SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash/Gameplay

Goal
The goal of each duel is to reduce your opponents Hit Points (or HP) to 0 before your opponent reduces your HP to 0. You accomplish this by attacking your opponent with the cards in your ring. Your opponent may defend against your attacks by counter-attacking with cards in his ring. You must also use cards in your ring to defend your own life points and prevent your opponent from defeating you. There are a few other methods of directly attacking your opponent's HP through the use of Action cards or Character abilities.

Abilities
It is important to understand the three different types of abilities that a Character card might have. There are Triangle, Square, and Circle abilities.
 * Triangle abilities are automatically activated each time a Character that posesses one is taken out of your hand and entered in to the ring.
 * Square abilities are abilities that you activate instead of attacking, and usually have some cost associated with using them. For example, a requirement might be having an Action card in your hand to discard.  If you do not have an Action card and the Ability requires that you discard one, then you can not use that Ability.
 * Circle abilities are abilities that are always active for as long as the Character that owns a Circle ability is in the ring. Circle abilities can not be turned off.

Back up
Each turn, you may take a Character card from your hand and Back up another Character already in the ring, providing the ring Character with 300 extra Battle Points (or BP.) Those extra BP are applied to the ring Character's current BP total, and can exceed that Character's starting BP. Any Character in your ring can be backed up one time each turn. The character that does the backing up does not get to use a Triangle Ability as if they were entering the ring. Nor do you recieve Spirit Points (or SP) for playing the back up card. Once the backed up ring Character is defeated, all cards that backed up this character are discarded.

Each Character can only be backed up by a particular set of cards. You can check to see which characters are accepted as back-up by looking at the card data. If your character is an SNK character, then all of the SNK characters that can back this character up will be displayed. Likewise for a Capcom character and its acceptible Capcom back-ups. However, if a character can be backed up by a character from the opposite universe, that character's name will appear as question marks until you discover who that character is and use him or her as back-up for the first time. After that, the name will always be visible to you.

Starting
After selecting an opponent to duel against, the scene will switch to the battle ring. A few events will take place that you have no manual control over, such as shuffling your deck and selecting the top five cards. Then Kuroko, the referee that appears in the Samurai Shodown series, will appear and wave a flag back and forth between you and your opponent. This is something of a coin toss to determine who goes first, and you must tap the A or B button to get him to stop and choose a player. Once a player is selected, the duel begins.

Phase 1
Activate Phase: Any character in your ring that was previously frozen is now unfrozen. Cards are frozen when they attack or use an ability attack during your turn. In the very first phase, any card in your ring that attacked is free to attack again. Likewise, any character that used a square ability to attack the opponent, or attack his cards, can use that ability once more. Occassionally, your opponent may use an Action card or a Character ability that will prevent some of your cards from unfreezing in this phase. This phase is passive and automatic, requiring no action on the part of the player.

Phase 2
Draw Phase: After Phase 1 ends, the robot from Capcom's Forgotten Worlds appears to deliver a card from your deck to your hand. Occassionally, your opponent may use an Action card or a Character ability that will prevent you from drawing a card in this phase. If by some misfortune, a player has no more cards at the start of this phase, they automatically forfeit the match and lose. This phase is also passive and automatic, requiring no action on the part of the player.

Phase 3
Main Phase: This is the first phase in which you are given control. You are given the ability to take any of the following actions in any order, but the phase comes to an end once you execute an attack.
 * You may select only one Character card from your hand and enter it in to your ring, provided a space is available in your ring. Each ring can hold a maximum of three Character cards, so you can not select another Character if three are already present.  Entering a Character in the ring automatically boosts your Spirit Point (or SP) pool by the amount of SP indicated on the card.  Additionally, if the Character you are selecting has a Triangle Ability, this ability will automatically activate itself when you place the card in the ring,
 * You may select a Character card from your hand and add it to an existing Character in your ring as a Back-up Character if and only if the ring Character accepts the Character you are choosing as a Back-up. You may back up each Character in your ring only one time per turn.  For more on backing up, read the back up section above.
 * You may use a Square Ability possessed by any of the Characters in your ring, provided you can meet the requirements necessary to use that ability. Using a Square Ability will freeze that Character until the next Phase 1 successfully unfreezes the card.  For more on abilities, read the ability section above.
 * You may play any Action card in your hand, provided you can pay the Spirit Point cost associated with using that Action card. For example, if an Action card requires 5 SP to activate, and you only have 4 SP, you can not use that Action card.  A card with a 0 SP cost can always be used.  If you can use the Action card, the SP cost is automatically deducted from your SP pool, and the Action card is discarded.
 * Lastly, you may attack. Any card that is sent to attack will become frozen throughout the opponents turn (unless an Action card or Circle Ability specifies otherwise) and will remain frozen until your own Phase 1 comes around.  A frozen Character may not counter-attack.  There are a couple of way to execute your attack.
 * Single card attacks: You may send any unfrozen Character cards in your ring for individual attacks. This means you can send one, two, or three cards to attack your opponent individually.  If your opponent wants to counter-attack against all of the attacks, he must have as many unfrozen cards as you are sending individual attacks, or some of the attacks will get through and directly reduce the opponent's HP.
 * United attacks: United attacks are attacks using multiple cards that require SP to activate. Uniting two Characters to attack as one costs 5 SP, and uniting three Characters to attack as one costs 10 SP.  (The Tooptadon Action card can be played to reduce those costs by 5 SP, thereby making Unite 2 attacks free.)  When cards attack with United attacks, they can only be defended by one counter-attacker.  Any damage that the counter-attacker fails to absorb will spill over and directly damage the opponent.  This is in contrast to an individual attack where if the attack is counter-attacked, no matter who wins, no damage is dealt to the opponent.  United attacks are a powerful tool, but should be used strategically in order to account for the SP consumption.
 * Combination: Provided you have three cards and at least 5 SP, you can send one card on an individual attack, and two cards on a united attack, at one time. This is useful when your opponent has only one card to counter-attack with.  There is no point wasting 10 SP points to unite three attacks when spending only 5 will accomplish the same thing (provided you unite the right group of cards.)