Manala: Equinox War

It is OK to cheat: that is the game.

Every game asks you to be the hero. But what if we cheated, just a little, when nobody was looking?

In Manala, cheating is not an exploit you found. It is a card in your deck and legal to play. Works every time:

• Argue Over Armor Points. Clearly the enemy's armor never covered that spot: you are sure of it. You are so sure of it that you keep talking until the Game Master gives up, and your next hit ignores every point of armor they have.

• Illegal Headshot. Hits to the head are illegal. So if you can get them to swing at your head, it obviously does not count. Your helmet comes off for the rest of the fight and everybody saw what you did.

• Forget to Count Health Points. Four hits? I counted three.

• STOP! The safety word. The field freezes, everyone stands down. You saw the strike coming, it was perfectly legal, and you called it anyway.

• Costume Check. You point at them and announce that they are not really playing their character. They spend the next round arguing about it instead of hitting you.

• Laying In. Noble warriors take a big swing for a hit to count. Well, what if we just tap our enemy really quickly with nonsense shots? Maybe they won't notice.

• Blacksmith's Hands. Grabbing your enemy's weapon in honorable combat is absolutely not allowed. But we are not in honorable combat here.

Põhja Konn, the Frog of the North will be looking at you. The world's judge, hewn out of bedrock, with heavy eyes that see straight through a lie. You can cheat, but there will be consequences.

LARP rules. MMO world. Card combat.

Combat is a LARP field with a rulebook, and everything you are wearing is in the deck.

• Your gear is your deck. All cards are unlocked when you create a character and the equipment on your body decides which ones you can actually play. Buy a large shield and three new cards activate in your deck. Your build changes at the Merchant, not at a level-up.

• Coat your blade. Poison does not go in your deck. It goes on your weapon, before the fight, like a person with a plan.

• Craft it, slot it, spend it. Potions and supplies go into the deck as real cards and playing one consumes the actual item out of your actual bag. You brought three. Now you have zero.

• Their deck is their loot table. Every enemy in the world draws its cards from the gear it is carrying. The sword that is beating you is the sword you are about to take off their corpse.

Your deck is as big as you want it to be

There is no deck size limit. Build the deck too small and you will run out of cards mid-fight, finishing the duel by throwing punches. Build it too big and every draw is a coin flip on whether the card you need is anywhere near the top. Somewhere between the two is a correct answer.

You are not a hero with 4000HP

You have somewhere between 5 and 20. Nothing scales. No levels. No multipliers. Plenty of things out there hit harder than you do and wear more armor than you can chew through and they are not impressed by your build.

So - do you fight honorably, take the loss, and walk home (like a coward)? Or do you forget to count a few hit points and accept the price of a cheater?

Manala is a real place, and it is full of people

• 400 rooms, 23 regions: forests, marshes and strongholds out of Finno-Ugric folklore.

• 5 classes: warrior, mage, healer, alchemist and smith.

• Faction war and seasonal conquest Defeat your enemies, capture the territory and decide who wins at the end of the month.

• Everyone is playing on the same field: one persistent world, one character, one deck, and a permanent record of how honorable you are.