Deck Construction

A player assembles their deck — their Army — prior to starting the game. A deck is made up of Troops, Gambits, and Dwellings.

Deck Size

Situation	Minimum	Maximum
Default (single territory)	30 cards	40 cards
Each additional Territory card	—	+10 cards

Note

There are ways around these limits — the Claw Empire's Orders Deck is a separate 10–15 card deck that sits outside your Army Deck entirely.

Declaring Allegiance

When building a deck you must declare an allegiance for your Army:

Allegiance	Army Ability card
Claw Empire	Orders Deck
Paw Coalition	Rebel / Rabble token
The Weald	Oldgrowth tokens
Hirelings	Gold tokens

Your deck must include the corresponding Army Ability card.

You may include cards from other factions in your deck — Paw cards in a Claw Empire deck, for example. Those outlier cards are subject to the Allegiance Rule.

The Allegiance Rule

A card that is not aligned with your declared allegiance costs +2 Provisions to play.

The surcharge applies for as long as the card is on the battlefield, since Provision costs are paid every Attrition Phase rather than once on play.

Hirelings and the Allegiance Rule

Hirelings are the exception, and which way it cuts depends on what you declared:

Your declared allegiance	Hireling cards in your deck
Claw Empire, Paw Coalition, or The Weald	No surcharge. Splashed Hirelings are played at their printed cost.
Hireling	The Allegiance Rule applies normally — every non-Hireling card in your deck costs +2.

In other words: individual Hirelings hired into someone else's army are unaligned mercenaries and cost what they cost. But if you commit to a Hireling company as your faction, you are an allegiance like any other, and bringing in Claw or Paw cards costs you the same +2 that everyone else pays.

Turncoat (parked)

WIP — revisit later

An earlier version of the Allegiance Rule let your opponent steal your off-faction draws: if you drew a card matching your opponent's allegiance, they could play it under their control for +2 its Provision cost before you could play or Forage it, and you would draw 1 additional card. This is parked in favour of the flat +2 surcharge above.

Card Rarity & Deck Limits

Rarity	Description	Default Deck Limit
Common	Basic Troops and Gambits — the rank and file of the battlefield	6 copies
Seasoned	Uncommon, more experienced Troops, Gambits, and equipment; slightly more powerful abilities or stats	4 copies
Renowned	Rare or elite Troops. Often powerful enough to turn the tide of a battle. Only one copy of a specific version may be on the battlefield at once.	2 copies