choose one card from your discard worth 4 gleam or less and move it to the top of your draw pile. If you have any cards that allow you to add a card to your hand, this moved card can be drawn into your hand the same round it was taken out of the discard pile if the cards are played in the proper order.

Fius the Reforger & Bolaars the Vanguard

Both Fius and Bolaars allow you to exchange an unplayed card in your hand with one from the Forum worth 2 (or 3) gleam more. This new, exchanged card can then be played in the same turn. The card that was exchanged out of hand is removed from the game and the Forum card is immediately replaced with one from the top of the Forum draw deck.

Glidderfut

Glidderfut allows you to choose two opponents and force them to reveal their upcoming hand to the table. After doing so, you may choose two cards from one player’s revealed hand that give gleam to gain that much gleam this turn. The gleam on these revealed cards may be from base abilities or unition abilities, but they must give gleam, not just reference a gleam amount. Once finished, the players that revealed their hands can hide their cards again and play them normally on their turns.

Glom

Glom allows you to steal one hero out of an opponent’s discard pile worth less than 3 gleam (or less than 4 with unition). You may choose any player’s discard pile to steal from, and make a decision after looking at all available discard piles.

Goldheart Bastion

At the end of your turn, you can choose to place one card from your hand (including starters or more gleam) on this stronghold. On any future turn, you may exchange that card with one from the Forum worth up to 2 gleam more. This newly acquired card goes into your discard pile and the stronghold is then open for another card. You may not replace the card on this stronghold with any from your hand until its been swapped out from the Forum. If an opponent destroys this stronghold, it and the card on top of it go into your discard pile.

Grand Arbalest

The unition ability of the Grand Arbalest allows you immediately play up to three heroes recruited from the Forum that turn that are worth 3 gleam or less. These heroes are treated as if they’re part of your drawn hand, and go into your discard pile as normal after the round is over.

Harvester Silo

Once per turn, you may take a card from the Forum and place it on this card as an additional recruitment option for yourself only. You may store up to three cards here, and can recruit them in any order you wish. If an opponent destroys this stronghold, all cards on top of it are removed from the game, and the stronghold goes into your discard pile.

Lianzo the Resplendent

Once played, Lianzo will halve all incoming whomp until the player’s next turn. In the event where the damage is an odd number, round down (for instance, 13 damage would become 6, not 6.5). Take note that since Lianzo’s ability reduces incoming damage numbers, he cannot stop Roktuth’s and Ramskul’s instant stronghold destruction.

Peelo Chups & Breck Sterk

Both Peelo Chups and Breck Sterk reduce the prices of cards in the Forum by 1 or 2 gleam, respectively. This cost reduction applies to all cards, regardless of how many are recruited, and lasts until your turn is over.

Ramskul

When played, Ramskul allows you to outright destroy an opponent’s stronghold regardless of shields or that stronghold’s health. With unition, you may destroy two strongholds, and they can be from different players. Take note: Lianzo the Resplendent cannot prevent this destruction from happening.

Roktuth

Roktuth’s stronghold destruction works just as Ramskul’s does. His unition ability allows you to gain 2 gleam when destroying an opponent’s strongholds that turn. If multiple strongholds are destroyed, you gain the 2-gleam bonus multiple times.

Shiftak Sooker

Shiftak will allow you to change any one ability type to a different kind of ability of your choosing. For instance, you can change 5 whomp to 5 gleam, or 3 shields to 3 cool, etc. This works across multiple cards in your hand and will convert all of that resource type. It does not apply to card-based abilities, so you can’t change 9 whomp to add 9 cards to your hand or consume 9 cards from your deck. Nice try.

Sloop

The unition ability of Sloop allows you to acquire one card from the Forum worth 7 gleam or less for free and add it to your discard pile as if you had recruited it. Like recruiting a card normally, the card is replaced in the Forum by one from the Forum draw deck immediately.

Viskiss Kileen & Batris Rang

Viskiss Kileen and Batris Rang both allow you to recruit one card out of an opponent’s discard pile. You may choose to look at all players discard piles first, and then decide who you want to recruit from, or even not to recruit any card at all. You may recruit heroes or strongholds, but no leader cards (8 gleam cost) can be recruited.