Game Terms
Activate/Activating
To activate a card is to take the card from the zone it is currently in (usually the hand), pay its costs, and put it onto the Effects Stacks for resolution. A player may activate a card if they have Opportunity and are legally allowed to activate the card.
To activate an ability is to indicate the ability being activated, pay the costs, and put the ability onto the Effects Stack for resolution. A player may activate a given ability if they have Opportunity and are legally allowed to activate the ability.
Awake
A card on the field is considered awake if it is in an upright position.
Abilities of that card that require resting such as attacking or as a cost of activation can only be activated if that card is awake.
Cards enter the field awake.
Banish
To banish a card is to take a card from the zone it is currently in and put that card in its owner’s Banishment zone.
A banished card is a card that has been put into the Banishment zone.
An object banished is not considered to have been destroyed or to have died when leaving the field this way.
Buff Counters
Buff counters increase an object’s power and life stats by +1 for each buff counter on that object.
Stat modifications due to buff counters are static.
Control and Ownership
Control of an object or card activation is given to the player who activated the corresponding card by default.
The player that controls a specified object is referred to as that object’s controller.
If control of a card, object, effect, or ability is not specified, control defaults to the owner. E.g. If an ally is suppressed, the new object ally will be under the control of the owner of that ally card.
If a triggered ability is placed onto the Effects Stack from a card or object, control of that ability is granted to the controller of that card or object as the ability was placed onto the Effects Stack; changes in control of that object will not retroactively change the player in control of that ability.
The owner of the card does not necessarily always control the card.
Ownership of a card (within a game of Grand Archive) is designated to the player that began the game with that card in their main deck, material deck, or sideboard.
The player that owns a specified card is referred to as the owner of that card.
Change in control does not change ownership of the card.
Copy
Copy can refer to both the effect of copying an object or card activation or the copied object or card.
When an object is copied, the copy object becomes a clone of the printed face of the card disregarding any modifiers such as extra counters or status conditions (awake/rested, will not wake up, etc).
When a card activation is copied, the copy activation becomes a copy of the card in the Effects Stacks with all modes, activation choices, and otherwise modified activation attributes being identical to the original.
If an effect is copied, it is effectively put onto the Effects Stack a second time with any relevant modes or activation choices and parameters copied from the original.
Damage Counters
Damage counters are marked on champions to track a champion’s life.
Counters can tick upwards from 0 and a champion is considered defeated when the damage counters reach or exceed the life stat of the champion.
Damage counters can be removed by effects that recover.
Destruction
Destroy is an effect that can affect any object(s) on the field.
To destroy an object, move that object from the field to its owner’s Graveyard. If that card is a token, it will be removed from the game.
An object is destroyed if and only if it is specified to have been destroyed by an effect that specifies to destroy it, if it is destroyed as a result of state-based effects, or if it has been sacrificed. Cards entering the graveyard or being placed into the graveyard for any other reasons does not mean it has been destroyed.
Destroyed objects are considered as having died when they go to the graveyard. They are not considered to have died if they would be banished, put on top/bottom of the deck, or put into the hand, instead.
An ally is considered destroyed by state-based effects of having damage marked equal to or greater than its life stat or as a result of having 0 life.
A non-regalia weapon is considered destroyed as a result of state-based effects that cause that weapon’s durability to reach 0, either by combat or other means.
An effect or card that specifies an object to be destroyed only causes that object to die if and only if that card immediately enters the graveyard upon resolution of effects.
Banishment as a result of a destruction effect does not allow effects dependent upon that object dying or being sent to the graveyard to happen as there is not a time during the game in which that card can be considered to have entered the graveyard.
Died/Dies and Kills/Killed
These are interchangeable terms used to denote when a non-Champion object on the field would enter the graveyard as a result of being destroyed either by state-based effects or by player effects.
E.g., A destruction or destroy effect kills an ally card.
An object is only considered to have died or to have been killed if and only if it enters the graveyard directly from play.
If it would instead be banished as a result of any effects instead of being sent to the graveyard, the card is, by definition, not considered to have died.
Discard
When a player discards a card, they must move a card from the specified zone to their Graveyard. If no zone is specified, cards are discarded from hand by default.
Discarding a card can be required as an additional or alternative cost to playing a card or activating an ability. As with the normal steps in paying costs, discarding must be done before the card or ability is fully played or activated.
Generally, effects that cause players to discard or require discarding as a cost allow them to choose which card or cards are discarded. Some effects may require that discarding is done randomly.
