Decks

Every card pool in the campaign. Trial and Stolen Town cards carry their challenge, odds, reward and punishment on one face.

Starter decks — one per colour

These are fixed lists — they do not re-roll. A starting deck that changes every time you open the page can't be built, sleeved or balanced against. Each is 17 basics + 23 spells = 40 cards. Rarity is looked up from the live pools rather than declared, so these lists can never claim something the pools disagree with. Most of each deck is singletons — the video game handed you a jumble, not a tuned list, and nothing here runs more than two copies. Not every card is one you can win: a few sit in a starting deck and nowhere else in the game, marked starter only. The build is logged in RULES/STARTER_DECKS.md.

TIER 1  Village deck — cards

Drawn at every common town. Cards seen but not picked go to the bottom of the Common deck. The Village card returns to the bottom of the Village deck — reshuffled, not consumed.

TIER 2  Unique Town deck — cards

Drawn at every special town. The Boons live in this deck — there is no separate Boon pile. Every reward elsewhere in the game that used to hand out a Boon now hands out a draw from here.

TIER 3  Riddle deck — cards

Drawn at every dungeon and lair. The card is handed to the player on your left, who reads the question and checks the answer printed along its foot. One guess, said aloud, and no partial credit. You may decline after seeing the card — the site blacks out, nothing gained, nothing lost. No Tier 3 Riddle costs a party life — failure takes Mana Links and anted cards instead.

The Ante pile: to ante a card, reveal one at random from your deck and set it face up in the Ante pile — it is out of your deck. The next player to pass a Trial takes the whole pile.

TIER 4  Stolen Towns — a pool of 5 trials

At any of the five stolen towns, draw any one of these five cards — the trial is not tied to the town's colour. The Seal you win is the colour of the town you are standing in, and it strips the ward from the matching castle: a castle cannot be assaulted until its stolen town has fallen. Tier 4 is the only place on the map that costs a party life. A failed town is not blacked out; you may return and draw again.

TIER 5  Castle decks — 5 colours × 5 levels

Level faced = castles already defeated, so the five castles are fought at levels 0 through 4 in whatever order the party takes them. Each is a Dungeon Master deck played 3 v 1, with a starting board already on the battlefield and an Archenemy-style Scheme deck. Five levels but three decks: level 0 has its own, levels 1–2 share one, levels 3–4 share another. The starting life is still set level by level, so a castle taken fifth hits harder than the same castle taken fourth even when the deck behind it is the same. Level 0 is each lord's own deck, cut to 40 — the Enemies table gives every castle lord a deck number, and these are those decks condensed.