Character cards are representative of those working or involved with Stargate command. Team characters are people you assign to complete missions; Support characters assist in overcoming obstacles your opponent might use to foil the completion of your mission. There are also Event cards which can make or break you completing a mission, Obstacle cards are used by your opponent as one last attempt to impair your success. Adversary cards are the dark side of the support characters.

To start a game each player places four team characters face up. Players start with eight missions and set them aside. The remaining cards are used to form a deck which players will draw from to use during the game. Each deck consists of 32 cards, so one can either play with one deck or two depending on the format of the game.

There are main phases to the game. There is a power phase in which players receive power to use during their turns. Power is used to cast characters or events from the players hands. If you do not have enough power to cast a card, that card obviously cannot be cast. Power starts at 3 for each player and if characters receive glyphs during game play for successfully completing events, the power the following turn goes up 1 for each glyph a character has.

The next phase is the mission phase. When you’re the hero (the player trying to complete missions), you take the top card in your mission pile and play it face up. That is the mission you need to complete for the duration of your turn. The mission has a numerical value assigned to it, in which your characters need to match in certain fields. Fields are culture, science, combat, and ingenuity. If a player ends up with the same numerical value in that particular field, or more, the player completes the mission at hand, and earns a glyph. If the player ends up with less then the numerical value, the player fails the mission, and his opponent, gains an extra point of power if the player chooses to play another mission from his pile. Otherwise the turn ends, and its now the opponent’s turn to complete missions.

For those who remember playing Magic: The Gathering, there are “counter spells” that a player can perform during the opponent’s turn which are called obstacles, or adversaries. Certain obstacles raise the numerical value of the assigned mission, forcing that player to either assign other team members to help complete the mission or conceding the mission. Adversaries are like enchantments which either help you on offense, or hinder your opponent’s progress on offense.

There are two ways you can play this game. The first is the traditional way where you and your buddies sit down at the table in your basement, (or like in the game Bully) in the dungeon of the local comic book store, and play against each other with physical cards. The other way you can play, is by going online, and playing against people all over the world in order to hone your skills as well as compete in tournament play, get a ranking, and win prizes for your efforts. You can also trade digital cards online with other players, trade in your digital cards for their physical equivalent, and using the software from SOE (Sonly Online Entertainment), build your own decks.

SOE says that there are many reasons why playing online will be a great asset to gamer’s world wide. The main reasons are the ability to play in a 24/7 venue, where there is always someone to play against; and to take part in the tutorials that come with the software, so gamers can have a visual aid in understanding the dynamics of the game. Both the card and online versions are set to be released on April 18th.