How to play Neuroscape TCG

The game in one minute

Neuroscape is played by two or more people, each bringing a mainframe, a cyberdeck and a RAM deck. Everybody starts on two separate health totals — 20 bioframe and 20 mainframe — and the whole game is an argument about those two numbers.

You install RAM to pay for things, deploy characters into the arena, bolt gear onto them, run programs, and attack. Which health total an attack damages is printed on the card: a red attack value takes bioframe health, a blue one takes mainframe health.

A player whose bioframe health or mainframe health falls to zero or below is eliminated — either one is enough. The last player or team standing wins, and a card effect that says you win the game does exactly that.

Building a deck

A constructed deck is four things, and only two of them are a matter of judgement. The mainframe is one card and the RAM deck is a fixed pile; the cyberdeck and the sideboard are where the deckbuilding happens.

One mainframe

It starts the game in your mainframe zone rather than shuffled into anything, and you may only ever begin a game with one in play.

A cyberdeck of 50 to 255 cards

Everything that is not a RAM card and not a mainframe. It is a minimum with a very high ceiling rather than a fixed size, so a legal deck is anything from 50 upwards.

A RAM deck of exactly 25 RAM cards

Exactly 25 — a fixed count, not a maximum. RAM is installed from this deck during your turn and is never drawn into your hand.

A sideboard of up to 12 cards, plus up to one more mainframe

It may hold nothing at all. Between games of a match you may move any of those 13 cards in or out of your cyberdeck and mainframe, as long as the deck you end up with still obeys every rule here.

At most 4 copies of any one card

Counted across the cyberdeck and the sideboard together, not four in each — unless a card says otherwise itself.

Iconic cards are not an exception

A deck may hold four copies of an iconic card like any other. The restriction is on the table, not in the deck: you may only control one copy of a given iconic in play at a time.

The five card types

Every card is one of five types, and the type decides where it goes and what it can do. Types are subdivided further — a program is a script, a protocol or an environment — and cards also carry tags.

Character

The soldiers of the simulation. They attack, block and use abilities, and they are persistent — once played they stay in the arena until something removes them. Attack is the upper number in the bottom-left corner and defense the lower one. Most characters have ports for attaching gear.

Gear

Attaches to a character and generally improves it or gives it a new ability. A piece of gear needs a port of a matching kind and level, and no RAM is committed to it. If the character leaves play, its gear is destroyed with it.

Program

Digital processes, in three kinds. A script resolves once and goes to the recycle bin. A protocol attaches to a mainframe slot and sits there providing a passive effect. An environment is global, affects everybody, and only one can be in play at a time — a second one destroys the first.

Mainframe

The neural computer you play with, in front of you from the start. It has three slots for protocols and a set of synergy effects that switch on once you control enough cards and enough faction synergy.

RAM

The resource. It lives in its own 25-card deck, is installed straight into your RAM bank, and is never held in hand or played from it.

Factions, synergy and requirements

Most cards belong to a faction, shown as an icon in the bottom-right corner. A card may carry several icons, or a blank hex meaning no faction at all — and a card with two different icons counts towards both factions at once.

Synergy

What your board supplies. Persistent cards you control with a visible faction icon — characters, gear, some programs — each provide synergy for their faction. Mainframes provide none, and neither do face-down cards such as trojans.

Faction requirement

What a card demands before you may play it, printed in the top-right corner as one icon per point of synergy required. Two Cybernetic icons means you must already control two Cybernetic persistents.

Requirements are checked once

Only when the card is played. A card already on the cache or in play stays there even if the synergy that let you play it disappears.

Mainframe synergy effects

Most need two conditions at once: a number of cards or tokens in play, and an amount of faction synergy. They switch on the moment both are met and switch off again the moment they are not.

The zones

Each player has their own set of zones. Only the environment is shared, and it is shared in the strong sense: one environment card is in play across the whole table, whoever put it there.

Setting up

1. 1Shuffle both decksThe cyberdeck and the RAM deck are shuffled and placed face down. Your mainframe starts in its own zone, face up and in play.
2. 2Roll for turn orderPlayers roll a d20 until somebody rolls higher. In a 1v1 game the winner chooses whether to go first or second. In 2v2 the teammates add their rolls together, the winning team chooses, and turn order then runs in an hourglass: you, the opponent facing you, your teammate, the opponent facing them.
3. 3Draw fiveEverybody draws five cards from their cyberdeck. RAM is not drawn — it is installed later, from its own deck.
4. 4Mulligan once, if you want toPut any number of cards from your hand on the bottom of your cyberdeck in any order, then draw that many replacements. Mulligans happen one at a time in turn order, and each player gets exactly one.
5. 5The first turn is short by oneThe player going first draws or installs only one card on their first turn instead of two. Everyone else, and every turn after, gets the usual two.