Distant
Distant is a property of units.
After a unit becomes distant, it will stay distant until the end of its controller’s turn.
The distant property ends at the same time as other end of turn effects.
Durability Counters
Weapons have durability counters that represent how many times they may be used to attack.
Durability counters can be added to exceed the durability stat of a weapon.
Weapons are destroyed when durability reaches 0.
Element
The element of a card is represented by a name and symbol on the top right of its card face.
Elements apply a restriction on players from playing cards unless that element is within the element identity of one of their champions.
Elements fall under three categories: Norm, Basic, and Advanced.
Norm is a default element without any restrictions; players always have access to playing cards of this element.
Basic elements are Water, Fire, and Wind, and are typically unlocked by the Level 0 champion that is put into play during the start of a game. Other effects can enable these elements, as well.
Advanced elements are any elements that do not fall under either Norm or the Basic element categories. These elements are typically unlocked either after a champion reaches level 3 in its lineage or under special circumstances.
Enlighten Counters
Enlighten counters confer the following ability to champions: “Remove 3 enlighten counters from [CARDNAME]: Draw a card.”
Enlighten counters persist through level-ups of a player’s champion.
Fast
Fast is an attribute of action cards that determines when that card may be activated. See the section on timing for further detail.
Player actions or cards with the fast modifier may be activated while that player has Opportunity to act or during that player’s main phase if they are the turn player.
Fizzle
Fizzle can refer to cards or abilities failing to resolve as a result of a game state where targets or game conditions made the activation illegal and the card or effect will not resolve.
A card or ability that has fizzled is not considered to have been negated.
Fostered
Fostered is a property of allies.
Units are unfostered by default.
Allies can be made to be fostered by other cards or as a state-based check generated by the Foster keyword ability.
An ally can only become fostered once.
Gather
Gather defines the player action of gathering.
To gather, a player selects an ingredient at random from among six different token items and summons it. The six ingredients are Blightroot, Fraysia, Manaroot, Razorvine, Silvershine, and Springleaf. Each ingredient has two characteristic subtypes used in conjunction with the Brew ability: Adjuvants or Catalysts, and Root, Leaf, or Flower.
If a player uses the gather token board, they may use dice or other counting tokens to denote the quantities of each ingredient. Each is still considered an individual object on the field and can be interacted with normally.
Generate
Generate defines the player action of generating cards, or adding cards from outside the game permanently for the remainder of a game of Grand Archive. Generated cards do not persist after the conclusion of a game; any generated cards will be removed from the play area and corresponding zones after a game has ended.
Generating a card adds the specified generated card to the effect’s controller’s hand by default. If a zone is specified for the generate effect, the card will be added in the specified zone for the duration of the game. If that zone is no longer present, it will regress to the default case of being added to the hand.
Generated cards can exceed the quantity limits imposed by deckbuilding constraints.
Players must own physical copies of each of the cards they wish to generate in a game.
If a player attempts to generate a card but does not have the physical card to represent the generated card, the card generation fails; the player fails to generate the card.
Cards are added to the hand by default if no zone is specified or a zone that it would be placed into does not exist when a player would be instructed to put a generated card there.
Glimpse
Glimpse defines the player action of glimpsing, usually worded as glimpse N.
To Glimpse N, a player looks at the top N cards of their deck and places any number of those cards to the top of their deck in any order and the remainder on the bottom of their deck in any order.
Have, Gain, Get, Become/Are
Have and Gain: Have/Has and Gain/Gains are used when an effect grants an ability or an effect to a set of described cards or objects) This effect is static for all cards or objects within the set that fit the described criteria. This will extend to any cards or objects that can be added to the described set of cards after the effect initially begins. If a card or object did not have the granted ability or effect before, it is considered to have gained it. Have does not specify a specific time when that characteristic was granted while gain confers an ability at a specific point in time.
Get: Get and Gets is used when an effect grants a stat modification to a set of described cards or objects. This effect is applied statically to all cards or objects within the set that fit the described criteria under the effect and lasts as long as the continuous effect persists. For one-shot effects, this effect only considered the set present when the effect was resolved. Otherwise, conditionally static effects that use words like "as long as [condition]" apply the effect only if the condition is fulfilled.
Become: Become and Are are used when an effect specifies a change of characteristics, such as typing, or properties to a set of cards or objects. All cards or objects within the described set become or are set to a property statically. Becomes is used for setting a property to a given state at a certain time while are sets the default property of the described cards/objects to that mode, but without a specific starting point.
