If you’ve spent any time in Night City, you already know the world of cyberpunk tcg how to play is going to feel familiar the moment you pick up your first deck. The Cyberpunk Trading Card Game, developed by WeirdCo in partnership with CD Projekt Red, brings the factions, tech, and gritty street politics of Cyberpunk 2077 to a card game built from the ground up for competitive play. This guide covers everything you need to get started, whether you’ve never touched a TCG before or you’re a veteran looking to size up whether this one is worth your time.
What Is the Cyberpunk TCG?
The Cyberpunk TCG is a two-player competitive card game set in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe. WeirdCo handles game design, with CD Projekt Red providing the IP, lore, and visual identity. If you’ve played the video game, you’ll recognise the factions, the slang, and the general vibe immediately. If you haven’t, none of that is required to play, but it helps.
The game has moved past its early Alpha Kit testing phase. WeirdCo’s Kickstarter campaign closed as the most funded tabletop game in Kickstarter history, raising over $28.3 million from more than 50,700 backers, a strong signal that demand for the game is real. Alongside the campaign closing, WeirdCo published an official set of Beta rule changes on 29 May 2026, and this guide has been fully updated to match them. The four colours are now confirmed as Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow, running a Color Tree system rather than named factions like Corp or Nomad, and the first retail set, Welcome to Night City, is expected on shelves on 1 October 2026.
The core design goal of the Cyberpunk TCG remains speed and aggression. Games are built around a Gig Dice win condition, a streamlined resource system, and a turn structure that keeps the pressure on both players from the first round.
How Do You Win?
This is the most important thing to understand before anything else, because the win condition shapes every decision you make during a game.
Under the Beta rules, victory goes to the first player who controls 7 Gig Dice. That sounds similar to the old Alpha Kit version, but the path there has changed in an important way. In Alpha, you could win passively by holding 6 Gig Dice at the start of your turn, which meant a player sitting comfortably ahead could effectively stall the game out. That loophole is gone in Beta. The only way to push your Gig Dice total up now is through an active steal: you attack your Rival’s Gig Area directly and take Gig Dice away from them.
This single change reshapes how you should think about pacing a game. You can no longer coast to a win once you’re ahead. You need to keep attacking your opponent’s Gig Area to convert a lead into an actual victory, which means board presence and combat matter more under Beta than they did in Alpha.
There is still no life point system and no separate “reduce your opponent to zero” mechanic. Gig Dice, now earned exclusively by stealing them from your Rival’s Gig Area, remain the entire win condition.
How a Turn Works
The turn structure changed significantly under Beta. The old four-phase sequence (Draw and Get Paid, Deploy Gig Die, Build Board, Attack) has been replaced with a simpler two-phase structure: Start and Main.
Start Phase
At the start of your turn, you draw cards and receive your Eddie income for the turn, same as before. There is still no hand size limit in the Cyberpunk TCG, so you can hold as many cards as you have without being forced to discard.
Main Phase
Everything else now happens inside a single Main phase. You play cards from your hand, spending Eddies to deploy Units, Programs, and Gear, and you attack with your Units to try to steal Gig Dice from your Rival’s Gig Area. The key difference from Alpha is that attacking is no longer locked to one fixed step at the end of your turn. It’s a repeatable action inside Main, so you can play a card, attack, play another card, attack again, and keep going as long as you have eligible Units and Eddies left to spend.
This makes the Main phase considerably more flexible than the old structure, but it also raises the stakes on sequencing. You need to think about whether to commit a Unit to attack now or hold it back to block your Rival’s counterattack, since you may get multiple chances to attack in a single turn instead of just one. WeirdCo’s Beta notes confirm this two-phase structure as the headline turn change. The exact moment-to-moment detail of how Gig Dice are added to your pool during the Main phase hasn’t been spelled out beyond the new steal-based win condition itself, so treat that specific sequencing as still settling in as more Beta rules text becomes available.
