Glossary

Neuroscape TCG terms, defined

Every keyword, attribute and mechanic in plain language. Need the icons too? See the visual legend.

Structure

Arena
Where characters and the gear attached to them are played.
Cache
Where cards and abilities wait before they take effect. It resolves from the top down, so the last thing added is the first to happen.
Cyberdeck
Your main deck: 50 to 255 cards, none of them RAM and none of them a mainframe. It is a minimum with a very high ceiling rather than a fixed size.
Mainframe
The neural computer you play with, in its own zone from the start of the game. It carries synergy effects and three slots for protocols.
Mainframe slot
One of the three places a protocol can attach to a mainframe. Once all three are filled nothing else can attach until one is cleared.
Purge
Where cards go when they are purged — out of the game, not merely out of play.
RAM bank
The zone installed RAM sits in. RAM in your bank is either refreshed (upright, ready to spend) or running (rotated, already spent this turn).
RAM deck
A second deck of exactly 25 RAM cards. You install from it rather than drawing from it, and its cards never enter your hand.
Recycle bin
Where cards go once they are used or destroyed.
Sideboard
Up to 12 cards plus up to one extra mainframe, held outside your deck. Between games of a match you may swap any of them into your cyberdeck or mainframe, as long as the result is still legal.

Attributes

Attack and defense
A character's two combat numbers, in the bottom-left corner: attack above, defense below.
Attack channel
Which health total a character's attack damages. A red attack value takes bioframe health; a blue one takes mainframe health. The colour is the rule, so this site prints the channel as a word as well.
Bioframe health
One of your two health totals, starting at 20. Reaching zero or below eliminates you, whatever your mainframe health is.
Faction
A card's allegiance, shown as an icon in the bottom-right corner. A card may carry several, or a blank hex meaning none.
Faction requirement
Synergy a card demands before you may play it, printed top-right as one icon per point. It is checked when the card is played and never again.
Faction synergy
What your board supplies: each persistent card you control with a visible faction icon provides synergy for that faction. Mainframes and face-down cards provide none.
Gear port
A named position on a character where gear attaches — Head, Left Arm, Right Arm or Body. Some characters have fewer than four, some none. Each port has a level from 1 to 3, and a port takes gear of its own level or lower.
Iconic
A word in a card's typeline. You may only control one copy of a given iconic at a time — a second cannot be played, copied, or taken control of while the first is out. Your deck may still hold four.
Mainframe health
Your other health total, also starting at 20 and also lethal on its own. In a 2v2 game each team shares one pair of totals.
RAM cost
What a card costs to play, paid by running that much RAM in your bank. RAM spent on a character is committed to it rather than merely run.

Abilities

Activated ability
An ability you pay for, by running the character, running RAM, or both. A character may use one until its abilities are rebooted, and a running character cannot use any.
Commit
To move RAM out of your bank and under a character, where it stays while the character is in play. If it leaves, RAM is pulled from your bank automatically to replace it.
Force quit
To destroy your own character, program or gear during the force quit step of your initialize phase — the only moment the game allows it. RAM committed to it comes back refreshed rather than running.
Instability
What happens when a character is short of committed RAM at your system check. Roll a d20 for each character and program you control, lowest cost first: 0–10 destroys it, 11–20 spares it.
Passive ability
A continuous effect that holds while the card is in play and stops the moment it leaves.
Persistent
A card that stays in play once it is there — characters, gear, protocols and environments. Persistents are what supply faction synergy.
Reboot
To make a character's abilities usable again. It happens on your refresh step, alongside refreshing.
Refresh
To stand a run card back upright, which happens to everything you control during your initialize phase.
Run
To rotate a card 90° clockwise. Running RAM is how you pay; running a character is how it attacks or pays for an ability.
Swift check
The window where players may respond, opened whenever a card is played or an ability activated, and at three points in combat. Only activated abilities and cards with SWIFT may be played into one.
Triggered ability
An ability that fires by itself when its condition is met — when, whenever, or on a named step. It opens no swift check and cannot be responded to.

Keywords

Counter
To remove a card or ability from the cache so it never resolves. What was countered goes to its owner's recycle bin.
MALICIOUS
Gear that may be attached to any character in play, including an opponent's — which is usually the point.
OVERRUN
A blocked attacker with OVERRUN pushes damage above the blockers' total defense through to the defending player.
PSYCHOSIS
Gear that destabilises its host. Whenever the character attacks or runs, its controller rolls a d20 against the character's total psychosis: equal or higher passes, lower deals the character's attack value to its own controller and the action fails.
SWIFT
This card may be played during any swift check, on any player's turn.
Tether
Gear joining two characters through their ports. It follows a character that leaves play, and is destroyed if one of the two changes controller.
TROJAN
A protocol attached face down to any player's mainframe slot, for 2 RAM. Its ability turns it face up on a later swift check and sends it to the recycle bin as part of the cost.

Nothing matches that.