How to play Seraphs & Serpents

What’s Inside (2 decks and 25 helpers · 129 cards)

Also needed: a handful of coffee beans.

Set Up the Duel (2 players · 30–45 minutes)

1. Toss for the deck (heads: the side with the youngest player takes the Covenant). Next game, even on another night, swap decks: toss only the first time you play together. Take your deck and Walls card: Jerusalem starts on 13 Walls, Babylon on 21.
2. Shuffle and draw 6. You may redraw 6, once: do it if fewer than 2 cost 1, 2 or 3. Then look at your top 2 cards: lay one face down on your Altar and put the other back on top.
3. The Deep takes the first day and skips its first draw. Darkness came first (Gen 1:2).

The Deep player is a storyteller, not a villain. Altar cards are the people’s offerings, not the people.

A Day (Your turn is called a day)

1. Morning, in order: stand up your cards, Altar too; each-morning powers; draw 1 (the Deep: 2 if it holds no cards, or only Answers that cost 2 or less); then the catch-up (panel 7).
2. Offering. You may lay 1 card from your hand face down on your Altar.
3. Work. Turn Altar cards sideways for 1 manna each, and play cards (day 3: 4 manna).
4. Go out. Turn characters sideways to attack (not on their first day).
5. Battle. See panel 5.
6. Evening. Damage heals; unspent manna is lost (Ex 16:20). Discard down to 7. The Deep: stand 1 spent Altar card for the Covenant’s day; it pays only for Answers and ◇ powers.

Battle (Strength against Heart)

1. Stand in the way. The other player may block with standing characters, 1 attacker each.
2. Each deals its Strength to the other, at the same time. Damage equal to or more than its Heart? It falls to its owner’s Wilderness.
3. An attacker with nobody in its way breaks Walls equal to its Strength. Resolve every fight first, including any “When … falls” powers; then unblocked attackers break Walls; then check for 0.

Winning (Two ways to win)

1. Break the Walls. Bring the other player’s Walls to 0. You win at once.
2. The Glory (Covenant only). Start your day with 4 different Holy Things in play, one the Ark, and you win before Morning. The glory of the LORD filled the Tabernacle (Ex 40:34).

Empty deck? Lose 2 Walls per card you can’t draw.

Be strong and courageous. Josh 1:9

Words to Know (The table)

Standing

upright, not sideways. Go out — attack: turn it sideways until your next Morning.

Stand in the way

block with a standing character, even one played today. It stays standing.

Altar

your face-down cards (you may look). Turn one sideways for 1 manna, even the day it is laid. Raise it up: once in your Work, pay a standing Holy Thing’s cost with other Altar cards to put it in play.

Manna

pays the cost in the top corner. ◇2 means pay 2. Unspent manna is lost at Evening.

Falls

damage equal to or more than its Heart. It goes to its owner’s Wilderness: the discard pile.

Walls

your life, 0 to 30. Catch-up — at your Morning, if your Walls have fallen 6 or more further from their start than the other side’s, draw 1 extra (Team Duel: a choice, on its card). Not on a Morning when the Deep’s empty-hand draw already gives it 1 extra.

Holy Thing, Stronghold

stays in play. Miracle, Act, Scheme — does what it says, then goes to your Wilderness.

Keywords (Keywords on the cards)

Heir of X

costs 1 less if you have X in play or in your Wilderness.

Giant

only a Giant-slayer, or 2 or more together, can stand in its way.

Giant-slayer

when a Giant battles this character, the Giant falls before it deals damage.

Heavenly, Army

only Heavenly or Army cards, or 2 or more together, can stand in its way.

Answer

play it in a pause (panel 4), even on the other player’s day, with Altar cards you left standing.

Return ◇n

in your Work, pay n manna to play it from your Wilderness. If a returned card would fall, it leaves the game.

Taken up

if it would fall, it goes to your hand.

Elder ( hourglass)

a character with YEARS on its plate. When it falls, its player draws a card.

Turned

a card can bring it over to the Covenant side.

Testimony, Answering the call

see panels 9–10.

