Location Rules

How Location Cards Work

Location cards set a mood. We designed them to have art that reflects our vision of the lore of Zun. They are also easy to distinguish from rune cards — which is good because they normally belong in their own deck.

• Each Location comes from its own deck and has unique rules which affect everyone while active
• On your turn, you may skip your action phase to replace any active Locations with a new one
• There are other ways to affect Location cards, such as using certain rune cards
• Only one Location can be active at a time, except of course for special card effects!

Card Challenge Rating

Each Location card has a set of diamonds (or skulls) at the top to represent its challenge rating.

These ratings are only a guide, but they could help you choose the Locations you want available before you start your next game.

Keywords

Locations may have bold keywords in parentheses that follow the same rules as the keywords with rune cards (currently, only immune is a Location keyword).

Effect Timing

Each effect on a Location card is limited by the bold time given before its non-bold text. There may be multiple effects during a single time, and there may also be multiple times when different effects occur.

Temporary Rune Card Areas

Some Location cards describe within their effects the creation of a temporary rune card area that it uses while the Location is active. These rune cards are often discarded once the Location that called for them is discarded.

You may organize these sets of rune cards as you like. We recommend stacking them in a pile to save table space, but that’s up to you.

Normal Rules

Location travel isn’t precise and often produces unexpected results. This is the official way Locations are meant to be played, but feel free to try some alternate game modes or house rules!

• Start the game with an active Location
• Players may skip their action phase to replace any active Locations with a new one
• Certain powerful rune cards may be used to manipulate Location cards

Setup

After you deal out cards to players but before the first player takes their turn, shuffle all desired Location cards into a separate deck. Then, flip over the top Location card from its deck and play it, dealing with any immediate effects.

Changing Locations

You may discard any current Locations and play a new Location by choosing to skip your action phase. To do so:

• At the start of your turn, after you deal with your start of turn effects and you go past the mulligan step, but before you can start playing Actions, you may play a Location card. Playing Location cards normally can only occur at this point.

• To play a Location, you must discard any currently active Location card first. Deal with any effects that may occur when discarding the active Location before you finish discarding it.

• Flip over the top Location card in the Location deck and place it in a central location or directly in front of you while still out of the way of any rune cards.

• Once played, the Location card’s effects resolve and begin affecting players immediately as written.

• After playing a Location card this way, you must skip the following action phase on your turn.

Using Rune Cards

We’ve marked several rune cards that can manipulate Location cards in case you want to change Locations but you don’t want to skip your action phase. However, these rune cards are also powerful when used normally, so you might not always want to use them on Locations.

Here are the current rune cards that can be used this way, and their effects when used on Location cards

• Scramble: Discard any current Locations, shuffle the Location discard and deck together, then take the top card from the Location deck and play it

• Purge: Discard any current Locations, then take the top card from the Location deck and play it

• Scry: Discard any current Locations, peak at the top 3 cards from the Location deck, choose one to play, place the other two in any order on the bottom of the Location deck, then take the chosen Location card and play it

• Swap: Discard any current Locations, flip the Location discard and shuffle it so it can become the new Location deck, then flip the current Location deck and play the revealed Location card that’s now on top of the new Location discard

Simplified Rules

When you just want to learn how to play a new Location, or you want to make your entire game have a particular flavor, try this.

Play following the card text on the chosen Location only

• Only play with one Location for the entire game
• Players may not play a new Location or discard the current one, even when using other card effects

Tourist Rules

When you want to take a trip and turn your game into more of an adventure, try this.

Play using the Normal Rules above, except:

• During setup, select the Locations you want to visit and place them face-up in their own deck in the order of your choosing
• Any player may look at the Locations deck at any time but must keep the Location cards in order
• Each Location lasts 3 rounds; discard any active Location and play a new one at the end of every 3rd round
• Return discarded Locations to the bottom of the Location deck face-up so they may loop in order
• Players may not play a new Location or discard the current one, even when using other card effects

Questions?

Join our Discord server or email our support team to ask rule questions or volunteer your time to help others in the community, test future content, or contribute to the game’s development.