Cards of the Mobius, an online card game. It's different from usual card games because of the way it's executed. The main objective of the card game is not the cards itself, it's the setting. Servers are opened up for a month at a time, and inside the server, every player is given a set of 15 temporary cards, alongside a totem which they can carry from server to server.

The maximum deck size is 40 cards, and you'll want to use all 40, trust me. Each server has a unique map, although I'll probably just be using one throughout the story and hope nobody finds out. Spread throughout the map are pillars, which generate energy over time, and the energy goes to the player in ownership of the pillar, with a small 'tax' (20%) being spread across the other members of the team, so you'll profit if your teammates play good. 

There's a main pillar in every city, and several smaller ones spread around the rest of the game world. The main pillars produce a lot more energy than the smaller ones, but they can't be personally owned, the energy is spread across the team.

Energy is used for unlocking new cards, either by buying card packs or individual cards. It can also be used for upgrading individual cards up to 3 times.

(It really varies from card to card, but most of every player in every game is going to be using 'standard' cards, with a max individual stat of 5 and max total stat, spread across A, D, S, as 9. After upgrading 3 times, this card has a max total stat of 12 and max individual stat of 7. There's also H and R, but I probably won't be going into that at least during the first server's story and stuff, so I'll put that off till later.)

Each server lasts for a month, and during that, the winning team is the one with the most main pillars, while the MVP is the one with the most energy left over. (The MVP does not need to be from the winning team.)

All members of the winning team and the MVP get rewards based on leftover energy. If you have a lot of energy, you get better rewards, while if you don't, you get terrible rewards. Rewards can include, but are not limited to, totems, good permanent cards (for your initial 15 card deck), or a simple head start on pillars or energy during the beginning of a new server. Really good boosts can even include permanent stat boosts to all your cards (Which is honestly OP, so don't expect that unless you win the world championship or something.)

Although, like I mentioned, the story's more about the general gamestate, in a pseudo-war scramble for pillars, every duel that is featured will have an attachment (In the form of excel) or a play by play explanation (Under spoiler. It's not a spoiler, just that those chapters might get clunky, and I don't want that.) I will also have a constantly updating page featuring the main player's deck.

Now onto the rules of the duels themselves.

Your deck is composed of 15-40 cards. There may be some awesome ones, but chances are that it's filled with 'standard' (Or worse) cards. Standard cards cost the same as worse cards, and are easy to get, not to mention that your starting 15 are all standards, so you'll not see many cards worse than standard ones, but they do exist, especially a few arcs later where the MC's deck starts gravitating towards goblins. Not a spoiler because I mentioned it in the summary.

Bottom three rows are yours (Or MC's) and top ones are opponent's.

The center ones at both ends is where the totems are placed.

Actually, since it's confusing to explain the whole field at once, I'll explain one side at a time.

f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 b1 b2 T b4 b5

The totem is placed at T

The F row is the front row, which faces the brunt of the attacks. In fact, while any card is placed in any of the f squares, the m square cannot be attacked whatsoever. SImilarly, the m row and the b row work the same way.

The 5 cards you have, some may have costs, but the general, standard cards, do not, so if you get a hand full of standard cards, you play a hand full of standard cards. You don't hav to worry about saving because you get a new batch next turn.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Remember the 3 stats? There's A, D, M. Sorry, used to be M (Movement) during the original design of the game, where the cards moved around on a 7x12 grid and M signified how much they moved. Now it's S, which defines who moves first.

A (Attack), D (Defense), S (Speed).

The card with the highest speed moves first, and it has 4 phases to it's turn.

During phase 1, it can delay, means to move later, which is mostly useless, because you want to be moving first, but it does have some applications. You can delay as many times as you want, until the card ultimately either moves or dies. If the card that moves last chooses to delay, it forefits moving that turn.

