How to Play

In Pixel Parties, players assemble Parties of three Heroes each and try to make them the greatest Heroes in the world - by beating up the opponent's Party and asserting dominance!

Whoever defeats all enemy Heroes first wins!

You'll build up your Heroes over the course of the game by giving them Abilities, throw Attacks and Spells at the opponent's Party to take their Heroes out one by one, or maybe summon Creatures to your aid to do the dirty work for your Heroes. You'll also get to utilize a variety of helpful Artifacts and volatile Potions to support your strategy and be the last Party standing.

Do you have what it takes to form the strongest Party ever?!

Card Types

Heroes

Heroes are the backbone of your strategy! You start the game with three different ones and have to defeat all enemy Heroes to win.

Your deck may contain Hero cards, but you can never play new Heroes from your hand to bolster your party!

Each Hero brings a unique effect, two Starting Abilities and stats to the table, so there's a lot to consider when choosing your perfect Party!

Starting Abilities

The two Ability cards specified here are attached to that Hero before the start of the game. They do not come from or count as part of your main deck.

If a Hero's HP drops to 0, it is defeated and flipped face-down. Its Abilities stay attached to it, and there are ways to revive it, so it is not removed from the board.

Attack

A Hero's Attack stat is used to determine the damage it deals with Attack cards. Heroes do NOT have the inherent ability to attack targets, an Attack card is always necessary!

Abilities

Abilities are attached to Heroes to empower them. They can allow Heroes to perform specific actions, give them passive effects, or serve as powerful once per turn effects you, the player, can activate while the Ability is in play.

Each Hero has three Ability Zones and can thus have up to three different Abilities attached to it. Additionally, copies of the same Ability on the same Hero are stacked on top of each other in the same Ability Zone, leveling that Ability up. All in all, a Hero can have up to 9 Ability cards attached to it!

A player can only attach one Ability to each of their Heroes every turn, and Abilities can be used the turn they are attached.

Attaching an Abilitiy to a Hero counts as choosing that Hero with the Ability.

When a Hero is defeated and flipped face-down, its Abilities stay attached to it. They remain on the board, but are negated and cannot be activated in any way until that Hero is revived.

Effects per Level

What effect an Ability provides depends on its level, meaning the number of copies attached to that Hero. At one copy (level 1), the top effect applies. At two copies (level 2), it's the middle effect, and at three copies (level 3), it's the bottom.

If an Ability has a once per turn effect that you can choose to activate during your turn, you can only activate that effect once during that turn, even if multiple Heroes have it! An example of this would be, "Once per turn, shuffle back 1 card to draw 1."

You can not choose to use an Ability at a lower level than it has!

Attacks and Spells

Attacks and Spells are the main way you will advance the board state. Dealing damage, applying negative status effects, summoning Creatures, but also healing HP, removing status effects or drawing cards - anything can be done by the right Attacks and Spells!

You can only actually play an Attack or Spell as long as you control a Hero that is able to perform it. Attacks and Spells have a Level and an Ability associated with it. In the case of Spells, that is called the Spell's Spell School.

For a Hero to be able to use an Attack/Spell, it must have the associated Ability at at least the Attack's/Spell's Level.

For example, to use Invisibility, you need a Hero with the Ability Magic Arts (indicated by the blue icon) at at least level 1.

When a Spell is played, its effect is resolved immediately, unless stated otherwise.

Sub-Type

There's 5 total Sub-Types of Attacks/Spells.

If a Spell has no icon at the bottom left, it is a "Normal" Attack/Spell. Normal Attacks/Spells are resolved when played and go to the discard pile.

Attachments

Attachments are not sent to the discard pile after use, instead getting attached to a target. Unless stated otherwise, an Attachment can be attached to any Hero, but some also specify they can only go to one of your Heroes, an opponent's Hero, or even just the user itself.

When a Hero is defeated, any Attachments on it are sent to the discard pile.

Reactions

Like Normal Spells, Reactions go to the discard pile after resolving. The difference is that they can only be used in reaction to specific triggers. Reaction Attacks/Spells will always specify when they can be used, they are the only sub-type of Attacks/Spells that can be played from your hand during an opponent's turn.

