How to Play the Cyberpunk TCG

What You'll Need to Get Started

The Cyberpunk TCG is the first official trading card game built around CD PROJEKT RED's Cyberpunk universe, designed by WeirdCo. It throws the traditional health-points formula in the bin — instead of chipping away at HP, you're hustling for jobs, collecting dice, and stealing them off your rival. Here's the kit you need before sitting down to play:

• A Cyberpunk TCG deck — grab a Common Cyberdeck starter or a Netrunner Starter Set if you're brand new. Each one comes pre-built and ready to play out of the box.
• A set of six polyhedral dice — one each of d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20. These are your Gig Dice and they're how you score in this game.
• Eddie tokens — coins, glass beads, custom credit chips… anything you can pile up. You'll be earning and spending these as currency every turn.
• A rival — find a friend, recruit a flatmate, or head down to your local game store on launch.

How to Win the Game

The whole game boils down to one number: six. Whoever's collected more Gigs than the other player is winning, and the first one to lock in six is the new Night City legend.

Each Gig Die in your Gig Area counts as one job done. Quantity is what matters here, not the value rolled — two scrappy little dice put you closer to victory than one fat d20.

Overtime

If both players ever take a full turn without grabbing a Gig from the Fixer Area, the game shifts into overtime. From that moment on, the player holding the most Gig Dice wins instantly. Most games never reach that stage — combat is brutal and dice change hands fast — but it's worth knowing the rule exists.

The Playmat

There are seven zones to know, and each one does a specific job. Get these straight in your head and the rest of the rules click into place.

The official Cyberpunk TCG playmat layout

Fixer Area

All six of your Gig Dice live here at the start of the game — think of them as the open contracts a fixer's lined up for your crew. Every Ready Phase, after drawing, you take one die from this area, roll it, and shift it to your Gig Area. You can pick whichever die you fancy, but the d20 always has to be taken last.

Gig Area

This is where the jobs you've claimed — and any you've stolen off your rival — pile up. You win if you start your turn with six dice already sitting here. Some card effects also key off your Street Cred, which is just the total of all the face values showing on the dice in your Gig Area.

Field

Your Units sit here once you've played them. This is where every fight happens. When a Unit attacks, you spend it (turn it sideways) — meaning it can't act again until the start of your next turn.

Eddies Area

Every card has a cost in Eddies, shown in the top-left corner. This area starts the game completely empty — you fill it by selling cards out of your hand once per turn, with each sold card becoming one Eddie when you spend it.

Legends Area

Your three Legend cards sit here, face-down, in a random order. They're the named figures heading up your crew, each with a unique synergy effect. At any point you can spend a Legend (face-up or face-down) to pay one Eddie, or you can drop 2 Eddies to Call a Legend and flip it face-up — once per turn during your Play Phase, or once during your rival's attack as a defensive move.

Deck & Trash

Standard stuff. Your deck is your draw pile — top card comes off at the start of every turn. Your trash is the discard pile, where defeated Units, used Programs, and anything else that gets binned ends up.

Reading Your Cards

There's a lot crammed onto every Cyberpunk TCG card, but once you know what you're looking at it becomes second nature. Here's the anatomy:

Anatomy of a Cyberpunk TCG card

• Cost — top-left number. The amount of Eddies you have to spend to play the card.
• Sell Tag (€$) — if a card has this symbol, it can be sold from your hand to generate one Eddie. Most Gear and Programs carry it; Legends always have it.
• Type — top-right label. Tells you whether the card is a Legend, Unit, Program or Gear.
• RAM — small coloured value next to the type. Used during deck building — your Legends set the maximum RAM you can run in each colour.
• Tags — group labels (Arasaka, Corpo, Mercs etc). Loads of cards reference tags in their effects.
• Power — bottom-right number, on Units only. Higher Power wins fights, and Power 10+ steals extra Gigs when you connect with a direct attack.
• Ability text — the rules text panel. This is where Timing Triggers and Keywords live.

The Four Card Types

The four card types side by side

Timing Triggers

A Timing Trigger is a label in the ability text that tells you exactly when an effect happens. There are three to learn:

Keywords

Keywords are shorthand for an effect that shows up on lots of cards. There are two big ones in Set 1:

• BLOCKER — when a rival Unit attacks, you can spend this Unit to redirect the attack onto it instead. Saves a Gig Die at the cost of a Unit.
• GO SOLO — pay the listed cost to play the Unit ready, meaning it can attack the same turn it hits the table. Bypasses summoning sickness.

