MORANA IN FIVE MINUTES
The Quickstart for Your First Game
You do not need the rulebook to start. You need three Sites, two Wardens, and one idea: nothing here stays dead. Deal it out, place cards face-down, flip them, and the first player to thirteen glory wins.
This page is the shortest path from "we have the cards" to "we are dueling". It skips the deep theory on purpose. If you want the complete rules, keep How to Play open in a second tab. If you want to see it in motion first, you can play the First Duel free in your browser and read this after. Everything below is enough to finish a real game today.
THE WHOLE GAME, IN ONE BREATH
- Each turn you have Embers equal to the turn number to spend, and they never carry over.
- Both players place cards face-down at three Sites, then flip together.
- Win a Site by having strictly more Power there, and score +1 Slava for it.
- First to 13 Slava wins, or the most Slava when Turn 8 ends.
1 Set up in three steps
Grab either of the two ready-to-play starter decks. They are tuned so nothing advanced can trip you up on your first game, so there is no deckbuilding to do right now. Then:
- 1Lay out three Sites. Put three spots in a row between the two players. This row is Yav, the living world, and it is the only place you fight this turn.
- 2Set both Slava tracks to 0. Slava is glory, the thing you are racing to 13. Leave an empty space beside each player called Nav, the world of the dead, where beaten Spirits will land face-up.
- 3Reveal your Warden. Each player places their chosen Warden face-up. It is your leader for the whole game, and it stays visible. That is the entire setup. Decide who goes first however you like.
2 The one hidden move
Almost everything in MORANA is out in the open. Both Slava tracks, every fallen Spirit in Nav with its return cost, and your Embers are all open information. There is exactly one secret each turn:
The single hidden move is the simultaneous face-down commit. Both players place their cards for the turn face-down at the Sites at the same time, then reveal them together. You are not reacting to your opponent, you are guessing them, and they are guessing you. This one blind decision is where the whole game lives.
Because nothing else is hidden, MORANA plays closer to chess than to a shuffle-and-hope game. You are never starved of resources and never flooded, so a loss is on you, not the deck.
3 How a turn flows
Every turn is four steps, always in the same order. Both players move through them together.
| Dawn | Draw one card and gain Embers equal to the turn number. On Turn 1 you have 1 Ember, on Turn 4 you have 4, and so on. Unspent Embers do not carry over. |
| Commit | Secretly place your cards face-down at the Sites, paying their Ember cost. This is the one hidden move. Bluffing an empty Site or an overloaded one is fair play. |
| Dusk | Flip everything face-up at once and resolve the three Sites left to right. On-reveal effects fire here. |
| Rite | For every Site where your Power is strictly higher, take +1 Slava. Then check whether anyone has hit 13. |
Repeat that loop. It moves fast, and a full game is short by design.
4 Scoring a Site
Scoring is deliberately simple, and one detail catches everyone the first time:
- You score a Site only with strictly more Power than your opponent there.
- A tie scores no one. Equal Power at a Site means neither player takes the Slava.
- Sites resolve left to right, so an effect that fires at the left Site can change what happens at the right one.
That "strictly more" rule means matching your opponent's Power is not good enough. To take a Site you have to beat it, even by one.
5 How you win
There are two ways the game ends, and both come down to Slava.
- Race to 13. The first player to reach 13 Slava wins the moment they get there.
- Or lead at the end. If nobody has reached 13, the player holding the most Slava when Turn 8 ends wins.
So you are always doing one of two things: pushing for 13 as fast as you can, or making sure you are ahead when the clock runs out. Sometimes those are the same play, sometimes they pull in opposite directions, and that tension is the game.
6 The one mistake new players make
Here is the single thing that separates a first game from a second one. Beginners try to keep every Spirit alive. That is the trap.
Nothing dies in MORANA. When your Spirit is defeated it does not go to a discard pile, it crosses to your Nav face-up. From there you can Reborn it, paying to bring it back for a second, often stronger effect. Losing a Spirit on purpose so it returns at the perfect moment is not a mistake, it is the plan. This is called the Turning, and once it clicks the whole game opens up.
So do not panic when a Spirit falls. Ask instead: is it worth more to me dead and waiting in Nav than alive and stuck at a Site? Often it is. You can Reborn up to two Spirits in a turn. Learning to sequence your own deaths is the deep game, and it starts on turn one.
7 Now go here next
You know enough to finish a game. Pick the next step that fits how you like to learn.
WATCH IT WORKPlay the scripted First Duel free in your browser and see every rule in motion.Play the First Duel ›
GET THE DETAILThe complete rulebook: the three worlds, all six keywords, and the full turn.Read How to Play ›
PRINT AND PLAYOnce you are hooked, learn how the fixed set works and get every card in one box.See the fixed set ›
8 Quickstart FAQ
Do I really need only five minutes to start?
Yes. Set out three Sites, put both Slava tracks at 0, and place each Warden face-up. Pick up a ready starter deck and you can play your first turn straight away, because the starters are tuned so the advanced rules never come up while you learn.
What is the one hidden move?
Each turn both players secretly place cards face-down at the three Sites at the same time, then flip them together. That simultaneous face-down commit is the only hidden information. Your Nav, your Slava, and your Embers are all open for both players to see.
How do you win?
You collect Slava by controlling Sites. For every Site where you have strictly more Power than your opponent you score 1 Slava. The first player to 13 Slava wins at once, and if nobody reaches 13 the most Slava when Turn 8 ends takes the game.
What is the most common first-game mistake?
Treating a defeated Spirit as gone. Nothing dies in MORANA. A beaten Spirit crosses to your Nav face-up and can be Reborn for a second, often stronger effect, so beginners who protect every Spirit miss the whole point of the game.
MORANA: The Open Grave, First Turning set (62 cards). Rules summarized from the official Rules Reference; anything not shown here is printed on the cards. This is a pre-launch, campaign-stage project, so product names, contents, and dates are planned targets and may change before the campaign.