Kongai

Kongai is a card game created by David Sirlin and run by Kongregate. The game was in closed beta until July 10, 2008. Since that date, Kongai has been available to the general public. However, a closed beta with 40 new cards began on September 17, 2009.

Building a Deck
Before you start playing, you should build a deck (note that you may also play with a random deck, rather than constructing one yourself if you prefer). You can build either a three-card deck or a five-card deck, and there are game types that correspond to each type of deck. You may earn cards in one of three ways. The first way is to beat a weekly challenge on the Kongregate website. Once you are in the game you may also pick three starter cards. Finally, when you win a match you have a chance of winning a card in a game. The chance that you win a card goes down as you fill up your collection of cards, but it will never dip below 3%.

There are two types of cards, characters and items. There are currently 20 character cards, which are split into four groups of five. The groups are Amazons, Vampires, Villagers, and Martial Artists. Click on a group to see the characters in it, as well as what items they can equip. Alternatively, you can look at a full list of all the characters here or a full list of the items here.

Item cards are split into five groups. Four of the groups are color themed and may be equipped only by characters of the same color. The final group is gray, and these items may be equipped by any character. Each character may be equipped with a single item. The item each character has is chosen when the deck is built and cannot be changed. Thus, in order to build a full deck you will need at least three characters and at least three items. You may not put multiple copies of a single character into your deck, even if you have multiple copies of them. However, you may equip multiple different characters with the same item, provided you have more than one copy of that item.

Gameplayou regain every round).
At the end of the round you gain 20 energy.

For more information on the rules of Kongai, see Kongai Rulesheet

Beginning Play
There is not a lot of information out there to help people get started in Kongai. The average person ends up making a lot of decisions they later regret before even beginning play due to this lack of information.

The first thing that someone is confronted with when they load Kongai is the screen to "Choose Starters". Most people do this because they figure that is a good idea at this point if it is showed to them at this point. People that choose here before playing any matches do not have a sound basis with the gaming system and tend not to fully understand the implications of their choices.

One method for choosing starters is as follows:

1) Canceling the option to pick starters before play.

2) Going into Multiplayer and choosing Host Game - 3 card.

3) Since no cards are on the account, the game will Default to the play setting "Random (ALL)" which will give 3 characters and 3 items and allow play.

4) Repeat step 3 until you win 10 cards by winning matches (approximately 25 games). This gets you familiar with the cards and how they play and allows you to take maximum advantage of the 40% win rate for less than 10 cards.

5) Once you have 10 cards from matches, then do available challenges. There is normally 1 per week, so this will get you to 11 cards.

6) Quit Kongai and go back in, at this point choose starters based on your knowledge of cards and based on the cards you already have, bringing your total to 14. Try to match characters and items together, such as Rumiko or Onimaru + Scroll, Yoshiro or Higashi + Insignia, etc.