How to Play the Palworld TCG: Beginner's Guide to Your First Game

The Palworld TCG is quick to learn: two players, 50 card decks, and a race to knock your opponent's life from 10 to 0. This guide walks you through a full game. When you are done reading, you can play a real game free in your browser, solo, against a bot, or online, no cards needed.

What you need

• A 50 card main deck (CR 6.1.1.1), with at most 4 cards sharing a card name (CR 6.1.1.2) and up to 8 Lucky Pals (CR 6.1.1.3), using up to two colors plus Colorless.
• A soul deck; your soul upper limit starts at 10 (CR 6.1.2.1)
• An opponent (or our simulator's bot)

If you do not own cards yet, the two trial decks are the cheapest start. Here is which trial deck to buy.

The goal

Both players start with 10 life (CR 6.2.1.8). Attack with your Pals to force Damage Checks that burn through your opponent's life. A player at 0 life or below loses (CR 1.2.1.1), and so does a player with no cards left in their deck (CR 1.2.1.2). If both lose at once, it is a draw (CR 1.2.2).

Setup

1. Shuffle your main deck and draw an opening hand of 5.
2. Not happy with the hand? You may mulligan once: shuffle it back and redraw 5.
3. The player going first skips the Draw Phase and proceeds to the Soul Phase (CR 7.3.1) — note the Stand Phase is not skipped, it simply has nothing rested to stand yet (CR 7.2). The player going second puts 1 card from their soul deck into their Soul Area at setup (CR 6.2.1.5).

The turn, phase by phase

1. Stand Phase. Stand all the cards in your base and soul area (CR 7.2.1).
2. Draw Phase. Draw 1 card (CR 7.3.3).
3. Soul Phase. Add 2 Souls from your soul deck to your Soul Area. Souls are your energy, and they stay between turns. Read Souls explained if this part is new to you.
4. Main Phase. The fun part. In any order you can:
   • Deploy Pals, Structures, and Gear by resting Souls equal to their cost (CR 10.4.3). The limit of 5 is on PALS only (CR 4.4.5.2) — Structures and Gear do not take Pal slots. Going over it sends the extra Pals to the graveyard by rule action (CR 4.4.5.1, CR 11.5).
   • Attack with standing Pals. Each attack rests the attacker.
   • Activate card abilities.
5. End Phase. The damage of all Pals and structures in all bases becomes 0 — your opponent's too (CR 7.6.3) — and every "until end of turn" effect is invalidated (CR 7.6.4). Pass the turn.

Attacking and Damage Check

When your Pal attacks the enemy player it deals damage equal to its Strike (CR 2.9.1). The defender then resolves it one card at a time: put the top card of the deck into the graveyard (CR 11.2.2.1), and repeat until the cards milled equal the damage — only then is life reduced, by the full damage (CR 11.2.2.3).

If a Lucky Pal comes up, the resolution ends immediately (CR 11.2.2.2) and they lose no life at all — not merely the remainder. Cards the check had not reached stay on top of the deck, so a Lucky Pal on the first card of a 3-damage check mills exactly one card.

The defender is not helpless, and gets a say in two separate steps. They may block with a standing Pal that is not already the target, which rests it and makes it the new target (CR 9.4.2, CR 9.4.2.1). The block step then leads into the quick step (CR 9.4.4), where an Interrupt — a Quick activated ability — can nullify the attack (CR 12.8.1, CR 9.5.2). They are different steps, so blocking and then Interrupting is legal. Our combat guide covers battles, blocking, and Damage Check in detail.

Attacking Pals

You can also attack an enemy Pal instead of the player. Pal vs Pal combat is mutual: both Pals deal their Power to each other at the same time (CR 2.8.1), and any Pal whose damage taken reaches its Power is put into the graveyard by the lethal damage rule action (CR 11.4.1). Attack their Pals when you win the trade, attack the player when you want life damage.

Your first game in 60 seconds

The fastest way to actually learn is to play. Our free browser simulator automates every rule in this guide (Souls, attacks, Damage Check, blocking) and has a built-in trainer that suggests your next move. Load a ready-made deck, fight the Easy bot, and you will have the flow down in one game.

Want to go deeper? The full rules glossary covers every keyword (Assault, Taunt, Stealth, Quick, Assign), and the card database has every revealed card with full effect text.