Full Game Rules
Gameplay Overview
Rookling Heroes is an exciting battling card game for 2 players. Pit your squad of 3 Rooklings against your opponents by exchanging magical attacks and defences, all powered by a shared energy deck!
Players take it turns to attack and defend. As Rooklings take damage, players get closer to losing. But Rooklings don’t give up easily! Once at zero health you can harness the power of a Rookling’s ‘siege-state’ - their final more powerful form - to try to turn the tide! Just beware - once all three of your Rooklings enter their siege-state, you lose!
Basic Turn-by-Turn
To start, decide who is attacking first. Each player draws a hand of 4 energy cards from the Field Deck. The players will then take it in turns to attack and then defend.
On an Attacking turn, the attacking player will:
- Arrange their Rooklings
- Assign energy to power attacks and abilities
- Declare attack actions and damage amounts
- Place attack marker tokens to represent threatening
attacks
On a Defending turn, the defending player will:
- Assign energy to power defences and abilities
- Declare defence actions (the defending player chooses the order that the attacks resolve in)
- Adjust the life totals of the Rooklings that took
damage on their life tracker card.
Once all damage has been calculated and the life tracker has been adjusted, the attacking player draws up to a hand of 4 cards. Players now swap - the attacking player will now defend, and the defending player will now attack.
(Note: On the very first turn of the game, the defending player also draws up their hand to 4. But after that, only the attacking player may draw up after their attack.)
Forming a Rookling Squad
Each player requires a squad of 3 Rooklings to play. There are a few different ways to form your squad depending on the kind of approach you want to take. Outlined below are a few options, you can choose whichever you want or come up with one of your own!
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Choose your favourites - Each player can choose which Rooklings they would like to play with. If you only have one starter set though, players can't have the same Rooklings as their opponent.
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Randomise - Shuffle all the Rooklings together and choose one player to hold them out of sight of both players. Then deal the Rooklings out blind to each player!
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Draft - Place all the Rooklings out in front of both players. Toss a coin to see who is going first. Player 1 may choose a single Rookling from the selection. Then Player 2 may choose 2 Rooklings for their squad. Then Player 1 may choose their final 2 Rooklings, and finally player 2 may choose their final Rookling.
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There are lots of other kinds of draft systems out there so play around and find a method that works best for you and your opponent! With your Rookling squads chosen, its time to set up the game!
1. Setup
1. Player 1’s energy zones
2. Player 1’s chosen squad of 3 Rooklings
3. Player 2’s chosen squad of 3 Rooklings
4. Player 2’s energy zones
5. Player 1’s field effects (draw pile - out of play)
6. Player 2’s field effects (draw pile - out of play)
7. Field Deck (for both players to draw from)
8. Discard pile
9. Player 1’s life tracker card
10. Player 2’s life tracker card
11. Token cards (for both players to use when needed)
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Lay out your chosen Rooklings as shown, leaving space underneath each Rookling for their energy zones.
Place your 3 Rooklings’ hexagonal tokens on the starting ‘6’ hex of your life tracker card. Your opponent does the same for their Rooklings on their life tracker card. Set the other Rookling tokens aside, you will not need them for this game.
Sort out all the energy cards and shuffle them to form the ‘Field Deck’ and place it as shown.
Check your Rookling’s special ability descriptions to see if you require any ‘Field Effect’ cards. If so, take all copies of the card mentioned and place them in a pile to the side of your play area.
2. Rookling Cards
Energy Thresholds
In order to activate a Rookling’s ability - (such as an attack ability, a defence ability or a special ability) - you will need to assign an energy card to the Rookling. These energy cards will have a number and a colour on them and that colour and number needs to meet or beat the threshold on the Rookling card associated with that ability.
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You may only assign one energy card to each Rookling on a turn (unless a card’s text states otherwise).
3. Attacking & Defending
Rookling Actions - Attacking
The attacker goes first, moving their Rooklings into the positions they want and then assigning all the energy cards they want to use that turn - placing them face-up in that Rookling’s energy zone. Each Rookling only attacks the Rookling it is facing.
Orange attack marker tokens can be placed in front of each Rookling that is threatening an attack to make it easier for their opponent to see what is incoming.
Then it is the defender’s turn. Just like the attacker, they must assign energy cards from their hand to their Rooklings (one card per Rookling) to do their best to block the incoming attacks. They cannot move their Rooklings. Once they have placed their energy cards to defend, the attacks resolve.
Any damage that isn’t blocked will hit that Rookling, and will move its token down the life tracker card that number of places.
4. Special Abilities and
Field Effects
With the damage resolved, all energy cards from both players are cleared from the play area and put into the discard pile. The player who just attacked draws a new hand of 4 energy cards from the Field Deck. Then the players switch and it is the defending players turn to attack. This means the defending player will now be forced to mount an attack with only the cards they have left in their hand.
