Chaotic Trading Card Game

Each player constructs the deck they want to use before starting the game. A deck may contain a number of Creatures (as above), with 1 Mugic and 1 Battlegear per Creature. Additionally, each player constructs a Location deck of 10 cards and an Attack deck of 20 cards. Each card is limited to 2 copies of it (by name) in a player's deck.

Some cards have other deckbuilding restrictions:

• If a card is "Unique," only one copy of it can be in a player's deck.
• If a card is "Loyal" or states "(This card) cannot enter mixed armies," then it may not be used unless all of the player's Creatures are from the same Tribe.
• Only one "Legendary" card may be in a player's entire deck.
• Each attack card has a build point value from 0-5, with more powerful attacks having higher build point values. The sum of all build point values of cards in a player's attack deck may not exceed 20.

Creature Cards are cards that players choose to make up their armies. These cards have up to six possible background colors based on the "tribe" with which creature is associated. The tribes are listed as "OverWorld" (Blue), "UnderWorld" (Red), Danian (Brown), Mipedian (Yellow), M'arrillian (black), and creatures unaffiliated with any tribe, called "Tribeless" (White). Certain creatures have abilities that are either active at all times ("Innate"), activated at will, triggered by certain circumstances or events, or activate when specific creatures are on the field ("Brainwashed"). Unlike the actual game, the animated series depicted creatures having to manually carry all of their Battlegear and their Mugic with them.

Each creature in an Army is permitted to be equipped with one Battlegear Card, as opposed to the animated series, where players may equip their creatures with spectral viewers and one additional Battlegear. Battlegear are often depicted as weapons, equipment, or vehicles that the equipped creature can utilize. Each creature can only use their own Battlegear in a battle. When a creature is defeated, both it and the Battlegear card are sent to the discard pile. At the beginning of the game, Battlegear is set underneath a player's Creature Card, face-down. When the creature engages in battle, the Battlegear Card is flipped face-up and revealed, where its effects will activate.

Each player builds a 10-card location deck. At the beginning of the game, each player's location Deck is shuffled and placed face down on the table. At the beginning of a player's turn, that player flips over the top card of their location deck. Location cards are used to determine Initiative (who attacks first in battle), either by Tribe, Element, or Discipline. If both creatures in battle are from the same Tribe or have the same score for the Discipline in question, then the attacking player has the initiative. Location cards also have a second ability which will modify the game (usually during combat) in some other way.

Damage is dealt through the use of attack cards. Each player must have a 20-card attack deck, which is shuffled and placed face down. Players draw 2 attack cards at the beginning of the game, and always have at least 2 attack cards in their hand at all times. When it is a player's turn to "strike", they draw a third attack card and select one of the 3 attack cards to play. A player must play an attack card during each of their turns. Damage to creatures is calculated by the following equation.

Total Damage dealt with 1 attack card = Base Damage + Elemental Damage + Attack card Text Box Damage + Creature Card Text Box Damage + Battlegear Damage (If applicable) + Location Damage (If applicable)

The players then alternate striking each other creatures in a battle, starting with the creature that has the initiative. A Creature is defeated when it sustains damage greater than or equal to its current energy.

Each player selects the same number of Mugic cards as creatures that they are using. Mugic cards are held in the player's hand with the three attack cards. Mugic cards will either be tribe associated (meaning only one tribe can use them), and have the tribe color in the caption boxes, or they can be generic (meaning any tribe can use them). Creatures must have Mugic counters greater than or equal to the required cost on the Mugic card in order to use it. Generic, Overworld, Underworld, Danian, and Mipedian mugic cards cost 3 or less mugic counters. M'arrillian mugic cards can cost up to 10 mugic counters. Sometimes mugic cards are affected by the location, for example, in Wood Pillar, Overworld mugic costs 1 extra mugician.

Each player lays out their creature cards in a triangular formation at the start of the game. This is called their Army. Officially, Armies can have 1, 3, 6 or 10 creatures in them, though sizes of 15, 21, or even 28 or larger are possible if players have enough cards. The different sizes correspond to different degrees of difficulty: battling with 1 or 3 creatures is considered an "easy to play" match, suitable for new Chaotic players, with 6 and 10 being the "standard" sizes and larger sizes being for more advanced matches. (The animated series once featured a 105-versus-105 size, with each side using 105 creatures; however, this battle was never finished, as both players were undeniably exhausted.) Players place their creatures face-up in the formation of an inverted triangle, with the bases of the two triangles placed against each other. Players also select one Battlegear per creature to equip to them.

On a player's turn, they may move each of their creatures once per turn, but only one space on the playing mat each unless otherwise specified. A battle is initiated when a player moves their creature onto a space containing an opponent's creature on the playing mat. Each player may initiate one battle per turn.

A "burst" occurs when a player plays an attack card, mugic card, or a Creature or Battlegear's trigger abilities are activated. This is similar to the "stack" from Magic: The Gathering. Once a burst has started, players alternate adding to the burst with their own abilities or effects. Once both players agree to stop adding to the burst, the effects are resolved starting from the last card effect or ability down to the card that started the burst.

There are very little differences between the official rules and the rules of the OCG. The OCG had a deck composed only of cards with the discipline symbols on them called the "Discipline Deck". The attacking player turns over the top card of the "Discipline Deck" to determine the type of contest between the opposing creatures. The creatures's discipline stats are enhanced or reduced by the battlegear attached, or the location. The players then draw "Power Cards" that have multiples of five printed on the cards. The players take turns to draw power cards which reduce the stat of the selected discipline of the opposing creature. The first player to reduce the selected stat of the opponent's creature to zero is the winner of the battle. These battles continue until one player has defeated all of his or her opponent's creatures. At the end of each battle, if an engaged creature has gained elementals during battle it loses that/those elements.

Like most trading card games, booster packs are sold to distribute cards. The booster packs of this game contain nine cards per pack, which includes two foil cards. The current MSRP for the booster packs is $2.40. Two covers were originally made, one with Blugon and Khugar on it, and the other with Ibiaan and Siado. The covers for the Zenith of the Hive set are Kelvedran and Illexia, while the covers for Silent Sands feature Melke and Gnarlus. All the Dawn of Perim and M'arrilian Invasion booster packs contained two rare cards in every pack, but as of Alliances Unraveled there are three rare cards in each pack.

Two starter decks were released alongside the initial set, "Dawn of Perim: Overworld" and "Dawn of Perim: Underworld". As their names suggest, the decks contain only one type of creature card. Each starter deck contains: 52 cards (although only 48 cards would actually be used to play the game), with two non-game cards within the 52 cards; a rulebook, and a game mat. Three new decks (one for each tribe) were released with the M'arrilian Invasion set in September 2008. Unlike Dawn of Perim and M'arrillian Invasion, Secrets of the Lost City does not show the tribe of the starter deck on the box. Each starter deck contains three rare cards and one super rare card, chances being a one out of five that the super will be replaced with an ultra rare card.

Chaoticgame.com announced that two demo decks, playmats, and a rulebook can be provided free at the Chaotic Website in PDF format to give players a chance to learn and play the game before purchase. The demo cards have no chaotic code- thus cannot be submitted online- and have a "DEMO" watermark over each card's image.