Wellkeeper: the long card game
Two keepers share a clearing of six fields around the old well. Whoever brings their sapling to bloom first wins. A game takes about 15 to 25 minutes. The mode is in beta.
Wellkeeper is played openly and in turns. There are no player life points and no stakes: your cards are never lost. And one important rule up front: rarity does not count here. A Mythic card is exactly as strong as a Common one.
Setup
- Clearing: your three fireplaces at the bottom (A1 to A3), the other keeper's at the top (B4 to B6), the well in the middle. Each ring field has a terrain, mirrored: both sides have the same.
- Deck: 16 cards from your album, at most 2 per motif, at most 2 support cards, at most 3 landscapes.
- Ember frame: the costs of all 16 cards add up to at most 30, with at most 2 cards costing 4.
- Start: 5 cards in hand, at least 2 cheap creatures are always included.
New here? Take a loan deck. Its cards only stay for that game.
Your turn
- Draw a card (not on the very first turn), at most 7 in hand.
- Embers: 1 from the campfire and 1 for each of your fireplaces that still burns, at most 4. Up to 2 embers keep glowing into your next turn. If you are 3 or more glow behind, the root power gives you 1 extra ember.
- Call: place creatures on one of your fireplaces. Wander: each creature moves 1 field per turn (from speed 6 up to 2). Leaving a field with an opposing creature costs 1 ember. At most 2 of your creatures per field.
- Put support (keeper cards) at the campfire, place a landscape on a ring field (different terrain for 3 days), once per turn put 1 glow into the fire for 2 embers.
- "Done". Until then you can take back everything since the last card you drew.
Dusk and glow
After both turns comes dusk: where creatures of both sides stand, they strike. Fallen creatures return under their deck. Whoever tends a field alone gets glow: the well 2 (from day 2), opposing fireplaces together at most 1 per dusk (from day 2). When a sapling reaches 5 glow, the Worldseed surge wakes: for the sapling that is not ahead, the well now gives 4.
Victory
10 glow at the end of a dusk means bloom. The sapling's stages: glimmer, first leaf (3), twig (5), crown (8), bloom (10). After day 12 the evening bell rings: then whoever has more glow wins. A tie: whoever tends the well, otherwise a draw.
Stats and abilities
A card's strike equals its might in the path duel; life is the card's life. Element edge: strike x1.25 to x1.35. Terrain: home element +2, an element beaten by it -1. The same family on a field and an element pair next to it give +1 each, at most +2 together. Every card's stats are in the card gallery.
Opponents
- Learning game with Funki
- AI in three levels: Sprout, Twig, Crown
- Friends, turn-based (24 hours per turn) or live
- Matchmaking against people with its own rating (starting at 1000). Live: 45 seconds per turn and a 3 minute time bank
Wins earn sparks within the shared daily cap. Fair: the server calculates everything, the seed's fingerprint is visible from the start and the seed itself at the end.
Still to come in the beta
Wildgrowth: open 4 fresh boosters, build a 12-card deck in 4 minutes and play with loan cards.
Milestones are already here: for your first learning game, 10, 50 and 100 cleanly finished games and more goals you get your own promo cards.
Where do I find Wellkeeper?
On the clearing below the picture ("Wellkeeper, beta"), in the arena below the path duel and under "Play".
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