How to play Palworld TCG

The game in one minute

Two players each bring a 50-card main deck and a 10-card soul deck. Both start on 10 life. You deploy Pals to your base, build Structures, equip Gear and play Events, then attack — either your opponent's cards or your opponent directly.

You win when your opponent reaches 0 life or runs out of cards to draw. If both players would lose at the same moment, the game is a draw. Either player may concede at any point, and nothing in the game can prevent or force a concession.

One rule outranks everything else on this page: if a card's text and the rulebook disagree, the card wins.

Building a deck

Deck construction has exactly three limits, and they are worth learning as a set — everything else is open.

Exactly 50 cards

Not a minimum. The main deck is 50, no more and no fewer.

At most 4 with the same name

Counted by card name, so alternate printings of the same card share the limit.

At most 8 Lucky Pals

Cards carrying the Lucky Pal icon. This is the cap that shapes how much damage you can shrug off — see Taking damage.

A separate 10-card soul deck

Built alongside the main deck, not out of it. Souls are what you spend to play cards.

The five card types

Every card is one of five types, and the type decides where it goes and what it can do.

Pal

Creatures you deploy to your base. They attack, block, and can be assigned to Structures. A Pal is either a Normal Pal or a Lucky Pal, and counts as both its type and that subtype.

Structure

Deployed to your base to support you and your Pals. A Structure has durability where a Pal has power, and it never deals damage back to a Pal attacking it.

Gear

Deployed to your base to support your Pals.

Event

Single-use. It resolves, then goes to your graveyard.

Soul

Kept in a separate soul deck and moved into your soul area during the game. Souls are spent by resting them, not by discarding them.

Reading a card

A card carries up to a dozen pieces of information. These are the ones that change how it plays.

Cost

What you pay to play it. The background colour behind the cost is the card's colour.

Colour

Red, blue, green or purple. Some cards are colourless, which means they have no colour rather than a colour called colourless.

Element

Neutral, Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, Ground, Ice, Dark or Dragon. Neutral is an element, not the absence of one.

Power

Damage this Pal deals to Pals and Structures, and how much damage it can absorb before it dies. On a Structure the same number is called durability.

Strike

Damage this Pal deals to a player. Separate from power, and often very different.

Lucky icon

Referenced when you take damage, not when you attack. See Taking damage.

Quick icon

Marks a card or ability that can be used outside your own turn.

Work suitability

The kind of work a Pal is suited to. Card text refers to it by name in corner brackets.

Reminder text

Text in brackets explains an ability without changing it. It has no effect on the game.

Zones — where cards live

Each player has their own set of zones. Public zones can be inspected by both players; hidden zones cannot, though either player may always count the cards in any zone.

One zone is not yours: the resolution zone is shared, and it is where a card or ability sits while it is being resolved.

Base

Where your Pals, Structures and Gear sit. You may have at most 5 Pals here; go over and the excess is sent to the graveyard.

Deck

Hidden, and its order is fixed. Run out of cards and you lose.

Hand

Hidden from your opponent, visible to you, unordered.

Graveyard

Public and face up. Used cards and dead Pals end up here.

Soul deck

Your 10 souls before they enter play.

Soul area

Souls in play. They stand and rest like Pals do.

Exile

Cards removed from the game outright.

Setting up

Show your opponent the deck you are using, then shuffle it. Randomly pick one player, and that player chooses who goes first.

Both players put their souls in the soul deck. The player going second immediately moves one soul into their soul area — a small head start to offset going second.

Both draw five cards. Starting with the player going first, each player may redraw their whole hand once: shuffle it back, then draw five more. You get one redraw per game, and you cannot redraw a redraw.

Both players set life to 10, damage taken to 0, and all resources to 0. The player going first begins.

A turn, phase by phase

Every turn runs through five phases in the same order.

Stand phase

Stand everything you control — every card in your base and every soul in your soul area.

Draw phase

Draw one card. The rulebook states that the player going first skips this phase (§7.3.1); it does not say this applies only to the first turn, so treat the published wording as the authority and check the current rulebook before building around it.

Soul phase

Move 2 souls from your soul deck into your soul area. If fewer than 2 remain, move what is left.

Main phase

Where the game happens — see below.

End phase

Damage on every Pal and Structure resets to 0, and anything lasting “until end of turn” expires. Then the turn passes.

What you can do on your turn

During your main phase you may take these actions as many times as you like, in any order, until you choose to stop.

Play a card from your hand

Pay its cost and resolve it.

Use an activated ability

Costs appear in square brackets at the start of the ability.

Attack

Declare a battle with a Pal that is able to attack.

Pay 3 souls to draw a card

Once per turn, and available to every deck — the game's built-in way to convert unspent souls into cards.

Souls and paying costs

Souls are your economy. You gain 2 per turn from your soul deck, and you spend them by resting them — a rested soul is spent for the turn and stands again in your next stand phase.

