How Everdawn is played

Everdawn is a high fantasy trading card game about deck building and strategy. There is no resource system, only space and movement. Three lanes of combat reward positioning the way chess does, so veterans with older decks are never outpaced just because a newer card is "better".

How to win

• Deplete their morale. Each player starts with 100 morale. When a creature dies, its owner loses that creature's morale score (the number in the top right of the card). Attacking an open lane damages morale directly, and the attacker counts as having advantage, so it adds its bonus. Overflow damage to a creature never carries over to morale.
• Deplete their creatures. Every player starts with 6 creatures in play (3 in lanes, 3 on the bench including the Champion). Destroy every creature they have in play and you win. Card effects can bring in more creatures, so you may need to defeat more than six.
• Draws and Sudden Death. If both players meet a win condition at the same time, the duel is a draw and goes to Sudden Death. Both players discard every creature on the field and every support card in hand, draw one creature into lane 2, and draw 5 support cards. Whoever started the duel lets the other player go first. Each player has 1 morale in Sudden Death, so the next morale loss decides it.

Building a deck

• Creature deck: exactly 10 cards. Exactly 1 Champion (Traghrim or High King Arenor) plus 9 other creatures, with up to 3 copies of each.
• Support deck: exactly 30 cards. Weapons, armour and accessories up to 3 copies each; spells 1 copy each. Creatures never go in the support deck.
• Build around your creatures. Equipment gives a small boost to anyone and a bigger one to creatures of the matching combat type.

The deck builder checks all of this as you build.

Reading the cards

Creature cards show their combat type icon (top left), name, and morale score (top right). The left stat box is attack and the right is defense. The top number is the base stat, and the bottom number is the bonus added when the creature has type advantage, whether attacking or counterattacking. Each creature has a "When played" or "On death" effect. Champions have their own icons, and only one is allowed per deck.

Support cards come in four kinds: accessories (bag icon), weapons (bow, sword or moon icon), armour (shield icon) and spells (stars icon). The colour shows the attack type: blue is magic, red is melee, green is range, purple is spell. A creature can carry one weapon, one armour and one accessory, which stay until the creature dies or a spell replaces them. Spells are never equipped. They are cast once into a lane.

Combat triangle & reach

• Range beats magic, magic beats melee, melee beats range. A creature with advantage adds both its attack and defense bonus for that clash.
• Reach. Melee attacks and counterattacks straight ahead. Range reaches straight ahead and one lane to either side. Magic reaches any lane.
• A creature can only counterattack if it can reach the attacker's lane. Otherwise it only defends.
• Damage must be higher than the defender's defense to destroy it. Attacks and counterattacks resolve at the same time, so a creature that dies still lands its counterattack.

Setting up

Flip a coin to decide who goes first. The first player shuffles both decks, then in this order:

• places their Champion in the Champion slot (bench 1);
• draws three creatures one at a time into lanes 1, 2 and 3;
• draws two more into bench slots 2 and 3;
• draws 5 support cards into their hand.

The first player may equip and set creatures, then skips combat and passes the turn. The second player sets up the same way and plays a full turn.

Phases of a turn

Set Phase

• Move a creature from your bench into an empty lane, or slide a creature into an empty lane after one of yours was destroyed.
• Equip support cards: one item per creature per turn, one weapon, armour and accessory per creature.
• Set one creature to give its creature bonuses to another of your creatures (added to base stats, never including equipment). A set creature can't attack or counterattack until the start of your next turn. Only one of your creatures can be set at a time.

Combat Phase

• Declare all attacks across all lanes before anything resolves.
• Each player gets one turn to cast combat spells: the defender first, then the attacker. Spells resolve one at a time, nobody can cast "in response", and once you pass you can't cast again this combat.
• All attacks and counterattacks then resolve simultaneously.

End Phase

• Resolve "On death" effects.
• Calculate morale damage.
• Draw up to 5 support cards, or 1 card if you already hold 5 or more.

Spells & timing

• Combat spells: each player may cast at most one per lane per turn, so three at most. Set Phase spells don't use a lane and aren't limited this way.
• Spells are cast one at a time in the order played. Play a spell before another that depends on it (for example, Resting Fortress before Change of Destiny).
• "For the remainder of this round" means until your current turn ends. A round is one player's Set, Combat and End phases.

Clarifications

• Nothing playable? If you hold 5 or more cards and none can be played, put your hand on the bottom of the support deck and redraw.
• Returning cards. Defeated cards go to the bottom of their deck in any order. Effects that let you look at the top X cards return the rest to the top in any order.
• Bench slots only refill from the creature deck when a spell or "When played" effect allows it.
• Resting Fortress is cast by the defender to redirect one of the opponent's attacks (not a counterattack) to any lane, even one the attacker couldn't normally reach. It's magic.
• "When played" effects trigger only the first time a creature enters the field. Taking a Champion off and on again doesn't summon twice.
• Lithriel's Berries: the creature is treated as dead. Its "On death" effect triggers, and its owner loses its morale and all its equipment. Then it revives in place.

Official rulings

Answers from Parker Jones on interactions the rulebook doesn't spell out. The online table follows these. Last updated October 24, 2026.

• Equipment like "+1 attack, if range type +3": a matching creature gets +3 in total, not +4.
• Several attackers on one creature are never combined. The defender picks the order and takes them one at a time, counterattacking each it can reach. If it falls, the remaining attacks in that lane hit nothing.
• Morale and win conditions are checked right after combat resolves, and again after "On death" effects.
• Spells only affect your own cards. Training Camp swaps an item on one of your own creatures for any item in your hand (a weapon can come off and an accessory go on, as long as the new item’s slot is free), and Divine Destruction adds 5 to your own attack (when attacking) or your own counterattack (when defending).
• A Champion's "add 1 creature to your bench or field" can place it in bench slot 2 or 3 or an open lane, never the Champion slot. If both bench slots are full, it goes into an open lane.
• Dawn Seers' "choose 1 opposing card to set" sets one of the opponent's creatures that isn't already set. It gives no bonus to anything, but like any set creature it can't counterattack, and the set wears off at the start of its owner's next turn. Because only one creature per player can be set at a time, if that player already had a creature set, that set ends and its bonus is lost.
• "First combat phase" effects (Beastmaster, Dragonblood, Lithriel) apply in the controller's first combat phase after the creature enters the field.
• A set creature's bonus is always on while it's set.
• Sudden Death: each player starts it with 1 morale, so the next morale loss (a fallen creature or an open-lane hit) ends the duel.
• Warrior's Bane is single use. The first time its creature attacks another creature, that attack can't be counterattacked, and then the Bane is discarded. Attacking an open lane doesn't use it up.
• Nature's Blessing gives +3 defense to any creature, as its text says.
• A Pirate's Life: just draw 2 support cards. Nothing is discarded first.
• The "Midway Journey" in the rulebook FAQ is Road Sanctuary.
• Resting Fortress redirects one of your opponent's attacks, not a counterattack. Only the defending player can cast it. To stop counterattacks, use Whispering Winds.
• Reforge always swaps: the creature you take from your deck replaces one on bench 2 or 3, and that one goes back into your deck. It never fills an empty slot, and it can't swap out your Champion.
• Online pace: Live matches give 2 minutes per turn plus a 5-minute bank, and three timeouts forfeit. Daily matches give 24 hours per move, and two missed moves forfeit.
• Leaving a live match: if a player is away from the table for 2 minutes, their opponent can claim the win. Conceding, or leaving for good, counts as a loss.