What SORTIE is

SORTIE is an aviation card game. You hold a hangar on an island, fly one aircraft at a time, and settle every fight with a deck of cards.

The deck is not picked from a menu. It is a consequence of the aircraft you fly, the pilot in the seat, and the hardware bolted to your wings. Change the loadout and the deck changes with it.

The loop

gather resources  ->  craft hardpoints  ->  fit them to your airframe
      ^                                              |
      |                                              v
  better rewards  <-  win harder encounters  <-  a stronger deck

Fighting costs no energy. Energy gates gathering, so running out means the farming stops, not the game.

What a session looks like

Fly out to the world map, harvest a node or two, come home, spend what you gathered on a hardpoint, fit it, and take the new deck into an encounter. Win and the encounter pays; clear all five battles and it pays properly.

That is the whole rhythm. Everything else (the Showroom, patrols, PvP, the crate drop) hangs off it.

The numbers

Three things that surprise people

Dilution runs backwards. A player-built deck is exactly 40 cards and cannot be thinned below that. The standard derived fit starts shorter; fitting more hardware adds cards, so the card you actually wanted comes up less often. Fit deliberately.

Action points do not pile up. You get 5 a round. Cards that "give AP" fill a bank that is spent at the start of the next round and then cleared, and the whole thing is capped at 9. A round is a budget, not a savings account.

Intent is public. Declaring an intent commits you to playing in that order, and the opponent declares too, so you see what is coming while it still matters. What kind of move is coming is public. Which card it is stays hidden.

Where next

• New pilot guide: your first session, step by step.
• Enlisting: how to get in.
• Combat: how a fight actually resolves.