During your summon phase, you play cards from your hand in order to build up your board presence and tip the scales in your favor before you move in and attack. You can play a Soul into any space in your Zone (the two rows closest to you) that does not already have a Soul in it, and Environments into any Environment space on the board. Other card types have specific ways to play them as defined in the Card Types section.
All cards have values, which must be paid with Coins. You earn one Coin at the beginning of each of your turns. To earn extra Coins, you can do one of two things: discard cards from your hand, earning one Coin per card, or discarding a Shield card, earning the Coin value of the card.
You may play as many cards from your hand as you like, as long as you can pay for them. However: you may only have 6 Souls on the board at a time, and 6 full Incantation slots (which may be filled with Incantations or Shield Cards). You also may not play an Environment if all Environment slots are full. Some cards have “on play” effects, and these trigger as soon as you play the card. If multiple “on play” effects would trigger at once, the controller chooses the order. You can’t play a Soul in the same space as another Soul, as two Souls can’t occupy the same space.
Also during your Summon phase, you have the opportunity to manipulate your Shield cards. As many times as you like per turn, you may:
Once you have finished playing cards, you move onto the Move/Combat phase. Each Soul has a movement pattern that determines how they move around the board. For each Soul you control, in whatever order you please, make the decision whether or not to move that Soul. If they move, follow their movement pattern. Some patterns will give you a choice as to what direction to move. This is determined on a card-by-card basis. Your Souls cannot move through your opponent’s Souls, and Souls cannot end their movement in the same space as another Soul.
Once you have moved or not moved the Soul, if it ends up adjacent to an opponent’s Soul, you then choose to fight or not. In a fight, each Soul rolls its Hit Dice, and then bonuses are applied, and then the numbers are compared. The Soul with the higher roll wins, and subtracts the lower roll from its roll this turn, and the Soul with the lower roll is discarded. If your movement puts your Soul adjacent to multiple Souls your opponent controls, you get to choose the initial target, but your opponent may then choose to have the other Souls fight your Soul. In this case, your Soul does not roll again, but instead retains its original roll, which has already had the first fight’s number subtracted.
When a Soul you control is in the row closest to your opponent, it is within range to attack them directly. This attack is treated like a normal combat, except that the number you roll on the Hit Dice is subtracted from your opponent’s life point total. If your opponent has a Shield Card, instead of taking damage, the Shield is broken and they put that card into their hand. Or, if your opponent has any Incantations, they may choose to discard one instead of taking damage.
[a small note on the playtest version of CIDWaM - for simplicity’s sake, I’ve reduced the available movement patterns to those of standard chess pieces. This will not be the only option for movement in future versions of the game, but the notation for movement patterns is still being workshopped. In the meantime, to clear up any confusion, Souls move *exactly* like their chess counterparts. This means that pawns cannot turn; they can only move forward one space, or two spaces from their starting position. This freedom of movement was something that pawns had access to in closed playtests, but this has changed. Pieces still can only attack in adjacent positions. In addition, castling, promotion, and en passant, advanced chess moves, are not part of CIDWaM’s ruleset.]
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