The Palworld OFFICIAL CARD GAME is a two-player card game from Bushiroad. You each start on 10 life, deploy Pals to a base, and attack until one player hits zero — or runs out of deck. If you have just opened a trial deck, this guide covers everything you need: how a turn is structured, how battles resolve, what every keyword means, and the exact deck construction limits.

Everything below is taken from the official Comprehensive Rules (version 1.00, published 29 July 2026) and the official Play Guide. Rule numbers are given in brackets so you can check anything against the official document.

What you need to play

Two players, each with a 50-card main deck and a 10-card soul deck. The trial decks (Dawn of Palpagos Red・Blue and Green・Purple) are legal decks straight out of the box, so a pair of them is everything two people need. Booster packs from Dawn of Palpagos then upgrade them.

You also need a way to track two numbers per player: life, which starts at 10, and damage taken, which starts at 0 and resets constantly during play.

How you win — and how damage really works

There are two losing conditions, and both matter (11.3):

• Your life is 0 or less.
• Your deck runs out of cards — having zero cards in your deck loses immediately, not on your next draw.

Those two are connected by the game's most distinctive rule, and it is the one thing you should read twice. Damage to a player is not subtracted from life straight away. Instead, when you have taken 1 or more damage, you resolve it like this (11.2.2):

1. Put the top card of your deck into your graveyard.
2. If that card has the Lucky Pal icon, the damage resolution ends immediately and you lose no life at all.
3. Otherwise, keep flipping until the number of cards you have put into the graveyard equals the damage you took — then reduce your life by that much.

So taking 3 damage means milling 3 cards off your own deck, and any Lucky Pal among them cancels the entire hit. This is why the deck limit on Lucky Pals exists: they are simultaneously playable Pals and your only defensive buffer against life loss. It is also why decking out is a real risk — every hit you take burns your own deck down.

Deck construction rules

From section 6.1 of the comprehensive rules:

• The main deck must be exactly 50 cards — not a minimum, exactly 50.
• Maximum 4 cards sharing the same card name. Names, not card numbers, so alternate-art reprints of the same card count together.
• Maximum 8 cards with the Lucky Pal icon in total.
• The soul deck holds 10 soul cards.

Those are the only limits section 6.1 sets out. Colour is not a resource in this game — costs are paid with souls, whatever colour your cards are — but decks are still built around one or two of the four colours (red, blue, green, purple), because individual cards reward sticking to a colour identity. The trial decks are each built as a two-colour pair for exactly this reason.

Card names can be split into a main name and a sub name by an em dash — on "Lamball – My First Pal", "Lamball" is the main name and "My First Pal" is the sub name (2.1.3). Effects that reference a name can hit either part, and the 4-copy limit applies to any shared name.

The five card types

Reading a card

• Cost — the souls you rest to play it. The card's colour is shown by the background colour of its cost (2.6.2.1).
• Power — damage this Pal deals to other Pals and structures, and how much damage it can survive. On a structure this same value is called durability (2.8.3).
• Strike — damage this Pal deals to a player. Power and strike are separate numbers: a huge Pal with low strike wins fights but barely dents your opponent's life.
• Element — Neutral, Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, Ground, Ice, Dark or Dragon. Neutral is a real element, not the absence of one (2.4.2.1).
• Work suitability — the same work icons as the video game, referenced by cards that care about them.
• Lucky icon — marks a Lucky Pal, which is what the damage resolution above checks for.
• Quick icon — this card or ability can be played during your opponent's battle, in the quick step.
• Reminder text — anything in brackets is explanation only. It is part of the text but has no effect on the game (2.12.2).

The zones and the playmat

Each player has their own set of zones (section 4):

• Base — where Pals, structures and gear are deployed. Public. Cards here are either standing or resting. You may control a maximum of 5 Pals; exceed it and the excess are sent to the graveyard (4.4.5.2, 11.5).
• Deck zone — face down, order matters, and hitting 0 cards loses the game.
• Hand — hidden from your opponent.
• Graveyard — public, face up, order not tracked.
• Soul deck — your 10 souls before they enter play. Public, but you do not have to lay them face up.
• Soul area — where souls go once gained. Souls here stand and rest like Pals do.
• Exile zone — cards removed from the game.
• Resolution zone — a single shared zone used while effects resolve.

Standing and resting is the core physical state. A standing card is upright; a resting card is sideways (4.3.2). Attacking rests your Pal, blocking rests your Pal, and paying a soul cost rests souls. Almost everything untaps — stands — at the start of your turn.

Setting up a game

1. Show your opponent the main deck you are using.
2. Put your main deck in the deck zone and shuffle.
3. Randomly pick a player; that player chooses who goes first.
4. Put all your soul cards into your soul deck area.
5. The player going second puts 1 soul into their soul area — the compensation for going second.
6. Both players draw 5 cards.
7. Starting with the player going first, each player may redraw once: return your whole hand to your deck, shuffle, draw 5 again. Once per game each.
8. Set life to 10, damage taken to 0, and all resources to 0.