Surprises

Surprises are Attacks/Spells that a Hero prepares during your turn to then activate once your opponent performs a specific action, such as dealing damage to that Hero or drawing cards with an effect.

To prepare a Surprise, you must place it face-down into a Hero's Surprise Zone during your turn. Once a Surprise is prepared, you can activate it at any time, during either player's turn, as long as its condition is fulfilled and the Hero with the Surprise is capable of activating it.

To activate a Surprise, the preparing Hero must have the Abilities necessary to activate it and cannot be defeated or otherwise unable to perform an Action (for example by being Stunned). On the other hand, you can prepare Surprises with a Hero, even if it does not have the Abilities necessary to activate them.

After activation, a Surprise resolves and is then sent to the discard pile.

Areas

Areas provide global effects that either affect both players or that both players can activate. Each player has one Zone for an Area. The Area Zone is not directly associated with a Hero, you may play an Area with any of your Heroes.

Areas remain in play until they are removed by an effect. You cannot play an Area while you already control an Area.

Types of Attacks/Spells

Attacks (Fighting)

There are five different Spell Schools, or types of Spells, but only one type of Attacks. Attacks specialize in dealing scaling damaging, being the only card type that uses a Hero's Attack stat to determine its damage. As such, Attack-based strategies will excel in picking off individual targets.

Attacks can also have a wide variety of secondary utility effects.

The distinction between Attacks and Spells is important, because many effects interact with specifically one or the other.

Destruction Spells (Destruction Magic)

Destruction Spells deal a ton of damage. They often have downsides to them, such as dealing recoil damage to your own Heroes, giving your opponent ways to counteract the damage, or having conditions a target must fulfill before it takes damage from them. Where Attacks excel at quickly taking out individual targets, Destruction Spells have by far the best spread damage options in the game, making for excellent tools to keep your opponent from building up strong boards with Creatures.

Decay Spells (Decay Magic)

Decay Spells make life harder for your opponent. Denying resources, applying debuffs, or inflicting status effects. Decks revolving around them will often rely on Poison and Burn to slowly melt away the opponent's HP over time instead of taking targets out quickly with Attacks or Destruction Spells. Decay Magic also has the best negation Spells in the game. It's a slower, more control-focused type of Spells.

Magic Arts Spells (Magic Arts)

Magic Arts Spells focus on "changing the rules" to an extent. Applying buffs or debuffs that do not just affect Heroes, but players themselves, searching cards from the deck, generating resources, extending turns, but also negating specific cards. Where Decay Magic has access to general negation Spells, Magic Arts has access to situational negation. Unlike other Spell Schools, Magic Arts is not meant to be played by itself, it's an auxiliary Spell School.

Support Spells (Support Magic)

Support Spells excel in healing and buffing your own Heroes. They keep your Heroes alive, make them stronger, but also generate resources for you and may hinder your opponent. Support Spells are particularly good at doing a lot of things in one turn, facilitating a more combo-oriented playstyle.

Summoning Spells and Creatures (Summoning Magic)

Summoning Spells are all about bringing out, using, and protecting Creatures, a special sub-category of Spells.

Since Creatures are a sub-category of Spells, they do count as a Spell in addition to being a Creature. However, while a Creature is on the board, it only counts as a Creature, no longer as a Spell.

Creatures, once summoned, go into a Support Zone of the Hero that summoned them and remain there until they are defeated.

A Creature is defeated when its HP is reduced to 0.

Even if a Hero is defeated, its Creatures survive by themselves!

Creatures have effects that can either be active or passive. Passive effects are always in effect. An example would be "Your opponent can't choose other Creatures you control." Active effects can be triggered manually on your turn. They usually start with "Once per turn" (or "Up to X times per turn").

A Creature cannot activate its active effect the turn it's summoned.

Besides Creatures, there are also Summoning Spells that do not linger on the board as Creatures, for example "Creatures you control take no damage until the end of your next turn."

If a Spell has an HP stat, it is a Creature.

Artifacts

Artifacts, unlike Abilities or Attacks/Spells, do not necessarily revolve around a Hero and don't need a Hero to be played. These are your general utility cards and play-extenders, but can also be very specific and require certain strategies to be used. They can have the same sub-types as Attacks/Spells (except that Attachment Artifacts are called Equipments and you equip Artifacts rather than attach them), and they have a Cost.

