Gatefall is a strategic miniatures game of tactics, deck building, and resource management.
In the game, a rift has opened between worlds, causing a war between very different kinds of characters.
The base game mode is designed for two players to fight head-to-head. Arena mode lets 2-8 players fight one another in a battle royale setting.
In a two player game, players choose which team to control, the fantasy team consisting of Brog, Gildri, and Randar, or the Wasteland team consisting of Exile, Firebug, Penny, and Lost Boy.
At the beginning of the game, each player has the same deck of ten cards, which contain seven “1” cards and three “0”cards. The first player draws five cards, and adds the total of their values. That number represents the number of actions the player can use for their team. Actions can be moving one space or attacking. These actions can be spread across the entire team, or used by only one character, depending on a character’s traits.
During an attack, the attacking player rolls the number of dice equivalent to the attacking character’s attack stat. The defending player rolls the number of dice equal to the defending character’s defense dice. The number of reds rolled are added up, and the defender takes damage equal to the number of reds the attacking character rolls above the total of their defending roll.
Each player then adds up the number of green dice they rolled, and earns one coin for each green die.
coins are saved up and used to buy new weapons from the weapon marketplace, to destroy “zero” cards in their hands, to purchase better cards from the main deck, or upgrade their individual character stats.
Each character has an upgrade shop. Players can choose any of the available stats to upgrade in any order for any of their characters, and spend the appropriate amount of tokens to get those upgrades. When a character is fully upgraded, that character unlocks their special power, which is unique for each character.
When a character is killed, the player who killed that character earns the number of victory points printed on the character’s upgrade shop card, and the player whose character was killed draws a “zero” card from the “zeroes” pile for every victory point listed on the killed character’s upgrade shop card and adds it to their discard pile. The killed character respawns in their base immediately, but that character cannot move or attack on their next turn, and effectively loses a turn while respawning.
The first player to reach ten victory points wins the game.
—description from the publisher