ERA Quick Start Guide
ERA is a competitive, player-vs-player card game where elemental dinosaurs, known as dinos, battle for dominance. The game is designed to be straightforward to learn but challenging to master, with an average game taking about 15-20 minutes.
Overview
Deck Construction
Each deck has:
- 3 unique dinos
- 3 crystals (elements matching the 3 dinos)
- 3 events (elements matching the 3 dinos)
- 27 other cards (actions/equipment)
Game Setup
- Place your 3 dinos and 3 crystals face down in front of you in 2 rows.
- Dinos go in the front row (closest to your opponent) and crystals behind them (closest to you).
- Shuffle your deck and place it face down, to the right of the dino row.
- Randomly determine which player goes first.
- Draw your initial hand of 6 cards.
- If you draw any events, set those aside and draw additional cards to replace them.
- You can mulligan if you like, drawing 1 less card each time.
- Once you have a hand you want to keep, shuffle any event cards you set aside back into your deck.
Core Game Concepts
- Exhaust: Cards on the battlefield (dinos and crystals) can be either Ready (default position) or Exhausted (turned sideways; used/activated); exhausted cards ready at the start of their controller's turn.
- Dinos exhaust when they attack, intercept, or suffer a wound.
- Crystals exhaust to produce energy (equal to 1 + their current number of charges).
- Events: Events are never drawn. If you would draw an event, instead reveal it and resolve its effects, then put it on bottom of your deck.
- If an event would leave your deck in any way other than being drawn, put it on bottom of your deck instead of anywhere else it would have gone.
- Crystals: To charge a crystal, during your turn, place a card from your hand face down under the crystal. You can only do this a maximum of once on each of your turns. You can charge a crystal that is already exhausted, but it won't produce an additional energy until the next time it exhausts.