Mechanics

Overview

Sanctuary: The Keepers Era is a 1vs1 competitive card game with a solid strategic component.

Two players, each representing a Keeper who leads one of the six Factions, engage in a fast-paced fight, playing their cards to attack the opponent’s Sanctuaries and defend their own.

Destroying all enemy Sanctuaries is the winning condition of the game.

To fulfill their goal, players need to get familiar with their decks and get the most out of every move, managing the unique mechanics of each Faction at their best.

The game is composed of six Faction decks. Each deck has its own peculiarity and implies different playing styles, exploiting the special abilities of its synergistic cards. In every single deck, players can find many possible strategic paths.

Hand Management

Decks are composed of 33 cards of different kinds. After having placed the Sanctuary cards and the Champion card in their positions on table, players start the game. They will draw their hand from a pile which contains Acolyte cards and Ritual cards.

By paying their summoning cost in a number of Essence Crystals proportional to the value of the card, players can cast Rituals for their immediate effects, or deploy Acolytes on the battlefield.

The Essence Crystals refill automatically. There are no limits to the Essence Crystals a player can collect and some cards can help to gain even more. It’s very unlikely to be short on resources, which means more room for the strategy.

With the synergistic abilities of the Acolytes and the powerful effects of the Rituals combined, there are many possible moves at every turn and no card in play is ever useless.

Deploying units on a grid 

Positioning rules on the battlefield grid have a great impact on the players strategy.

Deployed units interact only in the same lane of the grid and some of them have special abilities that are position based.

Champions

Champion cards can be deployed any time. While on play, Champions follow the same rules as the Acolytes, even though they can be considered far more valuable from a strategic point of view.

Champions enhance the opportunity to trigger the combos of a deck and can effectively turn the tides of battle with their presence.

“Should I play the Champion right now, or should I wait? And what if it gets destroyed?”
The effects of a Champion can be very useful even for just one turn, a precious resource not to be wasted!

Acolyte Cards

Faction are composed by armies of Acolytes, two of each type in every deck.

In addition to having different Attack and Health scores, Acolyte cards have also special abilities, which may apply in different conditions and get a combo with other cards.

RITUAL CARDS

Players can also obtain immediate advantages in battle with the aid of the Ritual Cards, which activate their one time effects and then go to the discard pile. There are from 2 to 3 different types of Ritual Cards for each deck.

Sanctuary Cards

Sanctuaries are the distinctive element of the game and there are 4 unique Sanctuary cards for each Faction deck. They all have different effects to be activated during the play.

Once a Sanctuary reaches the minimum Decay, it triggers its unique synergistic effects, which are ways to empower the strategies of every Faction or enhance some of their best combos.

Sanctuaries can be destroyed before they activate:
you will start making important decisions since the first turns!

How to win

When a Sanctuary is under attack it takes damage equal to the Attack points of the opponent. Some Acolytes, Rituals or other effects can make it possible to deal direct damage to the enemy Sanctuaries.

When a Sanctuary reaches the lowest level of its Aegis, it is considered destroyed and its effects are no longer active.

It’s always wise to defend all the Sanctuaries.
When they start falling, the end of the game gets closer in a rush!

Variants: Solo Play Mode 

We are currently working on new sets of alternative rules to make future battles even more challenging, including a Solo Play mode.

The additional cards for the Solo Play mode will be revealed during the Kickstarter campaign.

Game Contents