Infernal Contraption is a stand-alone card game where goblin mechanics race to assemble nigh-uncontrollable magical machines.

Through the strategic placement of arcane components like arcantric funnels, chthonic grinders, and entropic processors, these crazy goblins risk life and limb to overcome the competition with the ultimate Infernal Contraption.

Designed by Matt Wilson, the award-winning designer of WARMACHINE and HORDES, Infernal Contraption features the same celebrated fast, intuitive game play found in all Privateer Press games. Illustrated by WARMACHINE and HORDES concept artists Chris Walton and Rob Hawkins, the game's brilliant full-color cards are lavishly designed and feature hilarious goblins racing to complete the construction of their maniacal machines.

Game Overview

Let's take a look at how the game plays. The box has everything you need for 2-4 players to indulge in some mechanical mayhem. Infernal Contraption is designed to play quickly - the more players the faster! This allows you to play several games in a stretch of a few hours.

Set Up: To start each player begins the game with a Power Core card, which is the heart of your machine. The remaining deck is divided up between all the players. These cards become your

Parts Pile: Each player draws 7 cards from their Parts Pile into their hand and the game starts.

Types of Cards

Here are the ingredients to make the most of your mechanical mayhem! There are five types of cards in the basic set:

The Power Core is the central component of your machine. Each player starts with a power core.
Bodging Tip: Never touch an unshielded Core. Remember there is an "Ow!" in "power"!

Power Sources provide power to Contraptions and Consumables. Power Sources have different sockets (see below) meaning they power only Contraptions and Consumables with the same kind of socket.
Bodging Tip: Remember there's no throttle like full throttle. If it won't go, then give it more power!

Contraptions are the parts of your machine that do things (such as increase your Parts Pile like the Arcantric Funnel pictured here) when you turn on your machine. Contraptions have a blue border.
Bodging Tip: If you can't build it, bodge it! A contraption made from scrap is just as good as a new one. Well, almost.

Upgrades modify Contraptions, making them bigger and better (in theory at least). Upgrades have a green border.
Bodging Tip: Two halves make a whole. So if your machine half works, then perfect it by making it twice as large!

Consumables are like a Contraptions but they have a one-time effect. Attach them to a Power Source and let 'em rip! Consumables have a rust-colored border.
Bodging Tip: The best things in life are often the small things. You know, the ones that are likely to melt, explode, disintegrate, or all three at once.

Start: Players alternate taking turns to add consumables, contraptions, upgrades, and power sources to their respective machines to bolster its power. When cards are discarded they form a common Scrap Pile.

Building Your Machine:

Every bodger knows you can't harness the alchemical apparatus of your Arcantric Funnel to the voltaic coils of your Voltaic Dynamo! You've got to hook up coils with coils! It's just common sense (at least to a bodger).

Players place cards either in their main line (horizontally) or as plugs (vertically). However, every card can only attach to another card that has a matching symbol, known as a socket.

Every card has sockets. When building your machine, cards may be placed next to other cards only if their connecting sockets match.

Power Supplies have one or two kinds of sockets and thus may only power Contraptions and Consumables with the same kind of socket.

After building your machine for the turn a player then selects an opponent, activates their machine, and resolves all the card effects from left to right, top to bottom. That's when the mayhem really begins as the player’s machine begins to do its infernal work!

Winning the Game:

Racing to build infernal contraptions is a messy affair, so as the game rages on the Parts Piles of each player becomes depleted and the Scrap pile becomes larger. The goal of Infernal Contraption is to be the last player with cards in their Parts Pile.

Game Tip:

You build your machine from your Parts Pile, but if you use all your cards you are out of the game!

You'll need to balance bulding your machine with conserving enough parts to outlast your opponents.