About This Game

Sylvan Tactics is a card-battling chess game. Your pieces move in familiar ways from chess, but the cards in your hand decide who takes the field, what they can do, and when they strike. There is no checkmate: Kings have Health, and you win by bringing your rival's to zero.

Free to play on Windows and macOS. No deckbuilding required and no pay-to-win card purchases. Play with a shared deck of 80 cards, or try Draft Mode where each player picks from the available card pool before the game begins.

Learn in a Guided Match, test yourself against a CPU opponent, then challenge a friend!

• Moves you already know. Every piece uses their chess-standard movement lines, except for captures.

• Cards put pieces on the board. Deploy Mercenaries from your hand as your Rook, Bishop, or Knight, each with its own Strength and ability.

• Resolve combat through adjacent attacks. Mercenaries each have different Strength values. When you make an attack, that value determines if you kill or only wound your target. Wounded targets fall to any later attack.

Sigils are your only resource. You awaken one more each turn, up to a max of six, and spend them to play cards, move, and attack. Each turn your first move costs 1 Sigil, your second costs 2 and your third costs 3, and attacks climb the same way. Since board actions share the same resource as cards, you will need to balance aggressive board tactics with your card economy.

76 unique cards make up an 80-card deck that both players draw from: Mercenaries, Actions, Battlefields and Equipment. Riposte cards can be played on your opponent's turn: keep Sigils in reserve and spring the trap. Swap places with an allied piece with the mole's Backdoor ability. Or bring a nearby allied piece along with you on your move with the wolf's Pack Leader ability. Surprise your opponent with actions that break the rules of chess.

Bring in your Queen once per game: she enters with one Health for every Sigil you invoke, up to six. Equip your units or partner them with other Mercenaries to augment their abilities or increase their raw Strength. March a Pawn to the far row and it gets promoted - any Mercenary card from your hand, at no cost.

Every unit you lose costs your King 1 HP of morale damage, but morale alone can never finish a King. Someone has to land the final blow with an attack from an adjacent square. Stronger units are key here, because they deal damage to the King's Health equal to their Strength value. Two direct hits from a 5-Strength Mercenary can end the game.

• Guided Match: learn the rules by playing, one step at a time.

• Play vs CPU: Easy, Normal or Hard, with optional rule tips on Easy. Leave mid-match and pick it up later.

• Play with friends: host or join an online match.

• Draft mode: for experienced players. Take turns picking from shared packs to build your own deck of 40 cards, then play it against a friend or the CPU.

• And more modes coming soon...

Play the demo now!