Cardworks is a two-player lane-based card game. Every card is a real person, place or moment from your company. Here is how it works.
Two players face off across three lanes. Deploy your employees, boost them with team support, control locations and complete secret client goals. The first player to reduce their opponent to zero health wins.
Every employee has two traits that shape their abilities. A Decisive, Goal-Oriented sales lead plays very differently from a Patient, Loyal operations manager. The game rewards knowing your colleagues.
Each player controls three lanes. Deploy one employee per lane, boost them, and fight. An uncontested lane deals damage directly to your opponent.
Every card type maps to something real. Your people, your places, your culture — all in the deck.
Your main fighters. Each employee has Attack, Defense and Health stats, plus two trait-based abilities. Deploy one per lane.
Attach to a lane to change its rules. Locations reflect your real offices, meeting rooms or workspaces. They stay until removed.
A board-wide ongoing rule that benefits you all game. Represents your company workflows, rituals and methodologies.
Always played as a boost underneath an employee. Represents a department rallying behind one person. More powerful than a standard boost.
A secret goal held in your hand. Complete the condition, reveal the card and claim your reward immediately. Conditions range from easy to hard.
A one-time card that affects both players. Based on real company moments, milestones or traditions. Play it from your hand at the right moment.
Every employee gets two traits, one for each of their abilities. Mix categories for dual-type cards with unexpected effects.
High attack, high risk. These employees win lanes fast and put pressure on the opponent.
High health, high endurance. These employees absorb damage, outlast opponents and protect your lanes.
Low stats, high impact. These employees enable, heal and reposition your team in ways that change the whole game.
Every deck is randomly drawn from your company's full card pool. That means no two people get the same 25 cards. Someone has your card. You have someone else's. And everyone is missing a few colleagues they really want.
That is where trading comes in. Individual cards can be swapped between colleagues informally — at lunch, before a meeting, in a Slack message. There are no rules to it. You see a card you want and you make an offer.
It turns out that people are surprisingly motivated to track down their own card, collect their closest teammates, or simply build the strongest possible deck. The game gives them a reason to talk to colleagues they might not normally speak to.
Your own card is randomly distributed to someone else's deck. Tracking it down and getting it back becomes a game in itself.
A Decisive, Ambitious offensive player plays very differently to a Patient, Loyal defensive one. Trading lets you build towards a strategy, not just play the hand you were dealt.
Every trade is a conversation. You find out which traits were assigned to your colleagues, how they feel about them, and why they want certain cards. It works the same way a great team-building exercise does, except nobody calls it that.
Each turn follows five steps. Simple enough to learn in minutes, deep enough to keep you thinking.
Draw one card from your deck. If your deck is empty, skip this step. There is no reshuffling — every card counts.
Hand limit: 8 cardsPlay exactly one card. Deploy an employee to an empty lane, boost an existing employee, play a location, process or event, or use a team card as a boost.
If all lanes are full, you must boost, play a location, process or event. Combat resolves after both players have taken their turn.Resolve lanes one by one in your chosen order. Two employees present means they fight. One employee present means that employee deals damage directly to the opposing player.
Damage formula: Attack minus Defense, minimum 0. Excess damage hits the player directly.Check whether any of your secret client card conditions have been met this turn. If so, reveal the card and claim your reward immediately.
Conditions can be met on your opponent's turn tooThe player with the highest health takes their turn first each round. Once both players have played, combat resolves. The player with the lowest health chooses the order in which lanes are resolved, giving them the tactical edge. The game ends the moment either player reaches zero health.
Order your custom Cardworks game. Every employee gets their own deck, their own card and their own moment when they open the box.
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