Card Types
The Cyberpunk TCG uses four card types. Understanding what each one does is foundational to reading any deck or card list.
| Card Type | What It Does | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Units | Creatures/characters that occupy the board, attack, and block | The primary combat pieces in any deck |
| Programs | Spell-like cards with one-time or ongoing effects | Used for disruption, buffs, and tactical plays |
| Gear | Equipment cards that attach to Units and modify their stats or abilities | Upgrades your Units in play |
| Legends | Powerful leader cards that set your deck’s identity and colour limits | Start face down; 3 per deck; also called Leaders in some early materials |
Legends deserve extra attention. You include exactly 3 Legend cards in every deck, and they start face down at the beginning of the game. They are not drawn from your deck in the normal way. Flipping a Legend face up and bringing it into play is called Calling a Legend, and it costs Eddies to do it. Under the Beta rules, the cost to Call a Legend dropped from 2 €$ to 1 €$, which makes it noticeably easier to get your Legends online earlier in the game than it was in Alpha. When a Legend flips, it brings a significant effect, and it also defines your deck’s RAM limits (see the Keywords section below). Your choice of Legends is, in many ways, the most important deckbuilding decision you make.
The Resource System: Eddies
Eddies are the currency of the Cyberpunk TCG. If you’ve played the video game, the name will be instantly familiar. In card game terms, Eddies work as the resource you spend to play cards during the Main phase.
Here is what makes the Cyberpunk TCG’s resource system unusual compared to most TCGs: you do not have a separate land or mana card type. Instead, you generate Eddies by selling cards directly from your hand. Any card in your hand can be sold for its Eddie value rather than played for its effect.
This creates a constant tension. Every card you hold is simultaneously a potential play and a potential resource. If you sell a card for Eddies, you get the currency but lose the option. If you play a card for its effect, you spend the Eddies but gain the board presence. Every turn involves evaluating this trade-off, and it is one of the more interesting design decisions in the game.
There is no hand size limit, which means you can hold a large hand and selectively sell cards to hit the exact Eddie cost you need on any given turn. This rewards card advantage and planning ahead.
Deck Construction Rules
Building a legal deck in the Cyberpunk TCG follows these rules:
| Rule | Detail |
|---|---|
| Deck size | 40 to 50 cards |
| Legend cards | Exactly 3, included separately, start face down |
| Hand size limit | None |
| Colour restrictions | Set by your Legend cards via the RAM system |
The RAM system is the mechanism that determines which colour cards you can include in your deck. Your 3 Legend cards each have a RAM value tied to a specific colour. The combined RAM of your Legends determines how many cards of each colour you are allowed to run. This means your Legends do not just provide powerful effects: they define the entire colour composition of your deck. If you want to run a heavy concentration of one colour, you need Legends that support that RAM allocation.
The Four Colours
The Cyberpunk TCG uses four colours, now confirmed as Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow, running what WeirdCo calls a Color Tree system rather than named factions like Corp or Nomad. Your Legends and their RAM values determine which colours you can run and how much of each, so picking Legends is really picking your colour identity for the deck.
What About My Alpha Kit Cards?
If you picked up cards during the Alpha Kit phase, here’s what the Beta update means for you. Alpha-marked cards are no longer legal for tournament play, with three named exceptions: Saburo Arasaka, Goro Takemura, and Yorinobu Arasaka. WeirdCo confirmed these three have functionally identical Beta versions, so the Alpha printings remain tournament legal. Every other Alpha card needs to be swapped out for its Beta equivalent before you sit down at a sanctioned event. For casual play with friends, none of this matters, play whatever cards you’ve got.
