The Rules of the Precious Memories card game

The rules:
Ok, this is the post explaining the rules of the card game. To the new players, this is a must-read if you want to learn how to play this card game. Obviously, any new card game seems very intimidating just looking at the cards not knowing what they mean, especially in a foreign language. But I'll do my best to attempt to explain this in the most easy-to-understand manner. For those of you who can read Japanese and would like to take a look at the rules on the official website, then take a look at this page!
Official website rule guide


Since this is a somewhat long post, this is the index. Just hit ctrl+f and type in the index letters to easily jump to that part of the rule guide!
PMR-01 - The basics. PMR-02 - Win Conditions PMR-03 - Before you begin! PMR-04 Turn Phases PMR-05 Cost/Source (How to play out cards) PMR-06 Card text/abilities

PMR-01 - THE BASICS
Each deck consists of 60 cards. There are 3 types of cards. Character cards, event cards, and support cards.
Here's an example of these types of cards:
There are two types of character cards. There's one type which has "AP and DP", and there's support characters (which lacks AP/DP)
Here's what a character that has an AP/DP looks like:

I'll explain each part of the card.
-The upper left hand corner says "Character", so if you couldn't tell, that means it's a character card.
-"Cost" - Under "Character", there's a little circle with a number in it with "cost" written above it. This is how much the character costs to be put into play. The example here says "4". This means that this character costs "4" to be put into play.
"Ok, so how do I pay for cost?"
- "Source" Easy, you pay for cards to be put into play by using other cards. Under "Cost", there's another small circle with a number labeled "source". As of the time writing this, every card has either 1 or 2 source written in that bubble. In the example here, the source is 1. This means that you can trash this card to get 1 source to pay for another card's cost.
I'll go into more details about source after I explain the card types.
-AP/DP (approach power/defense power)- For characters with AP/DP, you can see on the right side of the card, there are two bubbles, one for AP, and one for DP. These are used for when you are attacking or blocking. If you played Magic the Gathering, they are the same as power/toughness, with the only exception being a character can have 0 toughness or less and still stay alive. I'll go into more details as I explain how battles work, for those of you who never played magic the gathering.
-Name - Under the AP/DP is where the character's name is written. "平沢 唯" (Hirasawa Yui) is written here. Many cards affect specific characters, so the character's name is actually very important. One thing to note is that you can have multiple characters with the same name in play, but not the same exact card.
-Card Text - Under the name is where the card text is. This card lacks card text, as it is just a generic 40/40. Card text offers many different varieties of cards, which makes the game very interesting.
-Card Type - Under the card text are 4 slots. This refers to the character type. For example, this card has two card types:
"制服" (seifuku - uniform) and "音楽" (ongaku - music). There are many cards that affect card type, and not just card name.
There are actually quite a few decks based around certain character's card type, such as a megane (glasses) deck, or a maid deck, for example.
-Flavor text - The flavor text is under the card type boxes. It has no effect on gameplay, and some cards don't have any flavor text. It is often a quote said by that character in the particular anime series that they're from, and are only there just for fun.
- Set/series/sakuhin - In the lower left hand corner of the card, the set that the card is in, or rather, the anime that the particular character comes from has it's logo drawn there. It may not seem important now, but using cards from the same series is very beneficial when making a deck, and always something to consider, as you can use cards from the same set as source to pay out for cards.
- Color - There are 4 colors in this game, Red/Blue/Green/Yellow. Every card is one of these 4 colors. As of this the time writing this, there are no dual color, or color lacking cards. Color also matters when making a deck, too.
- Rarity - The stars at the bottom right hand corner refer to the rarity of a card.
1 star - common
2 stars - uncommon
3 stars - rare
4 stars - Super Rare
5 stars - Ultra Rare/Signed
If there is no stars and it's labeled P-##, then it's a promotional card. There were also some lawson promotional cards (available during a campaign at "Lawson" convenience stores )which are labelled L-##. There are also cards labelled (for example) 01-006a. This is also a promotional card, but it's a promotional card of an already existing card.
-Card Number - Next to rarity is the card number. This is important as there are many cards of the same character, so having the card number handy helps when looking for a specific card, or when referring to a specific card. (We're often forced to give nicknames to certain characters otherwise you have to explain which card of the certain character you're referring to everytime)

Ok, onto support characters!

As you can see, the only difference with this card and regular character card's is that it lacks an AP/DP. This card has 0 cost 1 source. This means that you don't have to pay anything to play this card out. This particular card says "When this character comes into play, if you have a character with "seifuku" in play, then draw a card" It's mainly good for one free card.