The four phases

A turn is four phases in a fixed order. The first is bookkeeping, the second is when you commit to the board, the third is the fight, and the fourth clears the table.

1. 1InitializeFour steps, in order. System check: if your characters are short of committed RAM your mainframe becomes unstable — see below. Refresh: stand every persistent you control back up and reboot its abilities, RAM in your bank included. Draw/install: take two cards in total from your cyberdeck, your RAM deck, or one from each. Force quit: destroy any of your own characters, programs or gear, which is the only moment in the game you may do that.
2. 2DeployPlay characters, programs and gear, and activate abilities. When you are done, everybody checks for effects that trigger on netcheck.
3. 3CombatDeclare attackers, then blockers, then deal damage, with a window for swift actions before each. The whole phase is on its own page below.
4. 4ResetOn-turn-end abilities trigger, damage is wiped off every character, effects that lasted until end of turn stop, and the turn passes.

The draw/install step is worth reading twice, because it is one budget rather than two: two cards in total, in any combination. You may take them one at a time and decide the second after seeing the first.

RAM

RAM is what you pay with, and it behaves nothing like a card in hand. It is installed from the RAM deck straight into your RAM bank, and it never passes through your hand at all.

Installing

Up to two during your draw/install step, out of the two cards that step gives you. Card effects can install more, and there is no cap on how much RAM you may install in a turn that way.

Running it

You pay a cost by running RAM — rotating it 90° clockwise. Running is the payment; the RAM stays in your bank.

Refreshing

Every piece of running RAM stands back up during the refresh step of your initialize phase, ready to be spent again.

Committed RAM

RAM spent on a character is not merely run — it moves out of the bank and sits under that character for as long as it is in play. When the character leaves, the RAM goes back to its owner's bank running.

Keeping characters paid for

If committed RAM leaves play, or an effect raises a character's cost, RAM is pulled from your bank automatically to cover the difference — refreshed RAM first, then running. If you cannot cover it, the character stays in play underpaid, and that is what instability checks for.

Force quit is the exception

RAM committed to a card you force quit returns to your bank refreshed rather than running, which is why force quitting your own card is not simply a loss.

Instability

The system check at the top of your turn asks one question: is every character you control paid for? If any of them is short of committed RAM, your mainframe becomes unstable and the board starts rolling dice.

What you roll

A d20 for each character and each program you control — not only the underpaid one.

0–10

That card crashes and is destroyed.

11–20

That card survives.

The order

Lowest cost first, working upwards. Where two cards cost the same you choose which to roll for, and you must say which card a roll is for before you make it.

Combat

Combat is three decisions with a window for interruptions before each: who attacks, who blocks, and then all the damage at once.

1. 1Declare attackersThe active player picks refreshed characters to attack with, and every one of them runs — rotates 90° clockwise. You may not attack yourself or your own teammate. A character with PSYCHOSIS runs first and then makes its check; failing it leaves the character running but no longer attacking.
2. 2Declare blockersAnybody being attacked — or whose teammate is — may block with characters that are not running and have nothing stopping them blocking. Several characters may gang up on one attacker.
3. 3Deal combat damageAll damage, to players and to characters on both sides, is dealt simultaneously. An attacker held by several blockers has its damage divided among them however its controller likes.
4. 4End of combatEnd-of-combat triggers happen, and the turn moves on to its reset phase.

There is no phantom blocking. If a declared blocker is run or leaves play before damage, the attacker it was blocking counts as unblocked again rather than as blocked by nothing.

Damage and the two health totals

Every player tracks two totals that start at 20: bioframe health, which is the body, and mainframe health, which is the network. They are not interchangeable, and losing either one loses the game.

Red attack values

Damage a player's bioframe health.

Blue attack values

Damage a player's mainframe health. The colour is the rule, not decoration — which is why this site prints the channel as a word beside every attack value.

Unblocked attackers

Deal their attack damage to the player they attacked, in that player's matching health pool.

OVERRUN

An attacker with this keyword that gets blocked pushes any damage above the blockers' total defense through to the defending player. Against a blocker that cannot be damaged, it still assigns damage equal to that blocker's defense and the remainder goes through.

Damage does not last

Damage marked on characters is cleared during the reset phase at the end of every turn. Damage to a player's health totals is permanent.

In a 2v2 game

The team shares one pair of totals, 20 and 20. Damage to either teammate comes off the shared pools, and the team is eliminated if either reaches zero.