Example Legends

Here's what real Legend cards look like in the wild — three of the iconic faces from Welcome to Night City:

Saburo Arasaka, Goro Takemura and Yorinobu Arasaka — three Legends from Set 1

Setting Up the Game

Setup takes under a minute once you've done it once. Here's the routine:

Playing a Turn

Every turn flows through three phases in the same order: Ready, then Play, then Attack. Once you've got the rhythm, turns feel quick and snappy.

1. Ready Phase

Three small steps in this order:

• Draw a card — top of your deck into your hand. If you can't draw because the deck is empty, you lose on the spot.
• Gain a Gig — pick any die from your Fixer Area (except the d20, which has to be taken last), roll it, and place it in your Gig Area with the rolled value showing.
• Ready your spent cards — turn every sideways (spent) card back upright. Units that attacked last turn are ready to swing again, Legends spent for Eddies come back online, and so on.

2. Play Phase

This is the "do stuff" phase. You can take these actions in any order, as many times as the rules allow:

Sell for Eddies

Once per turn you can sell cards from your hand. Pick any cards with the Sell Tag (€$) symbol, reveal them to your rival, and put them face-down in your Eddies Area. Each one is worth one Eddie when you spend it later — it doesn't matter how expensive the card was originally.

Call a Legend

Once per turn you can pay 2 Eddies to flip one of your face-down Legends face-up. Don't peek at them first — the random order is part of the bluff. Calling a Legend triggers any FLIP abilities on that card immediately.

Play Cards

Pay the Eddie cost shown in the top-left of any card and put it into play — Units onto the Field, Gear attached to a Unit, Programs straight into the trash after resolving. Remember: spent Legends can also be used to pay one Eddie towards a card's cost.

3. Attack Phase

Time to send the crew in. There's only one thing to do here: declare attacks with your ready Units. Each Unit attacks individually and you fully resolve one fight before the next begins. We've broken the whole thing down in the Combat section below.

Combat in Depth

Combat is the heart of Cyberpunk TCG and works a bit differently from most other card games. There's no traditional blocker phase — instead, you pick a target with each Unit, then your rival reacts.

Combat — pick a target, resolve the fight, repeat

Choose Your Target

When one of your Units attacks, you pick one of two targets:

• A spent Unit on the field — start a fight to wipe it out.
• The rival player directly — if it lands, you steal a Gig Die from their Gig Area.

Attacking a Spent Unit (a Fight)

• Offensive Step — spend your attacking Unit and trigger any ATTACK abilities on it.
• Defensive Step — your rival can Call a face-down Legend, or use a BLOCKER Unit to redirect your attack onto a ready defender.
• Fight — compare total Power. The Unit with more Power wins. If they tie, both sides lose.
• Defeat — every defeated Unit (and any Gear attached to it) goes straight to the trash.

Attacking the Rival Directly

• Offensive Step — spend your attacking Unit and trigger any ATTACK abilities, same as a fight.
• Defensive Step — your rival still gets the chance to Call a Legend or redirect with a BLOCKER.
• Steal — if the attack lands, pick one Gig Die from their Gig Area and move it to yours. The face value comes with it.

Deck Building & RAM

Once you've played a few games out of a starter, you'll want to start tinkering. Here are the rules of construction:

A complete Cyberpunk TCG deck — three Legends plus a 40–50 card main deck

• Exactly 3 Legends — each one with a unique name. They sit separate from your main deck.
• 40 to 50 main-deck cards — anywhere in that range works, so you can tune for consistency or variety.
• Maximum 3 copies of any card — same name, max three.
• Stay within your RAM limits — every Legend has a coloured border with a RAM value. Add the RAM values across your three Legends and that's your maximum for each colour in the main deck.

How RAM Works

Every card in your main deck has its own RAM value in one or more colours. The total RAM-per-colour of every card in your deck has to be less than or equal to the combined RAM of your three Legends in that same colour. If you want to splash a second colour, you need at least one Legend that supplies that colour's RAM.

Glossary

Quick-reference for the terms that show up over and over in the rules and on cards:

Top Tips for New Edgerunners

Frequently Asked Questions