Ancient Duel Print & Play Is Ready
The Print & Play edition is finished. Every faction now has a printable deck, and the rulebook and score sheet that go with them are done too. If you want to play Ancient Duel on a table instead of a screen, the files are there.
I wanted this to be a real edition of the game rather than a folder of card images. That meant deciding print settings, paper weights and page order on your behalf, so that following the instructions gives you a deck that actually works, with cards that match each other and fit a standard sleeve.
What is in the package
Seven factions, each with its own printable deck: Rome, Sparta, Macedonia, Carthage, Persia, Dacia and Egypt. Every one of them exists in two versions, and both contain the same forty cards.
Alongside the decks there are two shared files:
- The Rulebook — one A4 sheet printed on both sides. Setup, the battlefield, card types, the turn, Energy, combat, how to win, and how to track everything physically.
- The Score Sheet — an alternative to tracking the game with dice. There is an English and a Romanian version, and the page serves you the one matching your interface language.
Full colour or ink-friendly
Each faction deck comes as Full colour and Ink-friendly. This is the part people ask about most, so to be clear: these are not a full version and a cut-down version. They hold the same forty cards, the same stats and the same effect text. The difference is entirely in how much toner they ask of your printer.
The full-colour deck is the game as it looks on screen, artwork and all. The ink-friendly deck is the same artwork re-exported to use far less ink, which also makes it roughly forty percent smaller as a file. If you are printing at home on a colour laser or an inkjet, that difference is the one you will feel.
Both are ten pages, A4 portrait, exported at 600 PPI without lossy compression. Neither is a compromise on the game itself.
How the cards are laid out
A deck is forty cards at roughly 64 × 94 mm, three across and three down on each sheet.
The ten pages already alternate fronts and backs, so you do not have to work anything out: print all ten in order, two-sided, flipping on the long edge. Sheets one to four carry nine cards each and pair with a nine-slot back. The fifth sheet carries the remaining four cards and pairs with a six-slot back. That last pairing looks wrong and is correct.
The one setting that genuinely matters is scale. Print at 100%, or "Actual size". Never "Fit to page", which quietly shrinks everything and gives you cards that do not match each other or your sleeves. For the decks I would use cardstock somewhere around 250–300 g/m². The rulebook and score sheet are fine on ordinary 80 g/m² paper, and the score sheet prints in greyscale.
The page itself lists every setting per file, so you do not have to remember any of this. It is there when you are standing in front of the printer.
The score sheet, and why it exists
You can track a game with dice: a d20 for life, a d12 or two d6 for Energy, and d6 dice on the cards for unit modifiers. None of them are ever rolled. In Ancient Duel a die is a counter you set by hand, not a randomiser, and nothing in the game is decided by chance.
But a board can hold five units a side, each possibly carrying modifiers, plus Energy and life for both players, and that adds up to more dice than most people own. I did not want the practical answer to "can I play this?" to be "first buy a bag of dice".
So the score sheet tracks exactly the same state with a pencil. Rows for life, Energy and the five unit slots, one rule for all of them: write the new value to the right of the old one, and the last number written is the current one. Temporary values go in parentheses so you know to clear them. One printed sheet covers four games per side, eight if you print it double-sided.
It is also simple enough to redraw. If you run out of sheets, seven labels on a piece of notebook paper will do the job.
What you actually need
Less than people expect:
- The printed cards
- Something to cut them with
- The rulebook
- Either the score sheet and a pencil, or some dice
That is the whole list. Sleeves are nice if you have them and the card size is standard, so ordinary ones fit. Spindown dice make life and Energy quicker to read. Neither is required.
Getting the files
Everything lives on the Print & Play page, which you reach from the Codex in the site footer, from the lobby, or from the campaign screens. On the Romanian site the same page is Printează și Joacă.
The free route is the campaign. Finish a faction's campaign with all fifteen stars, meaning every mission at three stars, and that faction's Print & Play deck unlocks permanently. It is tied to your account rather than to a purchase, so it stays yours. The page also offers bundles for unlocking decks without playing through each campaign, and an unlocked deck can also come from a grant.
Two practical notes. You need a verified account to download, because the entitlement has to belong to someone. And the download link the page generates is issued for you specifically and expires quickly, so a link forwarded to a friend will not work. Send them to the page instead.
The rulebook and score sheet come with the first deck you unlock.
From download to first game
- Open the Print & Play page and pick a faction you have unlocked.
- Choose full colour or ink-friendly, depending on your printer.
- Print all ten pages, two-sided, long-edge flip, at 100% scale, on cardstock.
- Print the rulebook, one sheet, both sides.
- Print the score sheet, or get your dice out.
- Cut the cards.
- Find a second deck and someone to play it.
Cutting forty cards takes longer than everything else combined. A guillotine trimmer helps; scissors and patience also work.
Why the physical version matters to me
The digital version automates state tracking, matches you with opponents and remembers everything for you. That is genuine convenience and I use it constantly. What it cannot do is put two people at the same table with the cards between them.
The practical upside is that you can now test a deck on paper, teach someone the game without asking them to install anything, and play somewhere with no signal at all.
That is it
The files are ready, for all seven factions, in both printing variants, with the rulebook and score sheet finished alongside them. Pick the version your printer will thank you for, set the scale to 100%, and put an ancient army on your table.
If something prints wrong or a page looks off, tell me. The settings on that page came out of my own printer, and printers disagree with each other for a living.
Daniel Rusu
Creator & Developer of Ancient Duel