Guardians

About this board game

Guardians is a collectible card game for 2–4 players, with games lasting about 45 minutes. It plays more like a board game than a traditional card game, combining hidden movement, strongholds, terrain, and detailed creature combat.

Each player begins with a powerful Guardian featuring special abilities. Three stronghold cards are placed in front of it, providing bonuses, while three empty spaces ahead of the strongholds receive terrain cards. These spaces connect with the other players’ spaces to create the shared board.

Creatures can be placed beneath shields at a stronghold, keeping them hidden from opponents. Only creatures under a shield can move, and they may travel up to two spaces subject to restrictions. Because each shield has a limit, players cannot build an army of unlimited size.

When armies meet, Guardians’ combat system comes into play. Players take the creatures from beneath their shields to form combat hands, then secretly choose creatures to reveal against one another. The stronger creature covers the weaker one, and the process continues until one player has creatures remaining in hand to reinforce earlier battles.

Modifiers affect the outcome, and every stack of creatures must be checked to determine its winner. Losing creatures are discarded. Once each individual battle is resolved, the total strength of both armies is compared; the weaker army must retreat, or the attacker retreats in the event of a tie.

• Control all six lands between the strongholds.
• Destroy five opposing shields.
• Destroy the opposing Guardian.

Any one of these conditions wins the game. Guardians was followed by a revised edition, Guardians Revised Edition, and has three expansions: Dagger Isle, Drifter’s Nexus, and Necropolis Park.