Keywords Glossary
TCGs use shorthand keywords printed on cards so that common mechanics do not need to be spelled out in full every time. Here are the confirmed keywords as of Beta:
| Keyword | What It Means |
|---|---|
| GO SOLO | This Unit can attack immediately when it’s deployed during the Main phase, instead of waiting until you’d otherwise get around to attacking with it. It effectively grants an extra attack opportunity the turn it enters play. |
| BLOCKER | When an opponent attacks, all attacks are redirected to this Unit first. Your opponent cannot ignore a Unit with BLOCKER and attack your other Units or objectives freely. |
| Street Cred | A cost gate tied to your current Gig Die count. A card with a Street Cred requirement cannot be played until you have collected the specified number of Gig Dice. Higher Street Cred cards are more powerful but locked behind game progression. |
| RAM | The colour and resource limit system set by your Legend cards. Your Legends’ combined RAM determines which colours you can include in your deck and in what quantities. |
| Eddies | The currency generated by selling cards from your hand. Spent during the Main phase to play Units, Programs, and Gear, and to Call a Legend. |
| Gigs | The dice mechanic central to the win condition. Under Beta, you earn Gig Dice exclusively by attacking your Rival’s Gig Area and stealing them. Control 7 Gig Dice to win. |
| REACT WINDOW | A new defensive opportunity introduced in Beta. It opens for the defending player during combat, giving them a chance to respond before an attack fully resolves. WeirdCo hasn’t published full card-level detail on every interaction yet, so treat the broad idea (a new moment for the defender to react) as confirmed, with specifics still emerging as more Beta cards are revealed. |
| QUICK | A keyword introduced alongside the React window. Cards with QUICK can be played by the defending player during that window, rather than waiting for their own turn. As with the React window itself, the full rules text is still being clarified as WeirdCo reveals more of the Beta card pool. |
About the Dice Win Condition
It would not be honest to write a beginner’s guide to the Cyberpunk TCG without addressing this directly. The Gig Dice win condition has been one of the most discussed elements among early playtesters, and the feedback during Alpha was not uniformly positive.
The original concern was straightforward: because Alpha let you win passively by simply holding 6 Gig Dice at the start of your turn, a player who got ahead early could sometimes turtle up and run the clock out, which made some late-game comebacks feel close to impossible once an opponent had built a big enough lead.
WeirdCo’s Beta update addresses this directly. Removing the passive hold-to-win path and requiring an active steal from your Rival’s Gig Area means a player who’s behind always has a concrete way back into the game: attack and take the dice back. Whether this fully resolves the comeback concern players raised during Alpha is genuinely still an open question. Beta only went live on 29 May 2026, and there hasn’t been enough time or volume of games yet for a clear community verdict to form. What’s fair to say is that the structural fix targets the exact complaint that was raised, which is a good sign, even if the full picture is still developing.
What you should expect as a new player: the Gig Dice win condition gives the game a distinct pace and feel that is different from most TCGs, and the Beta changes push it toward more active, contested play rather than a race to a passive threshold. It will still take a few games before it feels natural, especially the rhythm of attacking for dice rather than just attacking for board control.
Is the Cyberpunk TCG Worth Trying?
The honest answer is: probably yes, with appropriate expectations.
What the game does well is real. The resource system is genuinely interesting. Selling cards for Eddies creates decision points that feel meaningful on almost every turn, and the absence of a hand size limit means card advantage actually rewards forward planning rather than just card draw. The Legend system ties deckbuilding identity directly to your card selection in a way that feels cohesive, and Calling a Legend got noticeably cheaper in Beta, so that payoff comes online sooner. The Cyberpunk 2077 setting is one of the most visually and thematically strong IPs to enter the TCG space in years.
The Gig Dice win condition was always the biggest unknown coming out of Alpha, and Beta’s shift to an active steal mechanic is a real structural improvement, even if it’s still too early to call it fully solved. WeirdCo is clearly listening and iterating based on player feedback, which is exactly what you want to see this early in a game’s life.
The Kickstarter result backs this up. Closing as the most funded tabletop game in Kickstarter history, with over $28.3 million raised from more than 50,700 backers, is a strong vote of confidence from the wider TCG community, not just from CD Projekt Red fans. If you’ve been on the fence about whether enough other people care about this game to make it worth learning, that question has a clear answer now.
If you are a Cyberpunk 2077 fan who has never played a TCG before, this is a reasonable first game. The Main phase is more flexible than a traditional fixed turn structure once you get used to it, the resource system is intuitive once you grasp the sell-for-Eddies concept, and the theme will carry you through the learning curve.
If you are an experienced TCG player sizing up cyberpunk tcg how to play under the new Beta rules, now is a genuinely good moment to get in. The rules have stabilised since Alpha, the four colours and Color Tree system are confirmed, and the first retail set, Welcome to Night City, is set to land on 1 October 2026. Pick up a deck, learn the Main phase rhythm, and you’ll be ready well before Set 1 hits shelves.
Keep an eye on this site for ongoing coverage as more cards are revealed and Set 1 gets closer to release. There’s a lot more to learn as the full set comes into focus.