Special Abilities and Field Effects
When a player activates a Rookling’s special ability, the player will immediately shuffle the corresponding field effect cards into the field deck.
Field Effects work like energy, with their energy value at the top of the card just like standard energy cards. They can be placed to meet thresholds just like standard energy cards. A grey number means they cannot be used for colour thresholds.
Once the Field Effect has been used as energy and the turn has ended, the card is then slid under the Rookling that used it and the token section of the card takes effect from the next turn onward.
5. Applying a token
As mentioned previously, once a Field Effect has been used for its energy to meet an ability threshold, that turn ends and instead of the Field Effect being sent to the discard pile like normal energy, it is then slid under the Rookling it powered and its token section takes effect for the following turn.
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If that Rookling moves around, the token is attached to it and therefore moves with it.
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A token remains under the Rookling it is applied to until its text is resolved. Then it is removed from the Rookling and is returned to the player who it belongs to, outside of play.
Some tokens are Fixed Tokens. These remain in the zone they are created in and don’t move with a Rookling. Imagine these as changes to the world around the Rooklings. A good example of a Fixed Token is the Tunnel on Delvi's Field Effect card 'Tunnel'.
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The tunnel stays in the same place on the battlefield allowing Rooklings to move in and out and take advantage of the Tunnel's special qualities.
6. Token Cards
Token cards are cards that exist purely to apply a token affect to a Rookling without being a Field Effect and without being shuffled into the Field Deck.
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Some Rooklings simply apply an effect as a side effect of their normal attacks or abilities without mention in their text of shuffling a Field Effect into the Field Deck. In these instances in order to show the effect in action on the Rookling, you can grab one of these 'Token Cards' from outside of play and apply it to the Rookling affected.
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Once the effect has resolved, the token is removed and placed out of play.
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Rooklings that make use of Token Cards:
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RIME - If Rime's opponent doesn't fully block his attack then his ability text states to 'put a Frozen Token on them'.
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RUTE - If Rute's opponent doesn't fully block his attack then his ability text states to 'put a Poisoned Token on them'.
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HISS - If Hiss' special attack 'Vent' hits his opponent then his ability text states to 'put a Confused token on his opponent'.
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Future sets and Rookling cards will likely also make use of these token cards, with new token cards showing up too!
7. Siege-state and
ending the game
When a Rookling’s life score reaches zero they enter their ‘siege-state’ and the Rookling’s card is turned over. The Rookling gets a little stronger in some ways but they can no longer take damage.
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To see which aspects of your Rooklings will change when they flip to their siege-state look out for the little white twinkles on their front side. These marks highlight which numbers will change when they flip.
Once a Rookling is in it's siege-state you can play with it as normal but any damage that it is unable to block, now spills over to a neighbouring Rookling. If the siege-state Rookling is in the middle of its Rookling squad then the defending player can choose which Rookling the damage spills onto. You cannot divide the damage up, it must all go one way or the other.
If you have 2 siege-state Rooklings side by side then the damage keeps spilling over until it reaches a non-siege-state Rookling to land on.
Once all your Rooklings are forced into siege-state then your opponent wins the game!
FAQs
- Attack abilities can only be used on your attacking turn and defence abilities can only be used on your defence turn. Any ability that isn’t either an attack or defence can be done on any turn.
- Neighbouring Rooklings are Rooklings that are next to each-other. A Rookling in the middle position has 2 neighbours.
- Healing abilities can bring a Rookling back out of
siege-state.
- Pulse Rookling’s colour match icons only need to apply to one of the cards attached to a Rookling using Valt’s ‘charge’ ability.
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​- If a non-siege-state Rookling is facing damage from an opponent AND spill damage from a neighbouring siege-state Rookling, it can only choose to block one of them.
- You may have more than one token stacked on a Rookling.
FAQs
- If there are multiple tokens on a Rookling that do the same thing, (such as hidden or cover) they all resolve at once when their triggers are activated.
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- If an ability grants 1 Defence to a Rookling, then that Rookling doesn’t need to be offering any defence of its own to benefit from that. However, if an ability offers +1 Defence then that has to be added to an existing defence offering and cannot function as defence on its own. The same is true for attacks.
- If Delvi creates a second tunnel when one is already active, the older tunnel collapses and is replaced by the new one.
- When you discard a card to clear a Poison token you may not draw up your hand until the end of your next attack turn.
- Poison damage on siege-state Rooklings will spill onto
neighbour Rooklings.
- Any excess damage done to a Rookling to force it into it’s siege-state is nullified by the transformation and does not spill.