During phase 2, it can move to any square a king's move away. If you do not know what a king's move is, learn chess, not cards of the mobius. That's a far better game to learn. By the way, mobius is a reference to mobius strip, which is an absolutely beautiful shape. It has nothing to do with the game, but I love mobius strips, and shapes in general (My laptop background is a Gif of the 120-cell. It really eats up my battery, but it's worth it.)

During phase 3, the card can attack any card in the frontmost row your opponent controls. (Attacking is not compulsary.) If you have a lich (On of the awesome cards I mentioned.) on the M row for whatever reason, and you need him on the B row, so you move him there and you are not required to attack afterwards. If the attack is greater than the defense, the defending card is destroyed. If the attack is less, the attacking card is destroyed. (Excuse me if I ever use YGO terminology. That's the card game I'm most used to.) If it's equal, neither is destroyed. As for why you'd attack despite your attack being lower than the opponent's defense, it's because cards can only defend once per turn. Second time a monster is attacked, it's destroyed, no matter what. Well, it loses 1 health no matter what. ALl standard cards have 1 health, but totems do have 3, even the basic (0,0,0) ones that only N00B5 have. The brackets, by the way are in the order of (A,D,S). Remember that. It only loses 1 health no matter how much you attack with. Remember that as well.

During phase 4 you can move a king's move away, but only if you didn't die during phase 3 and didn't move during phase 2.

You cannot conduct phase 3 during your first turn, if you start.

Then, it moves onto the card with the next hightst S and so on. I'll demonstrate a simple turn, only 2 rows.

The stats are as follows:

1. A: (4,1,4)

2. B: (4,4,1)

3. C: (1,4,4)

4. D: (2,5,2)

5. E: (2,2,5)

6. F: (5,2,2)

A B C D E F

E moves first, so E attacks A, which has a high attack and low defense, something that poses a threat, but isn't hard to kill.

  B C D E F

C moves second, so it just delays, because were it to attack, it'd just die.

F moves third, and it kills B, something rather hard to kill, but also has high attack.

    C D E F

C still cannot kill, so delays.

D also cannot kill so it delays.

Since neither C nor D want to move, the turn ends with those 4 on the board.

If two cards have equal speed, it's just RNG. This is an online game, actually, you know what, make that a VR game, so the computer just decides for you. If you lose due to a speed tie, too bad for you.

Now here's how the duels translate into the main world. You have some method of forcing your opponents to duel, say, you point a fake gun at them. If you hit, you duel, and the one who actually used the gun chooses who goes first.

If you win, you get a portion, say, 5% of the energy the loser is carrying. More importantly, the loser is teleported to his team's home city and loses 3 cards. Not only does the loss of cards screw up your deck, it can potentially stop you from playing if you have less than 15 in your deck, so you'd have to wait a while for your energy to charge enough to buy more cards, which, by the way, can only be done on a main pillar your team controls. Since you're at your team base, you're set. If your base belongs to your opponent's team, I don't see how you haven't lost yet.

Then, you have to trek back potentially hours to get to the point where you lost, by which time, the totem that the two players were trying to get was probably already captured. If you do try to get back a totem that's owned by an enemy, you have to beat their deck (Controlled by an AI). If you win, you get the totem, but if you lose, it's just another few hours more to trek. It's kinda like those vrmmorpgs, where, if you die, you can't login for a day or so, and are teleported back to the last city where you visited.

Those are the basic rules. After this story gets approved, I'll get the first chapter, the first arc's map, (5 v 5. I don't think I can handle more just starting out.) and the MC's opening deck online. I'll also post the few cards that I've already designed, from staples like lich, bishop, and general, to less useful ones like launcher and archer, and even overpowered ones that I made purely for the purpose of banning later on in the story, like hydra or demon. Although Lich and Launcher get semi-banned later on too, Lich cannot be used as a totem, while launcher can only be used as a totem. I actually designed Lich such that he's be OP as well, but never be banned, because the creator of the game (Me) likes liches, and thinks they're awesome.