Palworld TCG Rules: How to Play

The Comprehensive Rules

Bushiroad publishes a full rules document for the Palworld Official Card Game: Comprehensive Rules ver. 1.00, last updated July 30, 2026. It is the tiebreaker for anything a card's text and this guide leave unsettled: exact check timings, how replacement effects stack, and the numbered rule each keyword abbreviates. Everything below is written against it.

Watch the Palworld Official Card Game tutorial

Bushiroad's official English tutorial demonstrates the play area, setup, turn phases, Soul costs, attacks, damage checks, and Pal battles. Watch it here, then use the illustrated sections below as a searchable rules reference.

The play area

Each player controls one half of the mat. Every zone has a job, click any zone below to see what it does. The mat also prints the “Flow of the Game” phase track that drives every turn.

Build your deck

Every legal deck is two separate piles: a 50-card Main Deck of Pals, Structures, Gear and Events, and a 10-card Soul Deck of Soul cards you spend to play everything else.

• Up to two colors from Red, Blue, Green and Purple. Colorless cards fit in any deck.
• 4 copies maximum of any single card name.
• 8 Lucky Pals maximum across the 50-card main deck.
• Both players start at 10 life, reduce your opponent to 0 to win.

Choose up to two colors from Red, Blue, Green and Purple, then fill 50 cards with those colors plus universal Colorless cards, no more than four sharing a card name., paraphrased from the Bushiroad BP01 / TD01·02 preorder announcement

Set up the game

The turn: five phases

Every turn follows the “Flow of the Game” printed on the mat. Click a phase to read it, or hit auto-play and watch a turn cycle.

Playing cards & paying with Souls

To play a Pal, Structure, Gear or Event you pay its Cost, the number in the card's top-left corner, by Resting that many Souls (rotating them upright to sideways). A freshly deployed Pal can act immediately; there is no summoning sickness. Try it: pick a cost, then pay it.

Material and Ingredient

Souls are not the only currency. Each player also tracks two resources, Material and Ingredient, that certain cards generate and then Consume. Both start at 0, both are public information either player can count at any time, and neither can go below 0. You cannot activate an ability unless you can pay its full Material or Ingredient consumption cost.

Attacking a player & the Damage Check

A Standing Pal can attack; when it does, it Rests. Attack the opposing player and its Strike value (lower-right number) is the damage dealt. The defender then puts cards from the top of their deck into their graveyard, one at a time, until the number of cards sent equals that damage. If a Lucky Pal turns up among them, stop immediately: the damage is cancelled entirely and no life is lost. If none appears, the defender loses life equal to the Strike. Run a check below.

Strike (bottom-right) does double duty: it is the life the defending player loses, and it is how many cards they must send to the graveyard looking for a Lucky Pal. That is the tension in a big Strike, a 4 takes four life but gives four chances to whiff. Power (bottom-left) is used in Pal-vs-Pal battles below, different numbers, different jobs.

Pal battles & blocking

An attacker may target the opposing player, a Structure, or an opposing Rested Pal. Standing Pals normally cannot be targeted, but they can block. When Pals battle, both deal their Power at once; any Pal that takes damage at or above its Power is destroyed. Structures have durability and do not deal damage back. All surviving damage clears at the End Phase. Pick a matchup and clash.

INTERACTIVE · battle simulator

Ragnahawk vs FoxparksRagnahawk mirrorFoxparks vs Ragnahawk

Ragnahawk

1000

Power-200

VS

Foxparks · Rested

200

Power-1000

Clash!

Blocking: a Standing Pal can block an incoming attack, Rest it, and the attack is redirected into a Power battle against the blocker instead. A Pal that is already the declared target cannot also block, and Stealth attackers cannot be blocked at all.

Every battle walks the same five steps, and each one is a window where abilities can fire before the damage lands:

Quick & interrupt

Cards and abilities with the Quick keyword can be played while you are being attacked, in the Quick Step that sits between blocking and damage. This is the defender's window alone: the attacking player cannot activate abilities during it, so anything they wanted to set up had to happen before they declared.

Structures & Assign

Structure cards (bases and machines) play in landscape orientation and cost Souls like anything else. You may have any number in play. A Structure has Durability and is destroyed if it takes damage at or above it. Its ability is powered by Assigning a Pal, Rest one of your Pals onto it to trigger its on-Assign effect. Assign a Pal below.

INTERACTIVE · assign a pal

⬡

➜

➜

Draw 1

Assign Pal

Ready to assign.

Gear

Gear cards (tools and weapons) are paid for like Pals, and many carry an on-deploy ability that fires as they enter play. The Single-Shot Rifle reads “AUTO OnDeploy Choose up to 1 Pal, and deal 1500 Damage”, so it destroys any Pal whose Power is 1500 or less the moment it lands.

Winning the game

Reduce your opponent's life from 10 to 0. Each attack that completes its damage check without turning up a Lucky Pal costs the defending player life equal to the attacker's Strike. There is a second, quieter clock: the moment a player's main deck hits 0 cards they lose, and every point of damage they take feeds that deck into the graveyard. You may also concede at any time, and nothing can stop or force a concession.

Keyword abilities

A keyword is one word standing in for a full ability, so the card can spend its text box on something else. These are the fourteen defined in the Comprehensive Rules, with the wording each one expands to. Anything in quotes is the rule text itself.

Card stats & terminology

Elements & work suitability

Every card carries an element, one of nine icons carried over from the videogame. Neutral is an element in its own right: a Neutral card is not an elementless card, which matters the moment something reads “choose a Neutral Pal”.

Eight work-suitability tags appear on cards and in Structure activation requirements. Assign a Pal with the matching tag to power the Structure's effect. In card text these are written inside corner brackets or double quotes.

Palworld TCG rules FAQ

These answers summarize the most common setup, turn, damage-check, and win-condition questions. Use the illustrated sections above for the full sequence and examples.

Ready to use the rules? Browse the complete card list, build a legal list in the deck builder, or start a CPU match.