A state of a property is only considered changed if the state before and after a property for a card or object are different. If a card or object in a given state becomes the same state or is/are the same state, it will not be considered as a change of state.
Hit
Hit will typically be considered in relation to On Hit triggered abilities.
A unit is hit when it is dealt damage through an attack.
If no damage is dealt or damage dealt is zero, a unit is not considered hit.
Non-Combat damage sources will not cause the unit to be considered hit.
Influence
A player’s influence is equal to the total number of cards in their hand and memory zones.
Label Keywords
Label keywords exist as bolded and italicized text followed by a long hyphen on cards that does not function as a normal keyword. Rather, they will refer to a broad class of similar mechanics with individual cards differing in the wording or conditions of the keyword.
Label keywords can be referenced by abilities or effects and do count as a characteristic of the card.
List of Label keywords:
Balance: This keyword represents that a card will offer additional effects based on whether the player has an equal amount of cards in their hand and memory.
Harmonize: This keyword represents that a card will offer additional effects based on whether a Melody subclass card was activated previously during this turn during the resolution of the card.
Upkeep: This keyword presents a cost or condition that must be fulfilled each turn, usually with the adverse effect of not fulfilling the upkeep condition.
Equestrian: This keyword reflects abilities that function in conjunction with controlling a Horse ally. The Horse ally may have any typing so long as "Horse" exists as a subtype and "Ally" exists as a type.
Last–known information is information such as status, characteristics, or stats of an object or card that is tracked when that card changes zones.
Some effects are reliant on information while a card or object was in a specific zone and will use the information as if that card was still in that zone for determination of effects.
Last-known information only considers the last zone change that happened and not any information carried from zone changes prior to that.
Leave/Leaves
These are interchangeable terms used to denote when a non-Champion object on the field would leave the field and move to another zone.
Level (base)
The base level of a champion is the printed level of the champion card in the top left corner. This level determines the leveling sequence of a champion and does not include any level stat modifiers such as “your champion gets +X levels.” The base level is a static characteristic of the champion card. The base level is typically only considered for leveling up champions rather than meeting level restrictions for abilities and effects.
Level Counters
Level counters represent +1 LV for each level counter on the champion.
These counters do not modify the base level of the champion.
Level Up
A level up or the act of leveling up is when a player adds the next level champion onto one of the champion’s lineages. This does not use the effects stack. Leveling up will cause any “On Enter” abilities of the card being placed onto the lineage to trigger.
Leveling up itself is not considered a materialization but can be the result of materializing a champion card.
Leveling up is not based on any level modifications from other effects in the game and is solely based on the printed (base) level of the champion card.
Lineage (term)
A lineage is the entire group of cards dedicated to representing a champion. A lineage includes all cards including the inner lineage as well as the topmost card (i.e. the representative champion).
The name of a lineage follows the name (excluding titles or monikers) of the topmost card and any leveling restrictions or champion restriction abilities will use that name as a basis.
Loaded
Loaded is a property of objects.
Cards are unloaded by default.
Cards are considered loaded when an object has cards in its Loaded Cards zone.
LV
LV refers to the level of your champion as a sum of the level denoted on your champion card in addition to level modifying effects in the game.
LV is generally used for effects or rules text requiring a calculation or a referential variable.
LV can take on negative values. If being used to calculate cost reductions (such as with Efficiency), a negative LV value will increase costs. When being used to count or select cards, counters, or objects, a negative LV is considered 0 (you can't select negative amounts of cards or objects).
Modes
Modes are effects that are listed on a card that require a player to make a choice as to which of the effects would take place if a card or effect were to resolve. These choices are made before a card is placed onto the Effects Stack pending resolution. Cards and abilities with these modes can be called modal.
Negate
Some effects may specify to negate a certain card, game action, or effect.
If something is negated, it is immediately removed from the effects stack and does not resolve (it does not happen) and any effects that would otherwise have occurred as a result of the resolution of the negated card/action/effect do not occur.
Any triggers dependent upon activation of the negated card still occur.
Paid costs are not refunded when something is negated.
If a card is negated, the default zone for negated cards to be sent is the graveyard. However, if the card had rules text to modify where that card would have gone during resolution, or the destination zone were changed due to a replacement effect or other ability, the destination zone is carried over during its negation and it will not go to the graveyard. This is also true for rules set by supertypes such as Regalia.
