The Archive Dispatch · October 9, 2026 · Lost Chapters Team

Lost Chapters Beginner Guide: How to Play Your First Games

Inventor's Goggles card art from Lost Chapters: brass goggles with green lenses

Short answer: In Lost Chapters you pick a historical Leader, build a 40-card deck in that Leader's colours and spend crystals to play characters, events, items and locations. You win by charging the enemy Leader until its five Life cards are gone, then landing one more hit. Start with the First Chapter, pick a first deck, and play a few games against the AI on Easy before you queue against real players.

This Lost Chapters beginner guide covers everything you need for your first ten games: how a turn works, how combat works, the keywords you will see first, and a simple plan for what to play next. The game is free and runs in your browser at lostchapters.org/play, so you can follow along with a match open in another tab.

What kind of game is Lost Chapters?

Lost Chapters is a collectible card game (CCG) built around real people, places and moments from history. If you have played Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering or the One Piece Card Game, the shape will feel familiar: you have a Leader, a deck, a resource that grows every turn and a board of characters that fight.

Every card belongs to one of five colours, and each colour has a theme:

Colour	Theme	Historical Leader
Gold	Inventors and Industry	Nikola Tesla
Cobalt	Thinkers and Dreamers	Martin Luther King Jr. (also Neil Armstrong)
Emerald	Frontier and Explorers	Amelia Earhart
Garnet	Rebels, Pirates and War	Edward Teach, "Blackbeard"
Quartz	Founders and Revolution	George Washington

Your Leader decides your colours. A deck may only hold cards of its Leader's colours, plus that Leader's three Signature cards, which also cost 1 less in that deck.

Step 1: Play the First Chapter

When you first open the game, the First Chapter walks you through four guided battles. They teach the basics one idea at a time, against characters from the game's story. You learn with Nikola Tesla's kit, so you will meet cards like Zap, a cheap Counter, and Inventor's Goggles, an Item that gives a character +1/+1 and Explore. The battles pay rewards the first time you win them, including a booster pack and a copy of Inventor's Goggles.

You can skip the First Chapter, but we do not recommend it. It is the fastest way to learn the timing of Counters and Brace, which is where most new players lose games.

Step 2: Pick your first deck

After the First Chapter you choose a first deck. Each one is a full, legal 40-card deck you keep forever, so you can always jump into a match:

Tesla's Workshop (Gold): build Tinker Tokens every turn, power up your Inventors, then overload the board.
The Dreamers (Cobalt, Dr. King): a wide crew that will not break. Characters that survive a hit grow stronger.
Wings Over the Frontier (Emerald, Earhart): Explorers fly over blockers and strike when it counts.
Blackbeard's Crew (Garnet): fast Rebels and dirty tricks. Hit their Leader and they lose cards.
The Continental Army (Quartz, Washington): Founders hold the line, then the army moves as one.

There is no wrong pick. If you like a simple, aggressive plan, try Blackbeard's Crew. If you like building an engine, try Tesla's Workshop.

How a turn works

Every turn follows the same five steps:

Refresh. Stand up everything you rested last turn. Your crystals come back.
Draw one card. The player who goes first skips this on the very first turn.
Crystals. Gain 2 more crystals, up to a maximum of 10.
Main. Play cards, use your Leader's ability, infuse and charge, in any order.
End. Damage and anything that says "this turn" wears off.

Crystals are your resource. A card's cost is the number of crystals you spend to play it. You can also infuse: spend a crystal on your Leader or a character for +1 power this turn.

Crystals you do not spend stay ready during your opponent's turn. That matters, because you can use them for Counter cards and Brace when you are attacked. Spending everything now or holding some back is the most important decision in the game.

To keep things fair, the player who goes first cannot charge on their first turn, and the second player gets a bonus crystal on each of their first three turns.

How you win: Life, charges and blocks

Each player starts with five Life cards, placed face down from the top of their deck. Your Leader stays in play all game. It has power but no health, so it can never be destroyed; it can only lose Life.

