The Aethermancer Game Rules, Updated

Objective

Reduce your opponent's life total to 0. [1]

Setup

Starting Life Total: Determined by deck. [2]

Starting Mana: 2 aether, and about 4 of each basic element. [3]

Starting Cards: 16 random basic cards in a balanced combination [4], plus the chosen aether cards. Players will never be dealt the same basic card as the opponent.

First Player: Skips their first Start of Turn phase, and receives "The Coin" an extra mana.

Turns have three phases:

Start of Turn Phase

Gain 1 of each mana. Trigger all your creature's start of turn abilities.

Action Phase

Play exactly one card. (Click and drag to the board.)

Creatures without Haste will enter the battlefield frozen.

Note that effects will be executed before the cost of a card is paid.

Combat Phase

From left to right, your creatures attack. Frozen creatures don't attack and instead unfreeze.

Footnotes

[1] Or, reach 1000 life. This is very uncommon.

[2] Your core provides some life. Some of your cards have class requirements, and class levels are paid for by starting life classes. Gain 5 life at the start of the game if your deck has no classes, and lose 5 life if you have multiple classes. "Neutral" is not a class.

[3] 3 Fire, 3 Water, 3 Air, 4 Earth, 3 random between Fire/Water/Air. As described in this page: https://masn3.itch.io/aethermancer/devlog/967550/v128-managen-v6

As described on this page: https://masn3.itch.io/aethermancer/devlog/968999/v130-the-infrastructure

[4] Specifically, one card of each of the following 8 groups, and more from each element to bring the total to 4 of each. Players are guaranteed to have a card of cost at least 9 of each element.