The next type of card is event cards!

The first thing you'll notice is that this card is horizontal, and not vertical. Event cards are non-character cards that you play that has an effect when you play it, and is then discarded. The cost and source work the same as they do for characters, but they are found on the upper right hand corner of the card, not the upper left hand corner. The flavor text is all the way on the left. The card text tells you not only what the card does, but also when you can use the card. The timing on when to use a card can make its usability heavily increase or decrease.

This particular event card is called "Un-tan" and it's a 0/1 red event that can be played during your main phase, and gives one of your "Hirasawa Yui" cards +10/+10 until the end of the turn, and then you draw a card. It can make one of your Yui cards strong enough to attack and not get trashed, and you get another card in the process! Not a bad deal! If the timing was on the opponent's turn, for example, it would be like a completely different card, even if the rest of the card text is the same. Hence why timing is just as important for events as the actual abilities of the card itself!

The last type of card is support cards. They are cards that you attach to characters.

Support cards are also vertical, like characters. Most everythign else is the same as the other cards. Cost/source works the same. You just attach the card to a character of your choice, and that character gets the effect of the support card.
Some support cards can only be attached to certain characters (for example, the giita shown here can only be attached to a Hirasawa Yui, and it gives her +10/+0 as long as the giita is attached to the character).
* Each character can only have the same support card attached to them once!
-This means that you cannot have giita attached to the same Yui, but you can put another giita on a different Yui if you want to.
* You can also attach a different support card to a character that already has a support card on it, as long as it's not the same one.
-Hypothetically, you could have 3-4 support cards on a single character, but that's not quite recommended, as you lose a lot of cards at once if a single guy gets trashed.

Ok, those are the 3 types of cards! Hope that was easy enough to understand!

Next, I'll get to what people have been waiting for, and generally the first question I ask when learning a new game:
"How do you win?"

PMR-02 WIN CONDITIONS:
This is very easy, as there's only 2 win conditions:

1) The opponent has no cards in their library. This doesn't mean until the end of the turn, this doesn't mean until they can't draw a card. This means that the instant you have 0 cards in your library, you lose.
2) You get your opponent to 7 "points". You get a point by attacking with a character, and having it go unblocked.

Regardless of AP/DP, if a character of yours goes unblocked, the opponent takes a point (done by flipping over the top card of their library into a seperate "point pile", next to your deck face up.) 7 of these, and it's game over.

This is the layout, your deck goes on the top, with the trash pile under it, and the point pile on the right.
PMR-03 Before you begin - Each deck consists of 60 cards. You can have no more than 4 copies of the same card in a deck.

Each player starts by shuffling their decks, and then drawing 7 cards. Then the players do paper-scissors-rock. The winner gets to choose if he wants to go first (where you draw only one card at the beginning of your turn), or draw 2 cards first, but go second. You then look at your hand. If you don't like it, you can put it on the bottom of your deck (in any order) and draw 7 cards. If you don't like the 2nd hand, there's nothing you can do about it. You have 2 chances to get a good hand, and after that, you're stuck. After both players are done, the player who takes their first turn begins.

PMR-04 Turn phases.
There's 4 phases to a turn.
1st - Beginning Phase. This is where you untap (or, as this game refers to, puts your character in an "state of action") your characters, and where you draw 2 cards. These are done at the same time, and nothing else can be done during this phase.

2nd - Main Phase. This is where you play characters, events (that say they can be played during your main phase), character activation abilities and support cards. Your opponent can also play cards during this point, or activate character abilities or whatnot during your main phase. Characters (unless stated otherwise) can only be played during your main phase. When playing a character, you have 2 places you can put the character. The main area, and the support area. Let's take a look at the setup once more:

As you can see, there are 5 slots in the "main area". This means that at max, you can have 5 characters in the main area.

The main area is where you put characters that are going to attack or block. Therefore, you cannot put a character that has no AP/DP into the main area.
The support area is where all the other characters go. All the characters that lack an AP/DP go here. You can also play characters that have an AP/DP in the support area as well. Do note, however, that you cannot move characters from the support area to the main area (unless you use specific cards that do this)

A couple of important rules for playing characters:
*You can only have one copy of a character out at once. You can have multiple characters with the same NAME, but you can only have one of the same character out in play, as in, same exact card number. This is true for support area characters as well. This means that usually, you only play a particular support area character once per game.
*If you have 5 characters in the main area, and you want to play another one, then you can throw away one of the 5 characters and put the new character in it's place. You cannot, however, sacrifice a character at will, nor can you sacrifice the same character you're putting out.

