What is Achroma? - A Beginner’s Guide

 

A basic introduction to the world of Achroma

Achroma is a game for 2-6 players where there are 2 end goals possible - get yourself up to 30 shards or drain all of your opponents down to 0. 

What makes it unique among most card games is that what is effectively your life force is also your resource for playing cards; each card in the game has a shard value, shown by the number of filled shards in the hex, currently ranging from 1 to 6, on the front of the card and this tells you how much it costs to play it.

Setup

The playing field in Achroma is called your Canvas, your deck is your Palette and what most games call the Graveyard, or Discard pile, is referred to as your Dregs. At the start of the game you connect to other players via the free App (downloadable from your mobile app store) and it will pick someone at random to go first. You then all draw 5 cards to make your starting hand and off you go!




‘Standard’ rules in Achroma, known as Canvas format, are that you have a 30 card palette made up of 1 Legendary card, up to 4 Rare cards that are all different and the rest can be any combination of Uncommon or Common cards, as long as you only have a maximum of 2 copies of the same card. The rarity of a card is shown by the pattern, or colour, of its hex as shown below. 






All cards in your deck must also be from the same realm (so the symbols, shown below, on the top left of the card must all match) however Realmless cards, which have no symbol, can go in any Palette.






When you buy any Achroma product, namely any First edition or Collector’s edition boxes, you’ll get 2 palettes built ready to play Canvas format with right out of the box. Unlimited Edition boxes will give you all the cards you need to build either palette related to the faction on the box. 

There is also an alternative format which has a slightly different ruleset, called Heroes, however I’ll explore that in a later article. For now I’ll add the link for anyone who wants to look up more about it here.

Turn order

Each player’s turn is made up of 4 steps;

1) Start step: Draw or Trade - apart from the first player in a 1v1 game, at the start of your turn you have the option of either drawing a card or trading a card from your hand to add the shards it would’ve cost to play it to your shard bank.

2) Main step - This is where you can deploy characters, locations and objects as well as attack with any characters that were deployed last turn.

3) Resolve step - This is where you go through all cards on your canvas and either Gain, Drain or Steal shards depending on what symbol your cards have on them. Some cards have bonus resolve abilities depending on other factors. There’s also some cards which Block other players draining or stealing shards from your bank. 

4) End step: draw or trade - Same as the start step; draw a card or trade one to gain the shards instead. Note that, if you run out of cards to draw, you are forced to trade instead. If you then run out of cards in hand you would just play with the cards you still have on your Canvas.

It’s worth noting that you are only able to deploy 3 cards during your turn, with a few exceptions of cards which ‘Deploy for Free’ such as Cintimani Stone and the coloured runes like Isaz or Kaunan. Action cards can also be deployed at any point on your turn; from before you decide to draw and trade at the beginning right up until after you’ve drawn or traded at the end, however these still count towards your 3 card limit.

Further information

This was a rather quick run-through of the key points when it comes to Achroma. If you’re after any more information on how to read the cards, the link below will take you to the Achroma website which has all the information you’ll need. Further down the page there’s also a list of all the Keywords and what they do.


If you do wish to purchase product from the Achroma website I’ve now set up an affiliate link that will get you 5% off your purchases. Simply follow the link below or use the code ‘antinomy93’ when you checkout.

See ya real soon folks! 









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