The five phases of a turn

1. Stand phase — stand all cards in your base and soul area. Everything you rested last turn is available again (7.2.1).
2. Draw phase — draw 1 card. The player who goes first skips the draw phase (7.3.1) and goes straight to the soul phase.
3. Soul phase — move souls from your soul deck into your soul area. The number gained per turn is 2 (7.4.2.1). If your soul deck has fewer than that left, move all of them.
4. Main phase — the whole turn happens here. See below.
5. End phase — end-of-turn abilities trigger, then all damage on every Pal and structure becomes 0 (7.6.3) and "until end of turn" effects expire. Play passes to your opponent.

During your main phase you may do any of the following, any number of times, in any order (section 8):

• Play a card from your hand.
• Play an activated ability.
• Declare a battle with a Pal that is able to attack.
• Rest 3 souls to draw 1 card — once per turn (8.5). This is a baseline rule available to every deck, not a card effect, even though some Soul cards print it as reminder text.

Souls: the resource system

Souls are not lands or energy that stay spent. You gain 2 per turn from a finite 10-card soul deck, and paying a cost means resting that many standing souls in your soul area (10.4.3) — they stand back up in your next stand phase. So your spendable resources per turn ramp 1, 2, 3… up to 10 and stop there, and the total number of souls you will ever have is capped at 10 for the whole game.

That cap is what makes the "rest 3 souls, draw 1 card" action a real decision: early on, 3 souls is your entire turn.

Battle, step by step

A battle is declared during your main phase and runs through five steps (section 9). You can declare as many battles per turn as you have Pals able to attack.

1. Attack declaration step. Choose a standing Pal you control and a legal target, then rest the attacking Pal. Legal targets are: the opposing player, or one of your opponent's resting Pals or their structures (9.2.3). A Pal deployed this turn can attack immediately — there is no summoning sickness (9.2.2.3).
2. Block declaration step. The defending player may choose one standing Pal they control that is not already the target, rest it, and make it the new attack target (9.4.2). Blocking is optional and costs you that Pal's readiness.
3. Quick step. The defending player gets a play timing and may play event cards or activated abilities marked Quick. The attacking player cannot activate abilities during this step (9.5.2.2).
4. Damage step. Resolve based on the final target:
   • Pal vs Pal — both deal damage equal to their power to each other, simultaneously.
   • Pal vs structure — the attacker deals its power to the structure, and the structure deals nothing back (9.6.3.2.1).
   • Pal vs player — the attacker deals damage equal to its strike, which then goes through the deck-flipping damage resolution described above. Strike of 0 or less does nothing.
5. End of battle step. End-of-battle triggers resolve, the attacker stops being "attacking", and you return to your main phase.

A Pal or structure is destroyed when the damage on it is equal to or greater than its power (or durability) (11.4.1). Because all damage resets to 0 in the end phase, chipping a big Pal across two separate turns does not work — it heals every turn.

The "only resting Pals can be attacked" rule is the tactical heart of the game: a Pal that attacks is rested and therefore becomes a target on the crack-back. Holding Pals standing keeps them safe but does nothing to your opponent's life.

Every keyword ability

These are the shorthand abilities printed on cards (section 12). The first four are timing keywords; the rest are the ten keyword abilities you can filter the card list by.

Ability types and timing

Card text comes in three flavours (10.1.1), and the icons on the card tell you which:

• ACT — activated abilities. You choose to use them when you have a play timing, paying any cost written in brackets. Costs are all-or-nothing: you may never pay part of one (10.4.2.2).
• AUTO — automatic abilities. They trigger on a condition ("When…", "At the beginning of…") without being played.
• CONT — continuous abilities. Always on while the card is in the right zone. Abilities on Pals, structures and gear only work while the card is in the base, unless the card shows a zone icon saying otherwise (10.3.5).

Costs shown as circled numbers are souls to rest. Where a card contradicts these rules, the card text wins (1.3.1).

Rules that trip up new players

• Damage to a player is not immediate life loss. You mill that many cards first, and a Lucky Pal among them cancels the whole hit.
• Damage on Pals wipes at the end of every turn. There is no chip damage across turns.
• You cannot attack a standing Pal unless your attacker has Assault. Standing Pals are defenders, not targets.
• Attacking rests your Pal, which makes it a legal target on your opponent's turn.
• Souls come back. Resting souls to pay a cost is not spending them permanently — but you only ever get 10 of them.
• Your deck emptying loses on the spot, at 0 cards, not when you fail to draw.
• The 5-Pal limit is enforced by rule, and going over sends the excess to the graveyard rather than preventing the play.
• Reminder text in brackets does nothing. It restates a rule the game already applies.

Rules summarised from the Palworld OFFICIAL CARD GAME Comprehensive Rules v1.00 (29 July 2026) and Play Guide, published by Bushiroad. Card images and card text are © Bushiroad and © PALWORLD. Palpedia is an unofficial fan resource and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Bushiroad or Pocketpair.