A negated Crux sight for which the additional 2 was paid will cause it to be banished as it is negated. Additionally, negated Regalia objects will be banished as a result of the Regalia supertype modifying where they would be placed.
Obedience
A player can’t attack with or activate the abilities of an ally that does not obey that player. They may still have that ally retaliate.
Allies obey their controlling players by default.
Static abilities and triggered abilities of an ally will always happen regardless of obedience, but ownership of the abilities depends on the control of that ally.
If an ally with intercept does not obey a player, the resolution of the intercept ability will fail and that ally will not be able to intercept. The trigger still occurs and Opportunity is presented if a player has any effects that might cause that ally to obey the controlling player.
Intercept will trigger, but will not allow the player to make that ally intercept if that ally does not obey that player.
An attacking ally will continue performing the attack even after it no longer obeys the player who originally declared the attack. This is included when pride conditions are suddenly not fulfilled or if control of the object changes during an attack.
Opportunity
Opportunity is defined as the time in which a player has the chance to act in response to player actions taken by either themselves or by another player, in response to an effect or player action pending resolution, or in response to a phase change.
When Opportunity arises, it first is given to the turn player and proceeds to other players in turn order.
Phases apart from the main phase end according to when no players have Opportunity and no events are pending resolution.
Play/Played
A card is considered played after it is either materialized or activated.
Materializing or activating a card counts as playing the card.
Player Action
Player actions are distinct actions in the game a player can take. E.g. activating or materializing cards, attacking, activating abilities, etc.
Player action order is the order in which players may take actions during a turn when they would receive Opportunity. After a player action is taken or Opportunity is granted, it is first given to the turn player. The turn player may act first, after which non-turn players may each take a turn performing player actions as allowed by the game. This can be called the Turn Player / Non-turn Player order.
Players
A player is an individual taking part in a game of Grand Archive. The “turn player” is the player in control of the current turn and its progression and “non-turn players” are any players that are not the turn player.
Preparation Counters
Preparation counters are a type of counter that may be placed on a champion.
Preparation counters may be paid as an additional cost when activating a card with the keyword Prepare
Recover
Recover defines the player action of recovering damage, usually worded as recover N.
To recover N, a player removes N damage counters from their champion.
If a player attempts to recover more than the number of damage counters on their champion, they instead remove all damage counters from the champion.
A player can’t remove more than the number of damage counters present on a champion, e.g. if a champion has two damage counters and the player recovers 3, only 2 damage counters are removed.
E.g. For a card that says, "As an additional cost to activate this card, Recover 10," a player activating that card must have a champion with at least 10 damage counters that must be removed."
Redirect
Redirect means to change the target of a card or ability to another valid target.
If an effect specified to choose rather than to target, it cannot be redirected.
Reflexive Trigger
A reflexive trigger is a trigger found within an effect or ability that is placed onto the effects stack only if the condition for that trigger is fulfilled and after the initial part of the ability or effect is fully resolved.
The source of a reflexive trigger is considered the original source of the effect or ability that generated the reflexive trigger.
E.g. Umbra Sight optionally allows a player to draw a card into their memory and put Umbra Sight on the bottom of their champion's lineage. The remainder of the text from "When you do,..." is a reflexive trigger; It is a triggered ability that is put onto the effects stack after Umbra Sight resolves and the second card is optionally drawn with Umbra Sight put on the bottom of the champion's lineage.
Reserve
Reserve refers to the player action of taking a card from their hand and placing it into their Memory zone.
Reserved cards are returned to the player's hand during the Recollection phase.
Rest/Rested
To rest an object on the field, that object is turned from the upright (awake) orientation to the horizontal (rested) orientation.
Rest Symbol: The rest symbol will appear on a card as a black-bordered arrow turning 180 degrees to the right.
The rest symbol will usually indicate resting as a cost for activating an ability.
An object on the field is considered rested if it is in a horizontal orientation.
Objects that are already rested can’t rest; players cannot rest objects that are rested. If an effect attempts to rest an object that is rested, nothing will happen.
Retaliate/Retaliation
To retaliate, the defending player may rest a defending unit during the retaliation step of the combat phase to represent it as retaliating during combat.
Resting is a cost to retaliate; already-rested units cannot retaliate.
A retaliating unit will deal damage according to its power against the attacking unit during the damage step.
When retaliation is declared, the retaliating unit causes the attacking unit to become the retaliation target, which is maintained even if the attacking unit stops attacking during the combat phase.
