I love the deckbuilding and the mid-combat mind games of card games, so I built my own. It's called aCHAOSi. I've been heads-down on it since May and it's now at the point where it needs more eyes than mine. I'm excited and slightly terrified to start sharing it.

If you'd like to try it, drop a comment and I'll DM you the link. It runs in the browser, it's free, and there is nothing to buy. Any feedback at all is a gift.

**How it plays**

Combat is MTG-style: you declare attackers, your opponent assigns blockers, then both players get a window to play Combat Tricks at instant speed before damage resolves. Damage sticks around, so a unit that survives a fight stays wounded. Mana works like Hearthstone: Flux ramps from 1 to 10, one per turn, and refills every turn, so there's no land screw or mana flood. The player going second gets a one-shot +1 Flux card called The Spark. You win by draining your opponent's Charge to zero.

Decks are 30 cards, max two copies of anything. The core twist is that you pick **two of five Sects** and they share one Flux pool. Cards from outside your two Sects are playable but cost 2 more, so splashing is a real decision rather than a free one. Keywords are the familiar set (Rush, Shield, Flying, Siphon) plus a couple of the game's own: Overclock rewards holding Flux, and Chaos has Ambush, a unit disguised as a Combat Trick that drops into combat as a surprise attacker or blocker.

The five Sects are five different ideas of what a mind is for:

* **Growth**: forests that compute. Ramp, buffs, go wide, overrun.
* **Destruction**: war machines that remember being gods. Burn, removal, all-in aggro.
* **Balance**: crystalline arbiters. Symmetrical effects where both sides pay the same price.
* **Chaos**: ninjas who walk between worlds. Draw, theft, Ambush.
* **Speed**: couriers made mostly of their own wake. Cheap, fast, fliers.

**What's in it right now**

139 cards, a tutorial that teaches by playing the opening of a real match, matches against an AI opponent called the Warden at a few difficulty settings, live multiplayer against another person, a deck builder, and per-Sect goals to chase. Every card is given to you from the first match. No packs, no gacha, no dust economy, and it will never be pay to win. That's a promise, not a launch promo. Expansions will be flat-priced when they come, and you'll always know exactly what you're getting.

**What's still in progress**

If you enjoy it and want to talk decks or tell me what's broken, there's a Discord and I'll drop that in the comments too.

I love the tactical combat of Magic and the pace of Hearthstone, so I built a free card game with both and no packs — looking for playtesters