Because souls come from a separate 10-card deck rather than from your main deck, you never have to choose between drawing a resource and drawing a threat. It also means your total economy across a game is bounded and known in advance.

Battle, step by step

A battle is one attack, resolved through five steps. Only the turn player starts battles.

1 · Attack declaration

Choose a standing Pal you control and rest it. You may target your opponent directly, or one of their resting Pals or Structures — a standing Pal is not a legal target unless something says otherwise. A Pal may attack the turn it arrives.

2 · Block declaration

The defender may rest one of their standing Pals to make it the target instead. That Pal and the attacker become each other's battle opponent.

3 · Quick step

The defender — and only the defender — may play Quick events and Quick abilities. This is the window where an attack gets answered.

4 · Damage

Against a Pal, both Pals deal damage equal to their power to each other. Against a Structure, only the attacker deals damage. Against a player, the attacker deals damage equal to its strike.

5 · End of battle

Battle-length effects expire and the turn player returns to their main phase.

Taking damage, and why Lucky Pals matter

Damage to a player is not subtracted from life directly, and this is the rule that most distinguishes the game.

When you take damage, you put the top card of your deck into your graveyard, one card per point of damage. If any card you turn over carries the Lucky Pal icon, the whole thing stops there: you lose no life at all. If you get through it without hitting one, you lose life equal to the damage.

So the 8-card Lucky cap is a defensive budget as much as a deckbuilding limit, every point of damage costs you deck as well as life, and a deck thinned by damage is a deck closer to running out — which is itself a way to lose.

When a Pal or Structure dies

A Pal or Structure with damage equal to or greater than its power or durability is put into its owner's graveyard. This is checked automatically, not chosen.

Damage does not carry across turns: at the end of every turn, all damage on all Pals and Structures resets to 0. A Pal that survived a battle is whole again by the next turn.

Formats and organised play

There is no rotation and no published banned list. Every card printed so far is legal in every format, which is what you would expect from a game five days old — this section will say something different the day that changes.

Organised play runs on the Bushiroad TCG Floor Rules, shared across all of the publisher's games rather than written for this one. They define two formats:

Constructed

You bring one deck you built yourself and play the whole tournament with it. Cards cannot be swapped in or out between rounds.

Limited

You build from a pool the tournament gives you — sealed product, opened on the day. The event's own rules say what that pool is.

Deck registration

An organiser may require your list in writing before play, and after registering you cannot change the deck.

Event-specific restrictions

An organiser may narrow the legal sets or add their own banned and restricted cards, and must announce that publicly before the event.

Assigning Pals to Structures

Some Structures put your Pals to work. Assigning rests a standing Pal — a Pal that is already resting cannot be assigned, and an assigned Pal is not available to attack or block until it stands again.

This is the trade the Structure economy runs on: board presence now, or the Structure's output instead.

Keywords

Keywords are shorthand for abilities that come up often. Each one means exactly what is written here — a card printing a keyword is printing that sentence.

Quick

Can be played during the quick step, on your opponent's turn.

On Deploy

Triggers when this card is deployed.

On Attack

Triggers when this card attacks.

On Assign

Triggers when this card is assigned to a Structure.

Brave N

On attack, this card's power increases by N until end of turn.

Serious N

On assign, choose a Pal; its power increases by N until end of turn.

Interrupt

A quick ability that nullifies your opponent's attack, paid for by discarding this card — with a soul, or with another card from hand.

Vigilance

Stands again at the end of your turn, so attacking does not leave it defenceless.

Taunt

Your opponent must attack this card if it is a legal target.

Stealth

This card cannot be blocked.

Retaliate

If this Pal dies in a battle, the Pal it was fighting goes to the graveyard too.

Nocturnal

While it is night, this card's power is 300 higher.

Breakthrough

If this card is attacking and kills the Pal it fought, its strike is dealt to that Pal's controller as damage.

Assault

This card may attack standing Pals, which nothing else can do.

Night

Night is a named game state that both players share and reference at the same time. Cards can turn it on, and cards care whether it is on — Nocturnal is the keyword built around it.

The official documents

Everything above is our reading of these. They are the authority, they are free, and they are worth going to for anything this page leaves open.

Quick Manual (PDF)

The publisher's illustrated beginner guide — the fastest way to a first game.

Playmat (PDF)

A printable mat with every zone in its official position.

Comprehensive Rules (PDF)

The full rulebook this page was written from. It settles anything this page leaves open.

Bushiroad TCG Floor Rules (PDF)

Tournament conduct, shared across every Bushiroad game — for judges, organisers and anyone entering an event.

Errata list

Corrections to printed cards. Errata apply in official play, unofficial play and casual games alike.

All official rules documents

The publisher's own index. Go here if any link above has moved — the PDFs carry upload dates in their addresses.