This tutorial consists of three parts: Anatomy of a card, Anatomy of a Game and anatomy of a Turn. In order of complexity, I will walk you through learning enough about Libre to get you started playing. Please remember that this tutorial cannot hope to cover everything exhaustively. If I explained every single niggling detail, you would get bored and go back to poker.

The above are some sample cards to give you an idea of what the cards look like. They may remind you of cards from other card games, and hopefully this should help you be familiar with the game from the get-go.

From top to bottom and left to right the boxes are as follows:

1. Name: this is the name of the card, easy enough. For example, the first card's name is “A Sample Action”
2. Type: Denotes the type of card it is, depending on the type, it is affected by different card effects, and/or how it is played.
3. Art: This is where the art for the card would generally go. Generally doesn't affect game play.
4. Text: (The tallest box) States what the card does. Some cards will have single words with no real explanation. These are known as “Keywords” and are explained on the web site, the manual, or in on other cards.
5. Offense: The amount of damage the card can deal during combat.
6. Health: The amount of damage the card can take without being discarded.
7. Cost: The amount of Spirit it costs to play a card (Spirit is produced by cards known as “Temples”)
8. Faith: The amount of Faith the card is worth when it is inside a Temple. Faith is the points you need to win the game.
9. ID Number: At the extreme bottom left is a 32 character ID Number (Actually an MD5 hash, for you geeks.) At some point, you'll be able to punch that into our site and you'll be able to pull up that exact card.
10. Artist: At the extreme bottom right would normally be the artist's name, but since there isn't any art on the sample cards, there is just a url to libre's blog.

Now, you may notice that some cards have a dash where their stat should be. This means that they simply don't have that statistic or information. This is different from a stat being 0, I'll get to that in a minute.

A game of Libre isn't much different from every other TCG you've ever played, but some things are markedly different. First of all, you both agree on the on the number of Faith points to play to. The suggested number is 30, but 15 makes for a shorter game.

Next, decide who goes first. You can do this by rolling a die, flipping a coin or cutting the deck.

Each of you then shuffle your own deck and then each other's decks and draw 5 cards.

You each then take turns until one of a couple conditions are met:

• If a player runs out of cards in his deck, he loses the game.
• If a player reaches 30 (or whatever you picked) Faith points, they win.

The first step for each turn is to draw a card. You don't draw a card if you went first, and it's the first turn of the game. Next, you may play one temple. Exactly one temple or less per turn. When it is put into play, it automatically generates it's spirit for the turn. You can then use this spirit to play other cards. Spirit can either be used on your turn or on your opponent's turn. You may also play temples at any point during your turn, except during combat.

You can now play cards, providing you have the spirit to pay for them. When you play a card with a Faith score, you may opt to place it into a Temple. You designate this by placing it beneath the Temple card. Moving a follower from in-play to inside a temple causes the follower to not be able to attack that turn.

When a follower of yours is inside on of your temples, it's faith score counts toward your total Faith. If at the end of your turn, you have 30 (or whatever) faith points, you win the game.

Once you've played whatever cards you want to for this turn, you may then declare Followers that you want to participate in combat. These don't necessarily have to be of the Follower type. They simply need to have an Offense and Health Score, even if it's 0.

Once you've declared what followers you want to participate in combat, your opponent then decides which followers he wants to use to defend against which followers. They then each deal each other their Offense. (Attacking followers deal their damage first.) If a creature takes enough damage to reduce it's health to 0 or less, it is discarded at he end of battle. Otherwise that damage stays on it until the end of turn. This can be tracked with counters, glass beads, coins, French fries, hamsters, or hundred-dollar bills.

If your opponent doesn't assign a blocker to one of your followers, you may designate a follower inside on of your opponent's temples to discard. If your opponent doesn't have any followers inside any temples, you gain one permanent Faith point.

Note that you can play Action cards at any point, during any Turn.

Also note the difference between a Turn and a Round. A turn is the block of time in which one player does things. A round is the block of time in which each player has taken one turn.