At the start of each turn, the turn player generates Gold. This Gold is used to pay for the use of Artifacts, meaning you can't play an infinite amount of them.

Potions

Potions function a lot like Artifacts, except that they have no Gold Cost. You just play them from your hand to get their effect!

But they have two big differences from other card types. For one, they are deleted (removed from the game) after resolving instead of going to the discard pile. Thus, they can never be reused.

Secondly, they start the game in a second deck, the dedicated Potion Deck, and you can only draw them through card effects. This makes them a lot harder to access than other cards, but they are also on average a lot more powerful!

Ascended Heroes

Ascended Heroes are special, more powerful versions of Heroes. You play them in your deck and place them on top of a Hero to Ascend it once a certain condition has been fulfilled.

Ascending a Hero immediately ends your turn!

When a Hero Ascends, it gains new stats, but keeps any damage it already had as well as status effects and any other effects that affected it.

Ascension Bonus

When a Hero Ascends, its Ascension Bonus is applied. Generally, there are 2 types: Either Abilities (like in Monia Bot's case), or something else. If the bonus is Abilities, you may attach the specified Abilities from your hand, deck or discard pile to the Ascended Hero immediately as additional attachments. You may also choose to attach fewer copies of the Ability than specified.

Actions

Besides Gold, which you passively generate every turn and spend on Artifacts, Actions are the other important resource in Pixel Parties. You get a single Action every turn, and Attacks and Spells cost an Action to use.

Wait, so you can only use a single Attack/Spell per turn to advance the game?

Not exactly. Reactions and Surprises do not cost Actions to use. Additionally, there are Attacks/Spells that can count as additional Actions, either inherently or if you fulfill specific conditions. Additional Actions do not consume your Action per turn.

On the other hand, there are also effects on Abilities, Artifacts etc. that can cost an Action to activate. If you choose to spend your Action on such an effect, that means you cannot use an Attack/Spell that turn, unless it's an additional Action, a Reaction, or a Surprise.

The Game Board

Pixel Parties has a very rigid game board. Both players have 3 Heroes, which each have 3 Zones for Abilities (Ability Zones) and 3 Zones for Equipments, Attachments and Creatures (Support Zones).

A Hero can only summon Creatures into its own Support Zones, so the amount of Creatures a Hero can control at a time is limited to 3!

(1) Hero Zones. Each player has 3 and starts the game with a Hero in each of them. When a Hero is defeated, it is flipped face-down and NOT removed from the board. If a Hero is revived later, it is flipped face-up again.

(2) Ability Zones. Each Hero has 3 Ability Zones, so Heroes can have up to 3 different Abilities, which can all be leveled up to 3.

(3) Support Zones. Equipment/Attachment cards and Creatures a Hero summons go here. If all Support Zones of a Hero are full, that Hero cannot be equipped/attached to or summon Creatures.

(4) Surprise Zones. Each Hero has only 1 Surprise Zone, so it can only have 1 Surprise Prepared at a time. Surprises can NOT be moved between Heroes once placed, and you cannot choose to send them to the discard pile if you want to Prepare a new Surprise. You have to either activate it or remove it with an effect first!

(5) Deck Zone. Your deck goes here.

(6) Potion Deck Zone. Your Potion Deck goes here (if you have one).

(7) Your discard pile.

(8) The zone for your deleted (expelled/removed) cards.

(9) Area Zones. Zones for your and your opponent's Area Attacks/Spells. A player can only use 1 of those 2 zones.

Setting up the Game

Before the game starts, a coin is tossed. The winner of the coin toss decides who goes first. Then, both players place their Heroes into their respective Hero Zones and those Heroes' Starting Abilities into their Ability Zones, with identical Abilities stacked on top of each other. The player that goes first places their Heroes down first.

After this setup is completed, both players draw five cards. The player who decided who goes first may now mulligan their entire hand, shuffling it back into their deck and drawing five new cards, once, while the other player may do the same up to two times.

Once both players are done with their mulligans, player 1 takes their first turn.

