Have you ever thought to yourself - “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I could hang out and read books all day with Twilight Sparkle or buck some apple trees with Applejack? Maybe even throw a party with Pinkie Pie? All my dreams would have come true!” Well, look no further! (But actually, you may have to look further because Ponyville’s in a bit of trouble, and could use a little bit of your help!)

The My Little Pony: Adventures in Equestria Deck-building game is a co-operative card game for 1-4 players, where your goal is to build your deck with cool cards and collect Sugar Cubes along the way before these nasty Clouds put a damper on your efforts. Once Clouds start accumulating quickly, it could spell the end of the game! You will have to endure the calamity of Situations, Hurdles, and a Final Challenge; so show this hardship the magical power of friendship!

To get started, each player will become their favorite character from the show (my personal favorite is Fluttershy), equip themselves with a starting deck of 10 cards, and their Character card, which we’ll study in-depth today. Like Twilight Sparkle’s level of studying. We’re mostly kidding. If you can’t decide on who you want to be, don’t worry. Don’t even sweat about their ability before deciding! You can look to the Elements of Harmony that they each represent, and what’s most important to you as a person (or a figurative pony):

Rarity: Generosity

Rainbow Dash: Loyalty

Pinkie Pie: Laughter

Fluttershy: Kindness

Applejack: Honesty

Twilight Sparkle: Magic (or a little bit of every element, perhaps?)

You could also shuffle them all up and let chaos decide who you are. Or is it maybe Discord deciding for you? We’ll never tell.

Each Character card comes with a unique ability on its Starting side that can be used once per turn, during your own turn. Three of them that we’ll highlight for you are Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie, as they have three unique powers that may significantly swing the momentum of the game back in your team’s favor.

Twilight Sparkle’s Ability: Flip and pay 2 INFO to have target player gain 1 BLUE CUBE.

At any time during your turn, you may spend 2 INFO that you may have produced from cards you play on your turn or any Resource token you’ve collected to produce 1 Blue Sugar cube for yourself or one of your teammates! Helping your teammates produce Sugar Cubes is especially beneficial during the Final Challenge portion of the game, where players will individually need to contribute Sugar Cubes for the game’s final goal.

Sugar Cubes should be the primary target for the group - you’ll want to collect them as often as you can, and of all the colors as you can, because you may never know when you would need a Sugar Cube of a certain color. Pink represents Work, Blue represents Knowledge, and Green represents Friendship - all facets of a strong bond between friends. So it’s no secret that Twilight Sparkle’s ability will come in handy during the game. Plus they’re sparkly and glittery - of course you want to collect them cause they’re so cool to hold! Spike can attest to this. Just make sure he’s not hungry before playing...

If you ever run out of single Sugar Cubes, use the larger 5-valued Cubes when necessary.

Pinkie Pie’s Ability: Flip and pay 2 HELP to allow each player at your Location to sing or hum a song to draw 1 card.

Pinkie Pie’s Character card allows the team to draw a card if they share the same Location as Pinkie Pie. That’s amazing in a deck-builder because everyone can benefit from drawing something that could really help the team out. But Pinkie Pie’s not going to let you off that easily, is she…she’s Pinkie Pie! She loves having a good time! That’s why you’ll all have to sing or hum a song to use her ability.

If you’re stuck thinking of a song to sing, we recommend the beginning of of the theme song:

"My Little Pony...My Little Pony!"

Come on, don’t be shy! But Big MacIntosh can relate if you are. If you wanted to break out into a Top 40 pop single or belt out a full-blown musical number, that’s totally fine, too!

Rarity’s Ability: Flip and return 1 Sugar Cube to the supply to give each player a +2 INFO token.

You can also collect Resource tokens through your character powers, like Rarity’s ability to give each member of the team a 2 INFO Token. She is super fabulous - she’ll tell you that herself - but her ability is super helpful! Especially coupled with Twilight Sparkle, as that’s an almost-guaranteed Blue Sugar Cube. The ability’s cost? One sugar cube. Well then, there’s a predicament if I’ve seen one! It may cost an INFO token to gain a Sugar Cube, but may cost you a sugar cube to gain some INFO tokens… It just goes to show that timing your abilities accounts for a substantial portion of the game. Especially when we’re dealing with Situations, but more on those in the next post.

Each Resource token will provide 2 of the specified resource, or each of them can be flipped over to use as 1 of any resource needed. For example, a 2 HELP token may be used as 2 HELP, or in a pinch, it can represent 1 INFO and 1 MOVE.

      

We recommend you maximize the potential of your cards that you have in hand before using any tokens. Your cards will always be discarded to the discard pile after your turn is done, whether you have used them or not, but Resource tokens will always stay in front of you until you use them.

The more tokens you can store up will allow you to have amazing turns to buy expensive Ally cards or to acquire a lot of Sugar Cubes from a Location. There is a catch, however! You cannot use Resource tokens or Sugar Cubes, for that matter, that your teammates have collected themselves! We want every pony to have a chance to contribute to the efforts of victory, so you control your own destiny.

Each character card has the same text on its Flipped side: Pay 1 of each resource to flip this character to the Starting Side. You can perform this ability once per turn as well. So, in essence, you could set yourself up with a really good turn: perform your Starting side ability, generate your resources from your cards, then perform your Flipped side ability from the resources you’ve just generated! It’s like performing a Sonic Rainboom! Okay, it's maybe not quite as exciting as a Sonic Rainboom.

I hope you’ll have fun trying out all the combinations of Character cards for the game, and yes, this game can be played solo, so how heroic would you feel if a meek pony like Fluttershy was able to save the day on her own?

Next up, we’ll discuss the various cards that can fill your deck. Grab a hayburger and stay a while, cause you won’t want to miss this!

Want more TODAY? We'll be airing an interview with Chris Chung tonight at 5pm PST on Twitch!

Got questions? Head over to our discord server! We've got dedicated channels for My Little Pony, where staff such as Chris Chung (Lead Developer for My Little Pony: Adventures in Equestria) and Jordan Gaeta (Community Manager) hang out and answer questions!