How to Play Azuki TCG: Rules, Turns and Starter Decks

Azuki TCG is the newest card game on our shelves, and the question we hear most at the counter is simple: how do you actually play it? This guide covers how to play Azuki TCG from the ground up: what's in a deck, how the two-row battlefield works, what happens on a turn, and which product to grab first. With the second set, Fractured Domains, landing November 20, it's a good moment to learn.

What is Azuki TCG?

Azuki TCG is a two-player trading card game from Azuki Labs, set in the world of its Azuki anime. The first set, Gates Awakened, came out on June 26, 2026 with 148 cards. The second, Fractured Domains, adds 163 more.

Every deck is built around three things:

• A Leader. Your Leader is your life total and your deck's identity. Its printed health is what your opponent is trying to burn down, and its element decides which cards you can play.
• A Gate. Your Gate is how units get from the back row to the front row (more on that below). Each Gate has its own effect, and you can pair any Gate with any Leader of the same element.
• IKZ. IKZ is the game's resource, the mana or energy of Azuki. It lives in its own separate 10-card pile, so you never draw a hand full of resources and nothing to spend them on.

A tournament-legal deck is 1 Leader, 1 Gate, a 50-card main deck, 10 IKZ cards and 1 IKZ token. You can run up to four copies of any card, and every card has to match your Leader's element or be Neutral. Main deck cards come in three types: Entities (your units), Spells and Weapons.

The four elements

Each element has its own playstyle. Based on the official starter deck descriptions, Lightning leans on weapons, Water controls the tempo of the game, Earth ramps into big boss monsters, and Fire bursts opponents down fast. Fractured Domains also brings the first dual-element Leader, The Sisters, who is both Water and Lightning.

How to play Azuki TCG: setup and the battlefield

Each player shuffles their main deck, draws seven cards and starts with zero IKZ. If you don't like your opening hand, you get one mulligan per game: put the whole hand on the bottom of your deck, draw seven new cards, then shuffle. Pick who goes first with a coin flip or die roll. The player going second gets the IKZ token to help them catch up, usable from their first turn.

The battlefield has two rows, and each holds up to five Entities:

• The Garden (front row) is where the fighting happens.
• The Alley (back row) is your safe staging area. Entities in the Alley can't be attacked or targeted unless a card says otherwise.

Moving from the Alley to the Garden is called portaling. You tap your Gate to move one Entity forward, once per turn, and the Gate's effect triggers when you do. That makes your Gate choice a big part of how your deck plays.

How a turn works

An Azuki TCG turn has four phases:

1. Start of turn. Untap everything, resolve any start-of-turn effects, then draw a card.
2. Resource. Move one IKZ card from your IKZ pile into your IKZ area, up to a maximum of 10. So you have one IKZ on turn one, two on turn two, and so on.
3. Main. Do things in any order you like: play cards by tapping IKZ to pay their cost, use abilities, portal an Entity through your Gate, and attack.
4. End of turn. Resolve end-of-turn effects. Damage on Entities wears off and their stats go back to normal.

One catch for the player going first: they skip the start-of-turn phase on turn one, so no untap and no draw. They still gain their first IKZ.

Attacking

Only cards in your Garden can attack, and they can only hit targets in your opponent's Garden. A few rules make combat different from other games:

• Leaders can always be attacked, tapped or not.
• Entities can only be attacked while they're tapped. An untapped Entity in the Garden is safe from attacks (spells and abilities can still hit it).
• Cooldown: an Entity can't attack or tap for abilities on the turn it enters the Garden, whether it was played there or portaled in. Cards with Charge can attack the turn they're played, and Defender ignores Cooldown.
• Leaders have no attack of their own. Equip a Weapon to swing with your Leader.

When an attack is declared, the defending player gets a window to use Response cards and abilities. Then damage is dealt by both sides at the same time. Entities reduced to 0 health are destroyed. Damage to Entities resets at the end of the turn, but damage to Leaders stays for the whole game.

How you win

Bring your opponent's Leader to 0 health and you win. A player also loses if they have to draw from an empty deck. There are no draws: if one action knocks out both Leaders at once, the player who caused it loses.

Azuki TCG starter decks and booster boxes

The easiest way in is a starter deck. Each one is a ready-to-play 63-card deck (eight of them foil) with a Leader, a Gate, 50 main deck cards, 10 IKZ cards and an IKZ token, plus a rule sheet, a status marker sheet and a paper playmat. Two players with two starter decks can sit down and play right away.

Fractured Domains has four new starter decks, one per element. Lightning plays weapons straight off the top of your deck, Water pushes your opponent's Entities back from the Garden into the Alley, Earth roots enemy Entities so they can be destroyed before they act, and Fire rushes with combos that deal extra damage to Leaders. Fractured Domains starter decks are available to pre-order now.

Once you know which element you like, booster packs are how you build out a deck. Booster boxes for both sets hold 24 packs. Gates Awakened packs have 12 cards each. For the new set, the Fractured Domains booster box is also open for pre-order, and the Gates Awakened booster box covers the cards from set one. Fractured Domains also has a Relic Hunter Box with six booster packs and promo cards, and Azuki Labs has announced a 1st Anniversary Collection for January 15, 2027.

The cards collectors chase in Fractured Domains include alternate art versions of The Sisters, the set's dual-element Leader, alongside big hitters like Ace:

Why Azuki TCG is worth trying

A few things stand out once you've played a couple of games:

• No resource screw. IKZ comes from its own pile, one per turn, every turn. You won't lose a game because you drew too many or too few resources.
• Real positioning decisions. The Alley, the Garden and the one-portal-per-turn Gate make every turn a question of what to commit and what to keep safe.
• Cheap to start. One starter deck is a complete, legal deck. You don't need a stack of boosters to play your first game.
• It's early. With only two sets out, there's no huge back catalogue to catch up on. Everyone is still figuring the game out.

Azuki Labs also hosts a free quick-start guide, the full game rules and a printable rule sheet on the official Azuki TCG How to Play page. It's worth a read before your first game.

Playing Azuki TCG at Loot Kingdom

We carry Azuki TCG at Loot Kingdom, 159A Anne St. S in Barrie. Interested in Azuki play nights? Ask at the counter or call us at 705-730-0088 and we'll let you know what's happening and connect you with other players. You can browse everything we stock in our Azuki TCG collection.

FAQ

How many cards are in an Azuki TCG deck?

A deck has a 50-card main deck plus 1 Leader, 1 Gate, 10 IKZ cards and 1 IKZ token. You can play up to four copies of any card, and everything must match your Leader's element or be Neutral.

What is IKZ in Azuki TCG?

IKZ is the resource you spend to play cards and use abilities. It sits in a separate 10-card pile, and you add one to your IKZ area every turn, then tap it to pay costs.

When does Azuki TCG Fractured Domains come out?

Fractured Domains, the second Azuki TCG set, releases November 20, 2026. It has 163 cards and comes in booster boxes, four element starter decks and a Relic Hunter Box.

Which Azuki TCG starter deck should I start with?

Pick the playstyle that sounds fun. Fire is the most direct, Earth likes big creatures, Water is about control and Lightning is built around weapons. Any starter deck is a complete deck you can play straight out of the box.