Player 1 has several restrictions on their first turn. They cannot:

- Deal damage to enemy targets

- Inflict status effects to enemy targets

- Activate effects that would defeat enemy targets

- Take control of enemy targets

- Force their opponent to discard, delete, or shuffle away cards from their hand

- Look at their opponent's hand

- Send cards from the opponent's deck to the discard pile or delete them

The Course of a Turn

A player's turn is divided into the following Phases:

Start Phase

The turn begins. Effects that last "until the beginning of the turn" end and effects that trigger "at the beginning of the turn" trigger.

The turn player freely decides the order in which effects trigger/end.

Resource Phase

The turn player draws 1 card and gains 4 Gold. Some effects will increase this Gold gain.

First Power-Up Phase

The main part of the turn. The turn player may, in any order:

- Attach up to 1 Ability from their hand to each of their Heroes.

- Play any number of Artifacts from their hand, as long as they can pay their Costs.

- Play any number of Potions from their hand.

- Activate the active effects of any number of cards they control (Heroes, Abilities, Creatures, Equipments, Attachments).

- Use Attacks/Spells that "count as an additional Action".

Action Phase

The turn player may perform a single Action. This is usually done by playing an Attack or Spell, but there are also effects that require an Action as a cost. After performing a single Action, the Action Phase immediately ends.

Second Power-Up Phase

You may do the same things as in the first Power-Up Phase. If you already attached an Ability to a Hero during the first Power-Up Phase, you cannot attach another one to the same Hero during the second.

You can only enter the Second Power-Up Phase by performing an Action.

You cannot use effects that are only an additional Actions some of the time during your Second Power-Up Phase, unless you can guarantee the condition is fulfilled before playing the card!

For example, if a Spell requires you to reveal the top card of your deck, and it has to be a specific card for the Spell to be an additional Action, you can only use that Spell during your first Power-Up Phase, and if the condition is not fulfilled, the turn will immediately proceed to your Action Phase which will be consumed by you using that Spell!

End Phase

The turn ends. Effects that last "until the end of the turn" end and effects that trigger "at he end of the turn" trigger. The turn player decides the order in which effects trigger/end.

At the very end of the End Phase, if the turn player has more than 7 cards in their hand, they must delete cards from their hand until they have 7 cards left.

Status Effects

A target can be affected by any number of status effects at a time. Some cards inflict unique special conditions that "count as status effects", while others inflict the following "standard" status effects.

These can be viewed like keywords in other games in that they won't come up in every game and are short-hand for specific mechanics.

- Stunned: The target cannot perform Actions and its effects and Abilities (if it is a Hero) are negated.

- Frozen: The target cannot perform Actions and its effects and Abilities (if it is a Hero) are negated. Additionally, it cannot be equipped with Artifacts.

- Blinded: The target cannot choose any targets the opponent controls as targets for Attacks, Spells or effects.

- Poisoned: The target takes 30 damage during each of its owner's Start Phases. Poisoning effects usually revolve around stacking multiple instances of Poison, increasing its damage.

- Burned: The target takes 60 damage during each of its owner's Start Phases.

- Bleeding: The target takes 50 damage whenever it performs an Action or activates its active effect.

After recovering from a Freeze, Stun, Blind or any other status effect that includes negating a target's effect or preventing it from performing Actions, that target becomes completely immune to your opponent's incapacitating effects for 1 turn (until the end of your following turn)!

Deck Construction

Decks consist of 60 cards, not including your 3 Heroes and their Starting Abilities, so you bring 69 cards total.

If you play a Potion Deck, that has to contain 5-15 cards.

Your Hero lineup has to consist of 3 DIFFERENT Heroes. Alternate versions of a Hero with the same name, such as "Cool Rescuer Monia" and "Cool Birthday Girl Monia", still count as the same Hero for this!

Your main deck must contain any number of copies of Abilities and up to 4 copies of Heroes, Artifacts, Attacks, Spells and Ascended Heroes.

Your Potion Deck must contain up to 2 copies of Potions.

For tips on how to build your very own Pixel Parties deck, you can consult Deck Building Tips.

Miscellaneous Rules

Whenever a player looks at either player's deck for whatever reason, that deck is shuffled afterwards.

All effects that trigger at the start of a turn (in the Start Phase) trigger in immediate succession in the order the turn player chooses. Once the first effect actually resolves during the Start Phase, no further effects can be activated during this Start Phase.