Pages of WarDesigner Jae Duncan has a new card game coming to Kickstarter soon. Pages of War is a compact card game where players complete against each other to create the best story of glory and conquest. At it’s heart, it’s a game of warring factions with simple mechanics, and a lot of flavor.

Each deck of cards is broken up in to Monarchs, Generals, Aces, and Heroes. The Heroes have 5 suites, each of which trumps another in battle and gives a bonus. Each turn you’ll draw, take an action, then pass the turn to the other player. The Action phase makes up the meat of the game, and lets you use card powers, buff your Chapters (your groups of Heroes), create new Chapters, and attack.

You can view the full rules of the game here. Note these may not be final, and can change up until the actual publication of the game.

I played this one with my 10-year-old, and we had a lot of fun with it. It look a bit to get used to the game’s vocabulary while learning to play, but once you dig in it’s really quite simple to play. The depth comes from race, card powers, suit trumps, and card management. The cards are beautiful, and the races each have a distinct flavor.

The Kickstarter for the game hasn’t gone live yet, but I’ve seen the preview. You’ll be able to snag a print-and-play copy of the game for a $5 pledge, while a physical copy of the game will be given at the $29 level. The $59 level will include play mats for the game.

I was lucky enough to get a pretty complete prototype of the game. Most everything is set and ready to go, and what I saw is pretty close to what the final product will be like.

Pages of War is easy to learn, compact, and full of enough depth to keep you coming back for more.

A prototype copy of Pages of War was provided for preview by J.Kloud Entertainment, and returned upon the writing of this article.