After the main phase is finished, it's onto the "approach" phase.
3rd - Approach Phase. In many games it's called "attacking", but in this game, the characters don't attack, they "approach". When you approach with one of your characters, you tap it, by turning it to the side. This is called "state of taking a break" in Japanese, so I'll refer to it as "tapping" because it's much easier to say, and already widely used thanks to Magic the Gathering. Likewise, untapping means to turn the card back to face up. This gets a little bit tricky, but it's not as hard as it seems.

The character on the left is "untapped" (活動状態 - katsudou jyoutai), and the character on the right is "tapped" (休息状態 kyuusoku jyoutai)

There's 2 rules to the approach phase.
-Characters that were played out this turn cannot attack this turn.
-Characters can only attack once per turn.
The steps:
-Attack with a character.
--Either player can play event cards or use card text.
---The opponent chooses whether to block it. They can only block with characters that are untapped. After they block with a character, they tap that character.
----Either player can play event cards or use card text.
-----The characters then deal their damage to each other, or to the opponent.
------Either player can play event cards or use card text

This repeats for each character that attacks. While it may seem complicated, all you have to know is that you can play events/card text anytime after attackers are declared, after you decide on a blocker, and after damage is dealt, which actually gives you quite a bit of freedom.

Note that when you tap a character, it cannot block the next turn, as only untapped characters can block, so keep that in mind.

In this game, you can only block an attacking character with one character. You cannot block one character using two or more characters. The AP on your character's card is how much damage a character deals. If the damage a char recieves is as much, or more than the DP on your character's card, then your character will go to the trash pile. It works the same as in MtG, except characters with 0DP won't immediately get trashed unless they participate in battle (if a 0 DP character participates in battle with a 0 AP character, then the 0 DP character will get trashed, I was incorrect in my former assessment).

So let's take a look at the diagram:


On the left, there's a red Yui, which has 20 AP and 30 DP. The blocking character is a 20AP and 20DP yellow Azusa. Yui will deal 20 damage to Azusa, while Azusa will deal 20 damage to Yui. Yui has 30 DP, and so she takes 20 damage, she does not get trashed. Azusa, on the other hand, has only 20 DP, so the 20 damage Yui deals to Azusa is enough to take her out, so the Azusa will get trashed.

On the right, there's a blue 30/30 Mio approaching, and a yellow 30/30 Ritsu blocking. Both characters deal 30 damage, which is enough to take out the other, so they both get trashed.

After that, you repeat this once at a time until you finish attacking. Afterwards, you end your turn.

4th - End of turn phase - There's 3 steps:
1st - Any "~happens at the end of the turn" card effects go into play. For example, there are quite a few cards that say "draw a card at the end of the turn"
2nd - If you have 8 or more cards, you discard your hand down to 7 cards, throwing any above 7 into your trash pile. Of course, you get to choose what cards to throw away.
3rd - Any "~ effect until end of turn" effect then goes away, and it becomes your opponent's turn after that.
---

PMR-05 Cost/Source -

Next, I'll explain how to pay for cost:

As mentioned before, each character has a cost and a source. There are only 4 things you need to look at when playing a card. Cost/Source/Color/Series.
There are three main rules:
*You can only play a card out if you pay for it using at least one card that is either the same color, or is from the same "series"
*You can use multiple cards to pay for one card, and for events/characters that are 3 cost or above, it's almost always necessary.
*When you play out a card and pay for it with cards from you hand, you must trash the cards you use to pay for it.

For example, let's use the Yui from earlier. It's 4 cost. That means that you need to get other cards that give at least 4 source. At least one of those cards must be either red, or from "K-ON!/K-ON!!"

So on the left, you see a Yuno (red) and Miyako (yellow) card. They're both 2 cost, 2 source. Both together give 4 source, which is enough to pay for the Yui. As long as a color of one of the cards matches, or the set from another card matches, then you can play out the card. Since the Yuno is red, same as the Yui, you can use those two cards to pay for the Yui to come into play, even though neither of them are "K-ON!/K-ON!!" cards. You would put those two cards into the graveyard, and then put the Yui from your hand into play.
On the right, however, there's a Hiro (green) and a Sae (blue) card. They're also both 2 cost 2 source. So while there is enough source there, neither of the cards share a color with the Yui, and neither card are from K-ON!/K-ON!!, so they can't be used to play out that Yui.

