Defiance of the Gods: The Rift Alpha Edition

Intro  Welcome to the world of Defiance of the Gods: The Rift. Defiance of the Gods is a trading card game where players deploy their forces in order to defend and attack strategic locations on the battleground. You must move your forces across the battleground in order to attack and eventually destroy your opponent’s Capital. Along the way your warriors, generals, and gods will be under attack from your opponent’s forces and tactics that can pose a threat at any time. Additionally your opponent may have placed terrains on the battleground to impede the movement of your forces. These terrains will cost you resources to remove from the battleground so that your forces can attack your opponent’s Capital and other strategic locations. Your resource to play forces is gold and is generated by your Capital and other locations such as outposts. Sometimes you will find treasures that help provide additional gold to fund your campaign. Defiance is a game of position and resource management. Learning where to position your forces in relation to your opponent’s forces is very important and will take time to master. Another consideration is that your forces move and attack according to their movement diagrams and in some cases will not be able to attack or defend targets simply because they lack the movement to do so. This layer of position and strategy is what makes Defiance so immersive. Fortify your position, attack, and destroy your opponent’s Capital to win!

Design

First and foremost, Defiance of the Gods is a game that has been designed to be fun. Our definition of fun is that a game should be simple to learn but difficult to master. Defiance is just that. We have distilled down the fundamentals of Defiance through years of playtesting to make them very simple. Our rules are very clear and concise. 

Defiance has been designed to be a game that is competitive, offers a great deal for the causal player, and offers much for the collector. 

Competitive players will find that the game is very strategic from a spatial perspective and a timing perspective.  In other words, it matters where you place your cards on the battleground just as much as when you play them.  Our booster packs contain enough resource cards to be able to draft with easily… we designed them that way. You get four resources (locations) in each pack.  Cards are Euro Poker Size 3.46 ix 2.48 inches. The same exact size as many major trading card games. By the way our packs are 18 cards in total.  Each Randomized Booster pack contains the follow card slots:

2 Rare cards*

4 Uncommon cards

7 Common cards

4 Location cards (Resources)

1 Art card (more on that later)

*Ultra Rare cards will replace a Rare card in a pack when present.  Image of Booster Packs available: Defiance of the Gods: The Rift Alpha Booster pack

Defiance of the Gods: The Rift Alpha ALL FOIL Booster pack

We sell invidual packs and Booster Boxes as well.

Defiance of the Gods: The Rift Booster Box Alpha Edition

Defiance of the Gods: The Rift Booster Box ALL FOIL Alpha Ed

Causal players will find that games can be as long and as unique as you wish them to be. You can play global effects, mythological beasts, and build your gold up over multiple turns. 

The collector will find that we offer four sets of game cards to collect within the Alpha Edition. A non-foil booster only set, a starter deck non-foil set, a starter deck foil set, and a booster foil set.

There are 358 cards in Defiance of the Gods: The Rift Alpha Edition. 

Among the Starter Deck card pool there are 58 different cards that are not found in the Booster pack card pool. 

Sample starter deck available here on The Game Crafter.

Defiance of the Gods: The Rift Asgard Deck

The Booster pack card pool has 300 cards in it. The Ultra Rare cards can be found only in Booster packs. 

The Booster Foil set also contains something extremely special… the Special Alpha Full art Foil cards we call them “The Ten.”  The Ten are extremely rare, are only found in our all foil booster packs, and are full art versions of our Ultra Rare cards.  They are not new cards.  And you can find the Ultra Rare cards in non-foil and foil versions within Booster Packs.  When present in a pack the Special Alpha Full art Foil will replace the Art card in that pack. 

In addition to this we offer non-foil and foil art cards we call them “Masterpieces.” These are not playable game cards they are simply just about the art. What can we say we like art. Art enriches our lives and communicates so much so very well. 

*Game Board *

Defiance is a game where position matters.

Below is a sample playmat.  Note it is not required to use a playmat when playing Defiance.

Defiance of the Gods Asgard Playmat

This is a single player Playmat. Each player will have their own playmat or game board zones if they choose to play without a playmat.

For the full Rulebook please visit. 

The Rule Book

Additionally we have included some of the pages that cover the basics.

*Vision for Defiance *

We also have a vision for this game to have a community built around it and to continue to reinvest in research and design for our game.

We want to be able to bring people together through a game that is fun.

To have tabletop experiences both in person and digitally.

We also already have a Tabletop Simulator version of the game available on Discord powered by Steam. It’s totally free.

Discord

We are looking ahead. And planning for sustainability. So that we can keep bringing Defiance to you.

Editions of Defiance of the Gods: The Rift

We are offering the Alpha Edition of Defiance of the Gods: The Rift. It is a limited edition.  All of the cards in Alpha Edition are stamped with “Alpha” on the bottom center of the card. As shown below.

Looking ahead (below is a section to inform you of our printing plans for Defiance of the Gods.)

Very important only the Alpha Edition is currently available.

Our next and final edition of this set, will be the “Beta Edition” after which we will stop printing “The Rift” set. 

Our official reprint policy is that we will never reprint a card with the same Edition stamp or Art. To be clear if a card is printed with the stamp “Alpha” it will never again be printed in anyway with the “Alpha” stamp on it. Nor will it be printed in anyway with the original Art other than the “Beta Edition” of “The Rift” set. Beta will have the same art as Alpha. But this will only be for “The Rift” set. 

“The Rift” will offer an “Alpha” and “Beta Edition” for the following reasons:

One to offer the Limited Alpha Edition to our first supporters. As a thank you we want to offer you something special and limited. 

Two to offer the Limited Beta Edition so that more players may enjoy the game. 

Please note that only the “Alpha Edition” is being offered as only the Alpha is currently available.

We hope you enjoy Defiance of the Gods: The Rift.

Regards,

James Baccellieri President of Defiance Games Studios