How to Play MORANA: The Open Grave

Two Wardens, three sacred Sites, and a graveyard that hands your cards a second life. No dice, no mana screw, no pay-to-win. You can learn it in five minutes and lose to it for years.

MORANA: The Open Grave is an original two-player card game rooted in Slavic folklore and the world's oldest public-domain fairy tales. Death is not the end of a card, it is the middle. This page teaches the whole game, from your first turn to building your own deck. New to it? You can play the First Duel free in your browser right now.

1 The game in thirty seconds

Secretly play cards to three places. Reveal together. More Power holds a place and scores a point. First to 13 wins.

That is the whole game, in about fifteen minutes.

2 The three worlds

Slavic cosmology has three realms, and in MORANA the board is those realms.

Everything except the cards in your hand is open information. Your fallen Spirits, their return costs, your opponent's Slava, all of it is visible. That is what makes MORANA a game of pure skill, closer to chess than to a booster-pack gamble.

3 Embers, your resource

Each turn you gain Embers equal to the turn number, up to a maximum of 7 (Turn 1 = 1, rising to Turn 7 = 7; Turn 8 also gives 7). Embers do not come from cards and they do not save up. That single rule means you can never be mana-starved or mana-flooded. Skill decides every game, never the luck of the draw.

4 The turn: four steps, together

1. 1Dawn. Both players draw one card and gain Embers equal to the turn number.
2. 2Commit. Secretly place Spirits and Charms face-down at the Sites, paying their Ember cost. You may also Reborn a Spirit from your Nav. Bluffing is encouraged.
3. 3Dusk. Flip everything at once and resolve the Sites left to right. Omen and Clash effects fire now.
4. 4Rite. For every Site where you have strictly more Power, gain +1 Slava. Then check for 13.

5 The Turning: the signature mechanic

When a Spirit is defeated, it does not die. It crosses to your Nav (underworld) face-up. From there you can Reborn it, pay its Reborn cost to summon it again and trigger its second life. Every Spirit prints two effects:

• Omen fires the first time the Spirit is revealed.
• Reborn fires when it returns from Nav, usually stronger or stranger than the first.

Knowing when to let a Spirit fall so it comes back at the perfect moment is the heart of the game. The graveyard is not where cards go to be forgotten. It is your second hand, face-up, for both players to read.

6 A worked turn, start to finish

The four steps above are the whole engine. Here is one clean turn with real numbers, so you can feel the loop before you ever touch a card.

The setup: it is Turn 3. You and your opponent each gain 3 Embers (the turn number) and draw a card. Three Sites sit between you: call them the left, the middle, and the right.

1. 1Dawn. You hold 3 Embers, and so does the Warden across from you. Neither of you can be short or flooded; the turn number sets the pace for both. You draw one card.
2. 2Commit, the only secret moment. You seal cards face down, spending Embers, where the other Warden cannot see. Say you seal a Power 4 Spirit that costs 2 Embers at the middle Site and keep 1 Ember back. Unseen, your opponent seals a Power 3 Spirit at that same middle Site. The whole bluff of the game lives in one guess: where did they commit?
3. 3Dusk, everything flips at once. The Sites resolve left to right. At the middle, your Power 4 meets their Power 3. Your Spirit's Omen reads Clash 3: on reveal, send an enemy Spirit of Power 3 or less at this Site to Nav. Theirs is exactly Power 3, so it crosses to their Nav, face up, where you can both see it wait.
4. 4Rite, score. You have strictly more Power at the middle Site, so you take +1 Slava. The left and right Sites score the same way. Has anyone reached 13 yet? Not this turn.

Want a full duel played out rather than a single turn? Walk through a complete sample game, or better, play the First Duel free and feel it for yourself.

7 The six keywords

Every card prints a small reminder the first time a keyword appears, so you never memorize, you just read.

8 Reading a card

• Cost orb (top-right): the Embers you pay to play it.
• Power badge (bottom-right): wins Sites and is the card's durability.
• Omen band: what happens on reveal. Reborn band: its second life from Nav.
• The little wheel means a Reborn life waits in Nav. The rarity gem is cosmetic only, never power.

You can browse every card, full size, in The Grimoire.

9 Quickstart

1. Lay out three Sites. Set both Slava tracks to 0. Place both Wardens face-up.
2. Each turn: gain Embers equal to the turn number, draw one card.
3. Secretly place cards face-down at the Sites, then flip together.
4. Resolve left to right, then score +1 Slava for each Site you out-power.
5. First to 13 Slava wins. That is the whole game.

Playing your very first game? Start with the "Your First Duel" card, it walks you through a scripted opening.

10 Building your own deck (optional)

The two starter decks in the box are ready to play and tuned so none of the advanced rules can even come up while you learn. When you are ready to build, open the Warden's Codex:

• Deck size: exactly 20 cards plus 1 Warden. Maximum 2 copies of any card, maximum 1 copy of any Legendary.
• Wardens sit face-up all game with a Vigil (a passive) and an Invocation X (a once-per-game power you pay Embers for during Commit).
• Reborn limit: at most 2 Spirits per turn; minimum Reborn cost is 1.
• Off-board Slava from Charms and Omens is capped at +4 per turn. Slava from controlling Sites is unlimited.
• Comeback lever: at each Site, the player with less Slava resolves first.
• End of Turn 8: if nobody has 13, the most Slava wins (tiebreak: most Sites, then most total Power).

11 Frequently asked questions

MORANA: The Open Grave, First Turning set (62 cards). Rules summarized from the official Rules Reference; everything else is printed on the cards. Card art is AI-assisted illustration, art-directed in-house. Product names, prices and dates are planned targets and may change before the campaign.