The other way to pay for cards is to flip over cards in your point pile. You can flip over the cards in your point pile instead of discarding cards from your hand to help pay for cost. Take a look at this

On the left, you see 3 cards in the point pile. Any of those cards can be used to pay for the necessary "same set/same color" cost, as the Mio and Azusa are both K-on, and the Nori is red, so even if the other card(s) you use to pay for the Yui aren't of the same color/series, you can use any one of those 3 and be ok. On the right, however, all of those cards are from Hidamari Sketch, a different series, as well as different colors. So on their own, those three can't be used to play out the Yui, even though they're 4 source together.

Note: *You can use a combination of cards from the point pile and cards from your hand to pay for a character.

It's not as complicated as I may have made it sound, you just need to remember two things
*To play out a card, you need to have at LEAST that amount of source
*That source needs to be from another card that's either the same series, same color, or both.

PMR-06 Card text-
This is the part about card texts!
Card abilities: There's two types of card abilities, active and passive.
Active - There's also two types of active abilities: one that involves paying a cost (even if the cost is 0) to do the card ability, and the other which involves tapping your character.

If you look at the diagram, you can see that on the left, is an ability where you pay 0 to activate it. Before the 0 cost, however, is the timing of when you can use that ability. In this particular card, it says "Main/Jibun", meaning your own main phase is when you can use it. This card's ability says "0: Main/Jibun - Discard an "Akiyama Mio" from your hand. This card gets +10/+10 and "active" until the end of the turn."
On the right, you see the arrow pointing down. This refers to tapping your character, and then the ability comes into effect. This particular card says "Tap: Main/Jibun - One of your "Hirasawa Yui" get's +10/+0 until the end of the turn"

Passive - Passive abilities are abilities that happen automatically. Many passive abilities involve "When this character comes into play, then ~". Others involve "if you have 3 or more ~, then (so and so effect)" or something along those lines.

There are 4 rules to "using active card texts"
-If you don't pay the cost, you can't use the text.
-As long as you pay the cost, you can use as many different abilities as you like
-You can only use each character's card text once per turn
-You can only use the active card text during the time specified on the card (Your own main phase, your opponent's main phase etc)

ICONS:
These are what the icons that are on character cards refer to:

0: Without paying any sort of cost, you can use this character's ability.
2: If there's a color on that box that the number is in, then you must pay with that color. If it's black, you can pay with any color/series.
(arrow): This means you tap the character and the ability occurs. Because the character is tapped, obviously it cannot attack or block.

TIMING:
On all event cards and active character abilities, there is a timing that specifies when you can play the card.
メイン (main) - It can be played during the main phase.
アプローチ (approach) - It can be played during any step of the approach phase (after a character attacks, after you choose a blocker, after damage is dealt)
割り込み (warikomi / interrupt) - The timing is when an opponent plays a card, or when they activate an active character ability.
自分 (jibun / your own) - This refers to whose turn you can use the event/ability on. If it says 自分/アプローチ (jibun approach) for example, it means you can only use this during your own approach phase, and not your opponent's approach phase. This makes a huge difference for some cards.
相手 (aite / your opponent's) This means that on the opponent's main/approach phase or whatever, you can use this card.
両方 (ryouhou / both) This means that during either player's turn, you can use this card. Always very convenient to have!

OTHER CARD TIMING:
On many cards, there's something that says ~する場合. This means that "If ~ happens, then ~" This can only happen once a turn, even if you meet the condition multiple times. For example take a look at this card:


This Mugi says, "When this card comes into play (登場する場合), two of your characters get +10/+10 until the end of turn" It's easy to understand that this happens only once, as the character only comes into play once. However, there are certain cards that might not be so easy to understand, such as:


This 20/20 Yui on the left says "If you play a character that has "ongaku"(このカードはこのカード以外のの自分の「音楽」を持つキャラが登場し場合), then this card gets +20/+20 until end of turn." So even if you play two characters that have ongaku, the effect only happens once because it says "する場合"

On some other cards, there's something that says "~するごとに". This means that "Whenever ~ happens, then ~". This can happen multiple times a turn as long as the condition is fulfilled for each of them. For example, take a look at the 30/30 Yui on the right. This card says "Whenever you play a character (自分のキャラが登場するごとに), then this card gets +10/+10 until the end of turn. This means that if you play 3 characters that turn, that this card will get +10/+10 for each of them until the end of turn, making potential for this character to become very big! There's a huge difference between these two abilities, so keep that in mind when looking at cards!

