Puppet Masters is a game where players choose from 27 Masters, powerful characters with differing amounts of health or magical prowess, each with special abilities encouraging a certain style of play. Then the players each pick up to two decks from the 18 different factions ranging from undead to angels to steampunk. All chosen decks by all players are shuffled together into a single draw pile, from which the minions, Puppets, are drawn into the arena. These can be bought and used by the players or hunted for money, money which can be spent on spells of destruction or items to buff Puppets. It is a flexible game, addictive, easy to learn but hard to master and fits up to 4 players in free for all or 2v2 formats.
The single draw pile is to guarantee all players have access to all things in the game. If there is something directly counter to your strategy in the game in play, you can either buy it up so your opponent can't use it or destroy it before they get it. Players can attack each other, each other's Puppets, or the Puppets in the arena. The replay value of this game is very high due to the massive amount of combinations in the game of Masters and Puppets, plus the different strategies of gaining many cheap puppets or getting just one or two very strong ones and giving them a lot of items, or anything in between.
There are four phases of each turn, during which Players can perform different actions. In the recovery phase players receive gold and replenish their Puppets' energy, and the maintenance phase they can take turns buying items and spells for the upcoming battle. In the possession phase, players bid on Puppets to control using their Master character's strings (a finite resource moved around throughout the battle to control Puppets), the player with the highest bid on a Puppet gets it as their own. Then, finally, the action phase, where players use spells and Puppets to attack each other. Player turns in each round are infinite as long as you have things to do. This is limited instead by money/strings/Puppet strength to perform actions.
The game ends when there is only one player/team left in the game.
The winner is the last Player/Team remaining on the field. If a player is reduced to 0 hit points, they are out of the game.
