Sanguosha How to Play (Basic) Part 1: Before Playing
[Status: Complete Last Updated: 31 Dec 2018]
In this set of tutorials, you will learn the rules that apply to most, if not all, game modes of Sanguosha. This is the first of three parts, so buckle up.
Contents
On Characters
Choosing Characters
Before Starting
A Bit on the Game
1. On Characters
Characters are your avatars, the mediums you will use to interact with (and kill!) other people. They are pretty much the most important part of any Sanguosha game, so here's an entire section dedicated to them.
All characters have certain characteristics:
Gender
Allegiance
Maximum health
Abilities
Gender: Self-explanatory. It's usually not important, but some characters' abilities are gender-specific (like Diao Chan's "Estrange" and Sun Luban's "Haughty") and the weapon, Twin Swords, has a special effect when used on a character of the opposite gender. You don't have to know what these mean, but it gives you the idea that gender can have some impact.
Allegiance: Allegiance means what "kingdom" the characters belong to, meaning Wei 魏, Wu 吴 and Shu 蜀, and for characters without allegiances 群雄, I call them Heroes. You can tell the allegiance of the character based on the Chinese character on the top left corner of the character card. Most of the time, allegiance is the same as your character's kingdom, so don't worry about differentiating them.
^Cao Rui
Maximum health and abilities: Maximum health and number of abilities is dependent on the character. You can view the character's maximum health on the top of the character card. (To add: how to view abilities?) Most of the "scholarly" characters have 3 health and 2+ abilities, while most of the "warrior" characters have 4 health and 1+ abilities. Some have 5 health, some have more, but these are largely in the minority. (Health works a bit differently in Kingdom Wars, but I'll leave that to its own tutorial.)
Most abilities are supposed to correspond to famous achievements or traits of the historical figures. Unfortunately for history lovers, Sanguosha follows a lot of fictional traditions, such as including the very legendary Hua Xiong and the totally existent Guan Suo. This also means the villainisation of Cao Cao, along with more unsavoury examples. Just a caveat.
Abilities themselves will be covered in part 2 of this tutorial.
2. Choosing Characters
Now that you know more about characters, it's time to learn how to choose them! When you start a game, you get your roles in Roleplaying mode, or you decide who's going first in 1V1 and 3V3, or other things. Whatever it is, once that's been decided, you pick the character(s) you're going to send to butcher others play.
The process of choosing your characters differs across game modes, but I'll use Roleplaying mode as an example.
As the Loyalist, you choose any character from this array. Hovering over the characters with the arrows on them shows you the alternate versions of the character you can play. In the example below, hovering over the standard Lu Xun character card shows me the Breaking Boundaries expansion (界 jiè) version of Lu Xun. Since I have unlocked both versions of Lu Xun, I can play either of them. This also means that only one version of a character can appear at any one time, so if standard Lu Xun appears in the game, the 界 version (Breaking Boundaries is too much of a mouthful to say) can't exist as well.
Hovering over standard Jiang Wei shows me SP Jiang Wei, which I don't have, so I can't play the SP version. You can unlock him on the spot by pressing the "开通" button on the bottom of the SP character card, but you need to buy him using gold.
At the bottom of each character card is a little button reading "换将", or change character. You need a Character-Changing card 换将卡 to do this. Click it to expel the character you don't want and show another character choice. You can only change the character in the same slot once, and each time you change a character card, you use up a Character-Changing card (pictured below). If you replace all the characters offered, you cannot use the card anymore.
You can buy them or earn them by being online for certain lengths of time. These cards, along with the other non-game cards, can be found in your inventory. (Yes, I have 469 of them. No, I didn't buy any.)
The little breastplate icon on the top right corner of each character card just means that you have alternate skins for that character. You get small bonuses for using alternate skins.
3. Before Starting
Now that everyone's chosen their characters, it's time to draw cards! Each player draws 4 on-hand cards. The system automatically rates how good your cards are in relation to your character, role and position, on a scale from 1 to 99.
(The white text reads: “As the 8th player, Loyalist Huang Gai, your cards rating is ordinary. Do you wish to use a "Luck card" to change your current on-hand cards?”)
Anything below 60 is bad, 60-79 is okay, 80+ is good. Of course, just because the system rated it as such doesn't mean you have to change them. But if you don't like the cards you have, you can use a Luck card 手气卡 (pictured below) and change them (and supposedly the quality of your cards). However, but your luck rating might go up or down. You can change it up to 3 times.
(Like the Character-Changing card, you can earn or buy these. They are by far the easiest to earn out of the accessory cards, such that I still have 998 more of these.)
4. A Bit on the Game
Taking Turns
Below each character is a number, showing the order in which they have their turn. Players take their turns in an anticlockwise direction. Your number is found on the bottom left corner of your character card. Typically, you’ll know your position before you choose your characters.
In this example, you have the great fortune of being the 8th player.
Now that you’ve chosen your characters and known your position, let the game begin!