The cache and swift checks

The cache is where cards and abilities wait before they take effect, and it settles the order they take effect in. Anything played or activated goes on top of it, and it empties from the top down — last in, first out.

Swift check

The window where responses may be made. One opens whenever a player plays a card or activates an ability, and at three points during combat.

Swift actions

What may be played into one: every activated ability, and any card carrying the SWIFT keyword.

Passing

Each player in turn order gets a chance to respond, and a response opens another check. Only when everybody passes in a row does the cache resolve.

Triggered abilities are not responses

They happen whenever their condition is met, at any point in the turn, and they open no swift check for anybody to answer.

An ability outlives its source

Once an ability is on the cache it is no longer attached to the card that made it. Destroying the character does not stop the ability it already activated.

Counter

Removes a card or ability from the cache so that it never resolves. What was countered goes to its owner's recycle bin.

The three kinds of ability

Characters, gear, programs and mainframes all carry abilities, and every one of them is one of three kinds. Which kind it is decides when you may use it and whether anybody can answer it.

Activated

You pay a cost to use it: running the character, running an amount of RAM, or both, plus anything else the card names. A character may only activate one ability until its abilities are rebooted on your refresh step, and a character that is already running cannot activate at all. Activated abilities are swift, so they may be used on anybody's turn during a swift check.

Triggered

Happens by itself when its condition is met, usually written as when, whenever, or on a named step. It fires whatever stage of the turn it is, opens no swift check, and cannot be responded to. Where several would fire at once, the active player picks the order they go on the cache.

Passive

A continuous effect that is simply true while the card is in play, and stops the instant the card leaves. Where a passive has conditions, it stops as soon as they stop being met.

Keywords

Words printed on a card that stand for a rule. Each of these is defined by the rulebook itself rather than by the card that carries it.

SWIFT

This card may be played during any swift check, on anybody's turn, as well as in your own deploy phase.

OVERRUN

When this attacker is blocked, damage beyond the blockers' total defense carries through to the defending player.

PSYCHOSIS N

Gear that destabilises whoever wears it. Whenever a character carrying psychosis attacks or runs, its controller rolls a d20 against the character's total psychosis: roll that number or higher and the action proceeds; roll under and the character deals its attack value to its own controller and the action fails. A failed attack never happened, though the character stays run. Costs already paid for a failed ability are not refunded.

TROJAN

A protocol that attaches face down to any player's open mainframe slot. Its activated ability may be used on any swift check after the turn it was played, turning it face up; going to the recycle bin is part of that cost. Trojans cost 2 RAM to play, and being face down they provide no faction synergy.

MALICIOUS

This gear may be attached to any character in play, not only your own — which is the point, because malicious gear usually makes its host worse.

Iconic

Printed in the typeline. You may only control one copy of a given iconic at a time, so a second copy cannot be played, copied or taken control of while the first is out. It is not a deckbuilding limit: a deck may hold four like any other card.

Tether

Gear that joins two characters through their gear ports, doing something different on every tether card. It follows a character that leaves play, and is destroyed if one of the two changes controller.

Reversed

Some tarots — the scripts that need Mystic synergy — can be played reversed when an effect you control allows it, which swaps the pink words in the ability for the pink words in its reversed section.

Gear ports

Gear does not cost RAM and it does not go anywhere on its own: it bolts onto a character through a port. Ports are named positions rather than a budget, so the question is never how many a character has spare but whether it has the right one.

The four ports

Head, Left Arm, Right Arm and Body. Not every character has all four; some have fewer and some have none at all.

Matching

Gear with a port on top of the card attaches to the body port at the bottom of a character, and so on around the frame. A spare arm will not take a head.

Levels 1 to 3

Each port has a level, shown as one, two or three gold tabs. A character's port must be the same level as the gear or higher — a level 1 arm takes level 1 gear and nothing above it.

Attaching

A valid character is named when the gear goes on the cache, and the gear attaches when it resolves. If the character leaves play, everything attached to it is destroyed.

Abilities from gear

Activated abilities granted by gear become the character's own while the gear is attached, and follow the same one-until-rebooted rule as its printed ones. They vanish the moment the gear does.

The official documents

Everything above is our reading of these. They are the authority, they are free, and they are worth going to for anything this page leaves open.

Neuroscape Rulebook V10.2 (PDF)

The full rulebook this page was written from. It settles anything this page leaves open.

Neuroscape TCG — the publisher's site

Where the rulebook is published, alongside the store finder and the publisher's own app. Go here if the link above has moved.