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How to Play Neuroscape TCG
- , by Eden Miller
- 8 min reading time
Neuroscape TCG has officially been uploaded to Gamers Guild. If you're looking for a new indie trading card game that lets you hack into the mainframe to do some damage, this is the game for you.
In Neuroscape, you'll harness the power of programming to fight foes from a variety of factions in a simulated arena. Deploy characters, equip them with gear, and initialize powerful programs to come out on top in a neon cyberpunk world. Read on to find out how to build a deck that bends code to your will.
Dominate the Digital Realm in Neuroscape
Neuroscape brings a fresh new take on the cyberpunk aesthetic into the world of trading card games. Everything in the game is perfectly flavored for a cybernetic gaming experience. Play futuristic characters and attach cybernetic enhancements to them while running programs to buff your faction and nerf your enemies.
Form Up With Your Neuroscape Faction
When you build your deck, you're building around a mainframe card with core abilities. Your mainframe has a faction bonus depending on your synergy for that faction. Your synergy is based on how many cards of that faction you have in your play area. The symbol in the bottom right corner of the card indicates its faction. Your cyberdeck should include ample characters, programs, and gear within your faction to allow you to easily reach your faction bonuses.
Some cards also have faction requirements shown in the top right corner of the card as well. So, while you're deploying your characters and programs, keep in mind what requirements you have to meet for future plays. Your faction is built into your strategy from the very beginning, so what your deck does should harmonize with the goals of your faction.
Assemble Your Cyberdeck
You start with 20 bioframe health and 20 mainframe health. You win the game when you reduce either of your enemy's health pools to zero. You do so by committing RAM to play characters, run programs, and attach cybernetic enhancements to make your characters stronger.
On your board, you have two decks and a mainframe. Your mainframe gives you faction benefits based on your synergy for your chosen faction. On the lefthand side of your board is your RAM deck, which contains 25 RAM cards that act as resources for the game. This deck sits beside your RAM bank, where you keep your available resources. Your RAM bank is where all of the RAM you've installed sits before it's committed or run to play programs, gear, or environments.
On the bottom righthand side of your play area is your cyberdeck, which contains 50+ non-RAM cards. Your cyberdeck includes characters, gear, programs, and environments to enhance your battle. Keep in mind that although you have up to 255 cards in your deck, you can include no more than 4 copies of each non-unique card, and only 1 copy of each unique card. Above your cyberdeck is your recycle bin, where used and destroyed cards are sent, and your purge zone, where purged cards are sent.
The center of your board is the arena, where characters and gear are played. Persistent programs, or protocols, are played on your mainframe. Only three protocols can be attached to it, so choose wisely!
Neuroscape's Gameplay Is Programming Magic
If you're familiar with Magic: The Gathering, the phases, steps, and keywords in Neuroscape will seem familiar.
The initialize phase is essentially your upkeep step, it's a cleanup step before you start your turn. You'll refresh your cards on the board and reboot their abilities, including RAM. Importantly, you can draw and/or install a total of 2 cards.
Drawing is fairly self-explanatory, and installing is the process of adding RAM to your RAM bank; you can do any combination of these two. On the very first turn of the game, the first player can only draw or install 1 card.
Effects your opponents play can cause your characters and programs to become unstable, you'll make sure they don't crash and wind up removed during this phase too.
After you've completed all of these steps, you'll move on to deployment.
Deploy Your Forces
The deploy phase is your main phase, where you'll play characters, gear, and programs. Characters are the fighters you're pitting against each other. You can equip them with gear to make them stronger.
There are three types of programs you can play: scripts, protocols, and environments. Scripts are single-use and resolve immediately, like a sorcery in Magic: The Gathering or a trainer card in Pokémon TCG. While protocols are added to your mainframe as persistent elements of gameplay. Environments affect both players. Only one environment can be played at a time, and when another is played, the one on the battlefield is destroyed. Anything that remains in the arena until destroyed, like a character, gear, protocol, or environment, is known as a persistent.
Persistents are played by paying the RAM cost in the upper left corner. If any of your persistents have abilities, you can activate them here.
Anytime a card is played, your opponent has the opportunity to respond with a swift card or swift ability, like an instant in Magic: The Gathering. When responding to an opponent's plays, strategic thinking is essential because your card effects and abilities will resolve using a first-in-last-out framework. This means that the last card to be played will go into effect first.
From there, you'll move to the combat stage.
Go Head-to-Head in the Arena
In the combat stage, you're looking to deal as much damage as you can to your opponent's bioframe and mainframe. To declare an attacker, you'll run the character, turning it horizontally in the same manner as when abilities are used. Blockers must not be running or have any effects indicating that they cannot block. Multiple characters can block a single attack.
Damage is dealt to each character at the same time. If blocked by multiple characters, the attacking player may choose how damage is allocated between the blocking characters. If the attack is not blocked, damage is dealt to the player. Damage values indicated in blue are dealt to the player's mainframe, while values indicated in red are dealt to their bioframe. If a character has the OVERRUN keyword, damage greater than the blocking character's defense is still applied to the attacked player's health.
Before declaring attackers, blockers, and dealing combat damage, your opponents have an opportunity to play any swift cards or use any swift abilities they have open RAM for. Keeping combat tricks ready can quickly turn the tide of combat, so budgeting RAM for combat is essential.
Finally, you'll move to the reset phase.
Reset for Next Turn
The reset phase is your cleanup step before you end your turn. In the reset phase, all damage dealt to characters is cleared and any abilities triggered by a player's turn ending are resolved. Then, the turn is passed to the next player and the game continues.
Become Champion of the Digital Underground
Neuroscape is an exciting and highly competitive addition to the world of collectible card games, with pitch perfect theming, stunning art, and a thrilling new world to get lost in. It will be familiar to veteran TCG fans but still offer new mechanics and thematic hooks that make this a must play game.
As a player, it's especially cool to see a cyberpunk world so lovingly and thoughtfully realized. The differentiation between physical and neural health is incredibly unique and flavorful for the world. Plus, the introduction of a static mainframe with its own abilities to unlock throughout the game sets it apart from other games with characters you can recast, like Magic: The Gathering's Commander format.
You don't have to worry about your mainframe being removed from combat, giving you the space to focus on your own strategy and synergy between your characters, programs, and gear.
Neuroscape is fresh, unique, and exactly what trading card game players should be looking for in a new game. Whether you're just getting into TCGs or have been a longtime fan of the format, you'll find a rich world with powerful cards to discover.