Units without a power stat or have a power of 0 cannot retaliate.
Retaliation is the act of a defending unit resting in order to deal damage according to its power against a unit attacking it.
A unit can only retaliate if it was an object on the field “before retaliation.” (See Retaliation Step of combat.)
A unit that gains stealth after being declared as retaliating during the combat phase will still retaliate against its attacker during the damage step and deal damage accordingly.
Reveal
An ability, effect, or game rule may tell a player to reveal a card or a group of cards in a game zone.
To reveal a card, a player takes the specified card(s) in that zone and presents them to all players in the game face-up as public information.
Cards remain revealed until the next discrete game state/until a player takes a player action, or until the next time state-based effects are checked.
Revealed cards may be written down or recorded however a player wishes to do so but may not ask that the revealed cards stay revealed; the information state of the revealed card (private vs public) reverts to the original state before it was revealed after the card stops being revealed.
Cards revealed from a private zone ought to be shuffled or randomized among the other cards in the zone after those cards stop being revealed.
A card that is already public information or already known can be revealed any number of times.
Sacrifice
Sacrificing an object is a player action.
To sacrifice means to remove an object from the field or in play and put it into the graveyard, or, if the object was a regalia or champion, into banishment.
The type of object to be sacrificed will be characterized by the effect or cost.
If an object is sacrificed as a cost to pay for an effect, ability, or activation, that object is sacrificed at the same time all other costs are paid.
Players can only sacrifice objects they control.
An object is still sacrificed if a replacement effect would cause the object to go to a zone other than the graveyard.
If the object has an On Death trigger or would trigger an ability due to that object being sacrificed in order to activate a card or ability, the ability will be placed onto the Effects Stack on top of that card or ability and resolved first.
If the object has an On Death trigger or would trigger an ability due to that object being sacrificed as a result of an effect, the ability will be placed onto the Effects Stack after all effects of the original ability specifying the sacrifice have resolved.
Sacrified objects are considered destroyed only if they go to the graveyard.
Search
Search is an instructional word in some effects that tell a player to look through a set of cards in a zone, typically with the intended result of choosing one or more cards out of that set to perform an action on them, such as moving them to another zone.
Shuffling
Shuffling a set of cards is to make that set of cards sufficiently randomized such that any player in a game cannot uniquely identify any one card and has no reasonable knowledge as to the location of any of those cards from among the set.
Effects may instruct a player or players to shuffle a set of card. If this is done, those players must take the specified cards or set of cards and mix them in a random manner suitable for them until those cards are sufficiently randomized.
Slow
Slow is an attribute of action cards that determines when that card may be activated. See the section on timing for further detail.
Attacks and ally cards innately have a slow timing modifier, only being able to be activated by the turn player during their main phase when no effects are on the Effects Stack.
Source
A source is considered the object or card from which damage, ability, or effect originates.
Suppress
Suppress is a keyworded action that can target an object which means for its controlling player to “banish it and return it to the field under its owner’s control at the beginning of the next end phase.” The return of the object is caused by a delayed trigger created by Suppress.
If a card banished with suppress were to leave banishment before the delayed trigger were to resolve, the delayed trigger will not return that card to the field from wherever it currently is; the card in banishment must be the same card that was initially banished.
Summon
Summon defines the player action of summoning objects into play.
A summoned object is treated as a token that only exists while it is on the field.
Summoned objects (tokens) can be represented by any outside game object such that it is easy to distinguish tokens apart from other objects and such that the characteristics of that token is easily tracked or referenceable.
Timestamp
A timestamp is a chronological marker tied to an object on the field placed when it entered play or tied to a continuous effect when it began in the game. Timestamps are used to keep track of recency of effects and to determine which effects would supersede another if they modify the same value(s).
Effects with timestamps are applied in order of oldest effects to newest effects.
Token
A token is an object put into play through an effect instructing a player to summon that object.
Tokens are treated as regular objects while in play but will cease to exist when they move to another zone.
A token moving to another zone will still complete any state-based checks, triggers, and any necessary actions to resolve the game state, and the token will cease to exist as Opportunity is passed to the next player.
Unit
Units are champions and ally objects.
Units can typically be attack targets during attack declarations.
Wake Up
To wake up an object on the field, that object is turned from the horizontal (rested) orientation to the upright (awake) orientation.
Objects that are already awake can’t wake up; players cannot wake up objects that are awake. If an effect attempts to wake up an object that is awake, nothing will happen.
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