Devil's Bluff Rules

Devil's Bluff uses the Cadence Core Rules with the additional rules listed below. This game requires a battlefield around 3ft by 3ft, or something with a similar area, and plenty of terrain to fill it. Each game lasts for 3 rounds.

The Deck

Instead of six sided dice, Devils Bluff uses a standard deck of 52 playing cards, with Jokers removed, to determine success and failure of actions.

Draws

All 'rolls' in the core rules are referred to as 'draws' in this game. At the start of the game, shuffle a deck of cards and place it in reach of all players, this is The Deck. Any time an action would require you to roll a dice the player instead draws a card and then reveals it to the other player, taking the value of the card as their "roll".

Cards are numbered according to their value regardless of suit with the Jack, Queen, and King having a value of 11, 12, and 13 respectively. Unless otherwise specified any rule that would require a roll of 6 requires a draw of 13 instead, for any modifier that is not specifically mentioned in these rules the modifier is doubled - so -1 would become -2 and so on.

The Hand

At the start of the game, after shuffling the deck, each player draws 3 cards, keeping their faces hidden from the other players. Any time a player draws a card, they may instead swap it with one in their hand. In this way players have partial control of the action in the game.

A Wild West Gang

Models

Horses

A model that is mounted on a horse gains a number of benefits detailed below. A model on a horse may dismount at the start or end of any activation, removing these benefits, but may not again mount their horse for the remainder of the game.

A model on a horse has the following changes:

Increased Movement to 12"
Count as being at height level 1.
Mounted models treat climbable terrain as impassable.
A mounted model does not gain the benefit of the Cover terrain keyword.

Attacks

Attack roll modifiers have the following changes for drawing cards:

Close Range Penalty: Attack Rolls against a target unit within 3 inches of your model only hit on a draw of 13, instead of using the attacking model's Skill attribute. However, weapons with the Assault special rule don't suffer this penalty.
Rush Penalty: Units performing 3 or more actions this activation suffer a -4 modifier to their Attack Rolls.
Height Advantage: Gain a +2 modifier to your Attack Roll when attacking a model at a lower height level (see the terrain rules).
Obscured Penalty: When attacking a target with an obscured line of sight, suffer a -2 modifier to your Attack Roll.

Counter Rolls

Counter rolls have the following modified values for drawing cards:

Weapon Damage vs target Toughness	Counter Draw
Damage is half, or lower, than Toughness	5+
Damage is lower than Toughness	7+
Damage is equal to Toughness	9+
Damage is higher than Toughness	11+
Damage is double, or higher, than Toughness	13

Objectives

Objectives in Devil's Bluff are secured on a successful Skill Draw rather than a fixed value.

Routing

Any gang that has lost 3 or more models becomes increasingly likely to flee the fight. If your gang has met these conditions you must draw a card every time you activate a unit and place it face up where your oppponent can see it. This is not in the discard pile and each player keeps their own cards if they have both met the conditions. Once this pile has reached a total greater than 21 your gang has routed, after the current activation your gang will flee and the game ends.

Special Rules

Special Rule	Effect
Longshot	This weapon may double it's Range, but it reduces its Attacks to 1.
Leader	This model, and friendly models within 6 inches always pass the check when activating with 1 Command Point.