To attack, you charge: rest a ready character (or your Leader) and pick a target. You can charge the enemy Leader or an enemy character that is already rested. Characters standing up are ready to defend and cannot be targeted.

When you are charged, you get to respond, in this order:

Block. Rest one of your ready characters to take the charge instead.
Counter. Play Counter cards with the crystals you saved.
Brace. If a character is fighting a character, spend saved crystals for +1 power each on your defender.

Then the fight happens. Two characters deal their power to each other at the same time, and a character whose damage reaches its health is destroyed. If the Leader is hit, it loses one Life card, which goes to its owner's hand. That is a nice comeback rule: a lost chapter can come back to help you.

Some cards are Triumphs, like Genius Convention. If a Triumph is revealed as a lost Life card, you may play it for free right away.

You win by hitting a Leader that has no Life left. You also lose if you have to draw from an empty deck.

The keywords you will see first

Swift: can charge the turn it arrives. John Laurens is a cheap example.
Guard: blocks without resting.
Explore: can only be blocked by characters that also have Explore.
Protest: cannot be chosen as the target of a charge, but can still block. Rosa Parks has Protest, Guard and Resolve.
Resolve: when it survives damage, it gets +1/+0 for the rest of the game (once per turn).
Double Chapter: hitting a Leader takes 2 Life instead of 1.
Lightning X: when played, deal X damage to an enemy character.
Build X: create tokens such as Tinkers (1/1), Lightbulbs (0/1, draw when destroyed) or Steel Golems (1/1 with Guard).
Recover X: put the top X cards of your deck into your Life, up to 5.

Your field holds up to five characters and one Location. If your field is full, you can still play a character by trashing one of your own to make room.

Lost Chapters beginner guide: your first ten games

Games 1 to 4: the First Chapter battles.
Games 5 to 7: your first deck against the AI. Start on Easy, then try Normal. Watch what the AI does when you leave crystals open.
Game 8: open one of the free packs every new account starts with and look at what you pulled. Then visit the Deck Lab and swap one or two cards. The Collection filters show each colour's archetype (Inventors, Thinkers, Frontier, Rebels and Founders), which is a good guide to what fits.
Game 9: play a real person: Ranked, Free-for-All with 3 to 5 players, or a friend with a room code.
Game 10: try something new, such as Draft, where you pick a Leader and build a deck one card at a time.

New accounts also see a Next steps card on the hub. Each step (build a deck, open a pack, play a real player, try Draft, add a friend) pays a little gold the first time you finish it.

Five mistakes almost every beginner makes

Spending every crystal on your own turn. Keep 2 open when you can, so a cheap Counter like Zap can punish a charge.
Charging into a ready board. You can only target rested characters. Charging the Leader into an untapped Guard usually just loses your character.
Forgetting your Command. Every Leader has a once-per-match Command you can use from your second turn. Tesla's builds two Tinkers and pumps your Inventors.
Ignoring your hand after a hit. Lost Life cards go to your hand. Check them, especially for Triumphs.
Filling the field with tiny characters. Five slots go fast. A strong Swift charger like Paul Revere can be worth more than two small bodies.

The history is real, the story is not

Most characters in the core set are real people or well-known American legends, and card flavor lines point to real history. The world they arrive in, Marginalia, and the purple shards that pull them there are our own invented story, and we label it that way. Card draw combos like The Wright Brothers with your Pilots and Inventors are fun on their own, but if a card makes you curious, every figure has a real story worth reading.

Ready to play?

Lost Chapters is free to play in any modern browser, on desktop or phone, with nothing to download. Everything that helps you win can be earned by playing. Open the game, finish the First Chapter, and come back to this guide when you are ready to build your first custom deck.

Sources

Lost Chapters Rules of Play (PDF)

Cards in this post

Leaders: Nikola Tesla, Martin Luther King Jr., Amelia Earhart, Edward Teach "Blackbeard", George Washington

The history in this post is real; anything about Marginalia, shards, Echoes or the Travelers is the game's invented story. How we check facts.