Battleground Lanka: The Battle Begins (2019)

Cards
There are 2 types of cards in the game: (1) Characters, (2) Actions. Character cards are distributed to players while Action cards are stacked, shuffled and placed face down in the center of the table.

Types of action cards:
Attack
Defense
Health
… and so on

Both Character and Action cards have icons to identify which category they belong to. For example, attack and defense cards have a different icons and color schema to identify them uniquely.

Players and Setup
The game can be played with 3 - 7 players, with each assigned a hero character with their own unique power. Depending on the player count, the following heroes are selected and then distributed randomly (face down).

3 players: Rama, Ravana, Vibhishan
4 players: Rama, Ravana, Lakshman, Kumbhkaran
5 players: Rama, Ravana, Lakshman, Kumbhkaran, Vibhishan
...and so on

At the start of the game, each player receives 5 action cards face down from the deck, which they pick up and hold in their hands without showing it the others. Now, they flip over their character cards to reveal to the table which hero is assigned to them. Depending on the hero, they are now part of Team Orange or Team Purple.

Gameplay
The game begins with Rama playing first.

During each turn, in this order, a player:
Picks up 2 cards from the deck and adds them to their hand
May play one or more cards from their hand
Discards any cards they wish to or are required to
Ends their turn

Attacking:
There are different kinds of attack cards, each with their unique impact. During a turn, a player may only play any 1 attack card (icon: swords). They are free to play other cards before or after it.

Defending:
A player can defend (icon: shield) themselves using a Jatayu card or Aaina card. This is done in real-time when someone plays an attack card on you. In case an attack cannot be defended, the description will explicitly call it out.

Losing and Restoring Health:
When someone successfully attacks you, you lose the intended health points. If you reach zero health, the player is considered defeated and cannot continue playing. Health can be restored (icon: flower) by playing a Sanjeevani card or Shabari card.

Note: If a player reaches zero health, any player may play a Sanjeevani card in real-time to revive that player back to 1 health.

Ending your turn:
A player can end their turn any time, even without playing a single card. However, at the time of ending their turn, they must have no more than 5 cards in hand. They must discard any cards of their choice until they reach that limit.

Player Skills
Each player has a unique skills listed on their card. It is up to them to enforce and make the most use of these. Skills cannot be enforced retroactively after the next card-play has started.

Note: Player skills supercede any descriptions on cards. For example, Rama can use a Jatayu to defend any kind of attack, even non-defendable ones.

Power Cards (icon: lightning)
Power cards are special cards, depicted by the (icon: lightning) icon. These are meant to be placed in front of a player and will supercede all other card descriptions and player skills.

Winning the Game
The game ends in the following scenarios:

Team Orange wins if:
Rama is defeated

Team Purple wins if:
All heroes in the Team Purple are defeated and Vibhishan is defeated

Vibhishan wins if:
All heroes in the Team Purple are defeated and then Rama is defeated

As you can tell, Vibhishan plays an interesting role of trying to protect the Team Orange initially, but subtly works towards weakening them for the eventual showdown.