Lost Chapters Play free

How to Play Lost Chapters

Lost Chapters in one paragraph: each player brings a Leader from history and a 40-card deck. Your Leader is guarded by 5 Life cards. You gain crystals every turn, spend them to play characters, events, items and locations, and charge to attack. Each hit on a Leader takes a Life card. Hit a Leader that has no Life left, and you win.

The goal

  • Pick a Leader and bring a 40-card deck.
  • 5 Life cards guard each Leader in a duel.
  • Win by hitting a Leader that has no Life left. A player who has to draw from an empty deck also loses.

Setup

  1. Place your Leader face up. It stays in play all game and can charge like a character.
  2. Shuffle your deck and put the top 5 cards face down as your Life.
  3. Draw 5 cards. You may mulligan once: shuffle the hand back and draw 5 new cards.
  4. A coin flip decides who goes first. The first player skips their first draw and can't charge on their first turn. The second player gets a bonus crystal, for that turn only, on each of their first two turns.

Your turn

  1. Refresh: stand up your rested cards. Your crystals come back.
  2. Draw a card (not on the very first turn of the game).
  3. Crystals: gain 2 more crystals, up to 10.
  4. Main: play cards, infuse crystals and charge, in any order.
  5. End: damage and "this turn" effects wear off.

Crystals

Crystals are your resource. Spend them to play cards; the cost is the number on the card's gem. Crystals you don't spend can be infused into your Leader or a character for +1 power each, for the turn. Or keep them: unspent crystals stay ready during your rival's turn for Counters and Brace.

Card types

  • Characters go to your field, up to 5. They can't charge the turn they arrive unless they have Swift. If your field is full, a new character replaces one of yours.
  • Events happen once and go to the trash. Moment events are Counters: you can also play them while your rival is charging you. Triumph events can be played for free when they are revealed from your Life.
  • Items: Weapons, Vehicles and some Inventions equip to a character. Treasures and Edibles are used once.
  • Locations stay in play and power up your side. You can have one at a time; a new one replaces the old.

Charging (combat)

Rest one of your ready characters, or your Leader, to charge. You can target the enemy Leader, or an enemy character that is rested. Characters that are standing up are ready to defend and can't be targeted.

  1. Block: the defender may rest one ready character to take the charge instead. Characters with Guard block without resting. A charger with Explore can only be blocked by characters that also have Explore.
  2. Counter: the defender may play Moment events with crystals they saved.
  3. Brace: when a character charges a character, the defender may spend unspent crystals to give the defending character +1 power each until the charge ends.
  4. Damage: two characters deal their power to each other at the same time. A character whose damage reaches its health is destroyed.
  5. Hitting a Leader takes 1 Life card (2 with Double Chapter). The lost card goes to the defender's hand, so a lost chapter can come back to save you. If it is a Triumph event, they may play it for free right away.

Leaders

Every Leader has three parts:

  • a passive that is always on,
  • a once-per-match Command, a big play you can call from your second turn by paying its crystals,
  • three Signature cards that cost 1 less while that Leader leads your deck.

See all six historical Leaders, their Commands and starter decks on the Leaders page.

Building a deck

A deck is 40 cards with up to 3 copies of any card. A deck may only hold cards of its Leader's colors, plus that Leader's Signature cards. The deckbuilding guide covers curves, card counts and starter deck codes.

Free-for-All

Free-for-All (called Convention in the game) is Lost Chapters for 3, 4 or 5 players. Everyone plays for themselves, and the last Leader standing wins. The duel rules apply, with these changes:

  • Each player starts with 6 Life cards.
  • Peaceful first round: nobody may charge until every player has taken their first turn.
  • Charge anyone: you may charge any opponent's Leader or rested characters. Only the player you charge may block.
  • Interject: after the defender responds, other players (not the attacker) may pay for Counters to help the defender.
  • Mass effects: "all enemies" effects and "your opponent discards" hit each opponent.
  • Knockouts: the player who knocks out a Leader draws 2.
  • The Shard: from round 3, the player holding the Shard draws an extra card at the end of each turn. Take a Life card from the holder and the Shard is yours.

Keywords

Explore, Swift, Guard, Protest, Double Chapter, Tenacious, Resolve, Build, Recover and Lightning are explained in the keyword glossary.

Learn by playing

The First Chapter is a short guided campaign that teaches all of this one step at a time, and it is the first thing new players see. You can also download the full rules as a PDF, or read the beginner guide.

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