Shadow Realm

Ready to stand with Purple Knight and defeat cyber threats? Welcome to Shadow Realm, the trading card game that lets you battle threats alongside your favorite purple cyber defender.

Collect cards to duel against other players. Drub your opponents’ Threat cards with more powerful ones, or use Guardian cards to defeat malicious identity attacks.

Your objective: Build your deck and emerge victorious

Earn starter packs and additional cards at Semperis events or tradeshows where Semperis is present. The more often you stop by to see us, the more cards you can earn!

Prepare for battle

Shuffle your collection deck, mixing your Threat and Guardian cards.
Keeping your cards face down, draw 7 cards to form your game deck.
Put your game deck face down in front of you. No peeking at your cards!

Gameplay

Know your adversaries

Each Threat card lists 5 stat categories, which determine the Threat’s strength: Privilege Escalation, Severity, Stealth, Persistence, and Ease of Execution.

Enter the arena

Decide who will be Player 1. How? That’s up to you! Player 1 selects the stat category for the round. Will you test your rivals’ Stealth or see who has the greatest Severity? Choose any of the 5 categories.

Attack!

Player 1 plays the top card of their deck, placing it face up in front of them. The next player (moving clockwise) then plays their top card. Continue until each player has a card face up in the arena.

Compare your Threat stats. Have the highest stat value in the selected category? You win this round…unless a player has revealed a Guardian card. If so, they automatically win the round—and if the card is an Onyx Guardian, claim an additional card from each player.

The winner collects all the played cards. Place all collected Threat cards face down at the bottom of your game deck. Keep any collected Guardian cards, but do not add them to your game deck; they can be played only once per game. The next player (moving clockwise) becomes Player 1 for the next round.

Tied for mightiest Threat?

If multiple cards played in a round tie for highest stat value and no Guardian cards are played in that round, the card with the highest Power (POW) values wins. If the Power values are also tied, the card with the highest Vitality (VIT) value wins.

If Vitality values are also tied, leave all played cards in the arena. The current Player 1 selects a new stat category and begins a new round. The winner of that round collects all the cards in the arena.

If multiple Guardian cards are played and one is an Onyx Guardian, the Onyx card wins. If no Onyx cards (or multiple Onyx cards) are played, select a new stat category and battle it out again!

Winning the game

The game ends when one player holds all the cards, or when players begin sweating about losing their card collectibles. The player who has the most cards at the end of the game wins.

Knight's Gambit cards - Semperis Purple Knight

Card overview

Card sets you collect at Semperis events might include Threat cards, Guardian cards, or both. Occasionally, you might collect special-edition Onyx Guardian cards.

Threat cards

These cards represent real-world attacks on Active Directory and Entra ID. Each Threat card lists an overall Power score (POW) and vitality points (VIT). Each card also has its own set of values for these statistic categories:

Privilege Escalation: How much access the attack grants
Severity: How much impact the attack has
Stealth: How difficult the attack is to detect
Persistence: How long the attacker can maintain access
Ease of Execution: How simple the attack is to carry out

Using Threat cards: Play Threat cards against one another to see which attack is most powerful.

Guardian cards

These cards represent Semperis community tools.

Purple Knight: Mitigates an attack
Forest Druid: Mitigates an attack that uses a Privilege Escalation tactic

Using Guardian cards: Guardians beat all other cards. You instantly win a round by playing a Guardian card. You can play as many Guardian cards as are in your game deck, even if they are multiple instances of the same Guardian. However, you can only play each Guardian card once for the duration of the game. Do not return played Guardian cards to your game deck.

Onyx Guardian cards

These special-edition cards are rare gems! You can recognize them by their prismatic coloring (compared to standard matte cards).

Using Onyx Guardian cards: As with standard Guardian cards, playing an Onyx card automatically wins a round, and each card can be played only once per game. However, when you win a round with an Onyx card, you collect an additional card from each of your challengers’ game decks!