OTHER CARD ABILITIES:
Similar to other card games, there are certain special abilities that some of the characters have. They each do different things, and are useful in their own way. There aren't very many other card abilities, so this shouldn't be very intimidating.

- アクティブ (Active) - This means that the character can attack the turn it was put into play (with the very first turn of the game being an exception).


"Santa Mio - 1/1 red 30/20 - Active. At the end of the turn, put this card back into your hand" - Useful for a quick, cheap attack

- 天然 (#) (Tennen) - This means that characters with a cost of the tennen number or lower cannot block it. For example, a character with tennen 2 cannot be blocked by chacters with cost of 2 or less (so 2/1/0 cost characters).

As you can see, this Yui has tennen 2. In this, the yuno is 2 cost, therefore it cannot block the tennen Yui. In the below picture however, there's a 4 cost Yuno that can block the tennen 2 Yui if it feels like it.


- ブレイク (Break) - Cards that have break mean that when the card is flipped over as a point pile card, then you can play that card at that time without paying it's casting cost by flipping it over instead. Break cards often have high costs that aren't very practical to pay out normally, but when played out for free if you get lucky, are very rewarding.

"Kushami - 5/1 red event. Main/Jibun - BREAK! Return one of the opponent's characters to their hand." - Very rewarding if the break effect goes through.

- コンビ (combi) - Combi is short for combination, and they count as both of the characters in the one card.


This is a Ritsu/Yui combi, and acts as both a Ritsu and a Yui. So for any card that may affect either of them, you can choose this card (For example, the Un-tan card that was shown earlier which pumps up a Yui +10/+10 can pump up this card). However, the drawback to combis are the fact that you need to pay for the combi's cost using at least one card that's one of the character's on the card. For example, if you want to play out that Ritsu/Yui combi, you need to use either a ritsu OR a Yui for source.

If you look at this diagram again, on the bottom left, you have a Yui and an Azusa, so you can use that to pay for the Ritsu/Yui combi. On the right, however, is a Mio and a Mugi. Since you don't have a Yui or an Azusa there, you can't use those two cards to pay for the combi. This may seem like a huge drawback but many combi cards are very strong, and well worth the drawback because of their abilities.

- 逆境 (#) (gyakkyou - literally meaning "under adverse circumstances", but for the purpose of making things easy, let's call it "survival") - Gyakkyou/survival + the number means that whenever you have that many points in your point pile, that the effect on the card goes into effect. This effect first game into play in the "Katanagatari".

For example, the Shichika (red card) on the left has gyakkyou/survival 5, +20/+20. That means that if you have 5 or 6 points, that he will get +20/+20. This means that for a 3 cost character, he becomes a 50/40 if you have 5 or 6 points, which might just be enough to help you make a comeback!
On the right, there is a blue Togame. She's a generic 4/1 30/40, but because she has gyakkyou/survival 5, if you play her when you're at 5 or 6 points, then her "When this character comes into play, draw 2 cards" ability comes into effect! This can give you the extra boost you may need when you're in a tight situation, especially in a close game where the opponent is also at 5-6 points!

-+10/+10 coin - There are certain cards that say "when this character comes into play, put a +10/+10 coin on this character". Simply put, for each coin on a character, add +10/+10 to that character's AP/DP.

"4/1 40/30 Red Hirasawa Yui - "When this card comes into play, if you have 3 or more characters in play, put a +10/+10 coin on this card"

連携 (renkei) from here on to be called "Team Up" is a new ability unique to the Samurai Girls set due out in late June 2011. Characters with this ability are allowed to team up with seperate characters as long as those characters are not a "combi" character. The ability will list specific instructions on who they can team up with, usually a name or character type is listed. As long as you have one character with team up and another character with the name or character type designated by the ability then you may use it. When you attack with the new Team Up the AP of both characters are added together but the DP of only one of the two characters is used (which you, the person approaching, chooses). If it loses the battle during the approach phase, only the character who's DP was used is sent to the graveyard. During approach, these two characters are otherwise treated as one attacker and therefore only can land one point on an opponent who lets it through. So in a basic sense: Two characters attack at once (both get tapped), their AP is combined, and the DP is that of whichever the person approaching chooses. If a point goes through, it only counts for one point. Only one character needs the Team Up ability, but the 2nd character has to meet the requirements on the card with the Team Up ability.

So those are the basic rules of the game! Obviously certain cards are more complicated and may require further explanation, but for the most part, those are the rules of the game! If certain parts need more explanation, or if something seems to be too confusing, please let me know, and I'll do what I can to fix this!