Card Types
Units
Units represent your military forces. A unit stays on the field once you play it. During your combat phase, you can use units to attack your opponent's territories. They can also block units that attack your territories.
The numbers on the left-hand side are the unit's Strength and Size. Strength - the top number - is the amount of damage the unit deals in combat. Size is how much damage it takes to destroy the unit.
On the turn you field a unit, that unit is considered "mobilizing," and cannot attack or do anything else that would require you to expend it.
Damage is removed from units at the end of every turn, so you'll need to deal enough damage in a single turn to destroy one.
Territories
A territory represents the lands of your civilization. When you play a territory, it goes onto the field with your units.
Territories can have a wide range of effects, but usually they change the rules in some way, or add new rules for players.
As with units, territories also have strength and size, and damage is removed from a territory at the end of each turn.
A territory can be attacked by opposing units and when all of a player's territories leave play, that player loses the game.
When you begin the game, each player chooses five cards from their opening hand and places them face-down. These face-down cards count as 0/2 territories. When one of these face-down territories are destroyed, its owner adds that card to their hand.
Artifacts
Artifacts are the weapons and tools of your empire. An artifact enters the field when you play it, just like units and territories.
Many artifacts have some kind of activated ability that you can sink excess supplies into. Some artifact subtypes also have specific mechanics that they use.
Consumables are one-shot artifacts that need to be sacrificed to activate their abilities. Equipment artifacts can be attached to units to increase their combat effectiveness.
Spells
Spells are the fantastic powers and magical rites at your disposal. When you play a spell, the rules text plays out immediately, then the card goes to the scrapyard, unless it's attached to a permanent.
Spells can have nearly any kind of effect, from drawing cards and summoning units to leveling territories and wiping out whole armies!
Some spells attach to a permanent when you cast them, allowing them to stay on the field and grant constant effects.
Resources
Resources are the raw materials and manpower that drive your civilization. Any card can be a resource by putting it onto the field upside-down.
You may play a resource only once per turn. While a card is in resource mode, it can be expended to produce supplies that are needed to play other cards. However, cards in resource mode are stuck that way until they leave the field, so be careful which cards you break down for resources!
Some weaker cards may provide you with multiple colors of supplies to offset their low power level. On the other hand, more powerful cards often produce only colorless supplies. You'll need to keep this in mind while building a deck to make sure you have a balance between powerful cards and achievable supply costs.
Quick
Cards with the Quick supertype, as well as activated abilities from non-strategic permanents, can be played at any time, even on your opponent's turn. "Quick plays" can be made whenever a player:
1) Ends a step or phase of a turn.
2) Plays a non-resource card
3) Triggers or activates an ability of a card, with the exception of abilities that add supplies to a stock.
When multiple quick plays are waiting to resolve, they resolve in order from the most recent to least recent.
Basic
Basic is another supertype. A basic card represents a common example of something in the game world.
Basic cards are usually simpler and weaker than non-basic cards. To offset this, a deck may include as many copies as you want of a basic card.
Certain cards may reference basic cards specifically, making them a key piece in some decks, despite their low power.