Story Pairs (Each threat meets its match)

Most Deep cards name a Story pair: beat it with that card for a Testimony. Answering the call — its pair in play? A Covenant card costs 1 less (never below 1). Story moment — a card enters with its pair in play: read its story. A Story moment and a Testimony at once? Read the story once, then draw.

Story Pairs

Testimony

your Covenant card makes its pair fall, leave play, be Turned or stop working? Read its story aloud (anyone may); draw. Did the Deep character fall or leave play? The Deep draws too.

The battle is the LORD’s. 1 Sam 17:47

The Siege (1–2 players together · 25 min)

1. Shuffle the Covenant deck and draw 6 (you may redraw once). Jerusalem starts on 15. No Altar card. Babylon’s bean counts Days from 0.
2. Deal 19 Deep cards face down, not Leviathan. Shuffle it into the bottom 4: the Siege pile.
3. You go first. You never go out: stand in the Deep’s way, and use Miracles and powers.
4. The Deep’s day. Day +1. Its cards stand up and every Deep character goes out. Turn over Siege cards, free, until their costs total at least the Day (3 at most), reading each one’s name and plate aloud.
5. Deep cards choose your highest-cost card (you break ties) and skip what they can’t do. Win only when the Siege pile is empty and no Deep character is in play.

First Siege? Deal 15, not 19. Won the normal Siege? Next time deal 23.

2 players: deal 4 each. One card each Morning: take turns to draw it. Share one Offering; at Evening keep 5 each (Siege Rulings card).

The Long Ages (2–6 players · about 20 minutes)

1. Hide the leaflet; shuffle the Covenant deck (no sorting). Each takes a score card and a bean. The youngest reads first; readers go round by score card: each pair or solo player in turn.
2. The Reader draws a card in secret (no Strength and Heart? Draw again). Clues: 1 plate, without the number before YEARS (nothing else? skip clue 1), 2 relationship line, 3 story, 4 line under the name, 5 Bible reference. Skip a clue it doesn’t have, or one that uses a word of its name (not the, of, a), even shortened (Neh, Esth, Dan, 1 Sam).
3. Tap, call; two at once both score. Any name for it counts; for a group card, its own name (the Cherubim, the Mighty Men), not its type band.
4. Points for clues 1–5: 4, 3, 2, 2, 1. Wrong? Sit out this card. Nobody? The Reader scores 1. Then read the rest aloud. Before each card, the Reader names anyone 8 or more ahead of the second-lowest caller (not the Reader). They call only from clue 4. Most points after 3 cards each wins. Pairs, 3 players: Long Ages card.

Who Lived Longer? (2 players · years lived)

1. Use the Covenant deck as one face-down pile. Each draws 3; put aside any card without Strength and Heart and draw again.
2. Both choose one and flip together. A card with the hourglass counts the years on its plate (Job 140). Taken up (Enoch, Elijah) beats all. Any other card counts 0.
3. Higher takes both. Tie: the higher Heart takes both; same Heart, leave them for the next winner. Draw back to 3.
4. Pile empty? Play out your hands; cards left in the middle are out. Most cards wins.

How God Appears (and where the stories come from)

God is never a card. Nothing can attack or defeat him. Every Miracle is his act, painted as light, fire, cloud and wind, never a face.

Angels are mighty, not gods. Scripture gives Michael and Gabriel no wings, so the keyword is Heavenly. It names only Michael as an archangel (Jude 9): Gabriel’s title is tradition.

Every card comes from the 66 books of the Bible. The Amorite Kings are the five kings who fought at Gibeon in Joshua 10.

Where texts differ, the card follows the Hebrew text: Goliath is six cubits and a span (1 Sam 17:4); the Greek has four.

Friends of other faiths honour many of these people too, some under other names: Ibrahim, Musa, Daud, Nuh. Some prefer not to see prophets pictured: in the Long Ages, don’t show the card after it is named; in the battle games, ask first.

Read the stories

Genesis 1–11 · Exodus 14–40 · Judges 4–16 · 1 Samuel 17 · 1 Kings 18 · Job 38–41 · Daniel 3–6 · Jonah