Treachery terms, defined

The card type used only in Treachery. Each player controls one identity card, which sets their role, their team and how they win, and usually gives them a one-shot ability for unveiling it. Identities sit in the command zone for the whole game and are not permanents.

Rules: TR3.1, TR3.2 See also: Role, Command zone

The subtype printed on an identity after the dash: Leader, Guardian, Assassin or Traitor. The rules also call it the identity type. Your role decides your team.

Rules: TR3.3 See also: Leader, Guardian, Assassin, Traitor

The one role everyone knows from the start. A Leader identity has no unveil cost and begins the game face up, and its player takes the first turn. The Leader team loses the moment every Leader has lost. See the Leader role page.

Rules: TR3.3, TR6.3 See also: Leader team, “[Role] player”

A hidden role on the Leader’s team. Guardians win when the Leader’s side outlasts every Assassin and Traitor, and they lose with the Leader even if they are still alive. In the Treachery.app set every Guardian is Undercover. See the Guardian role page.

Rules: TR3.10, TR6.3 See also: Undercover, Leader team

A hidden role. The Assassins are one team, but they don’t know each other at the start. They win when every Leader has lost while at least one Assassin is still in the game. See the Assassin role page.

Rules: TR6.4 See also: Assassin team

A hidden role that plays alone. Each Traitor is a team of one and wins only by outlasting every opponent, other Traitors included. See the Traitor role page.

Rules: TR6.5 See also: Team

The pile of identity cards dealt at the start of the game: exactly one per player, built from the role counts for that player count. It is shuffled and dealt face down. Nothing to do with your Magic deck.

Rules: TR2.2, TR2.4

How many of each role are in the identity deck. It is public: everyone knows the counts before the game starts, just not who holds what. See the table on the setup page.

Rules: TR2.2, TR2.3

Uncommon, rare or mythic. On identities, rarity is meant as a measure of complexity rather than power: uncommons are the easiest to read and play, mythics the wildest. Groups often filter the pool by rarity.

Rules: TR11.3

Text on an identity that refers to the identity card it is printed on, in the command zone.

Rules: TR3.8

Identity cards that weren’t dealt this game. A few effects reach for them, such as The Wearer of Masks revealing random identities from that pool. “Removed from the game” on an identity means put outside the game, not exiled.

Rules: TR3.2, TR8.8

Players who share a win condition. Treachery has the Leader team (Leaders and Guardians), the Assassin team, and one single-player team for each Traitor. When any player on a team wins, the whole team wins.

Rules: TR3.10, TR6.7 See also: Leader team, Assassin team, Teammate

The Leader plus every Guardian. It loses as soon as every Leader has lost, even with Guardians still alive, and it wins once every Assassin and Traitor has left the game.

Rules: TR3.10, TR6.3, TR6.6

All the Assassins together. They share one win, including Assassins who were knocked out before the Leader fell.

Rules: TR3.10, TR6.4

Another player on your team. For card effects, a player whose identity is still face down has no teammates and counts as an opponent of everyone.

Rules: TR3.11

Every player who isn’t your teammate. Because face-down players have no teammates, “each opponent” on a card can hit your secret allies too.

Rules: TR3.11, TR10.4

Card text like “Leader player” or “Traitor player” means a player who controls a face-up identity of that role. A Guardian who hasn’t unveiled is not a “Guardian player” yet. The Leader is always a Leader player, because Leaders are face up from the start.

Rules: TR3.9

The player who takes the first turn. In Treachery that is the Leader, not a randomly chosen player.

Rules: TR2.6

Anything other players are not allowed to see: your hand, your library and, in Treachery, your face-down identity. You may talk about it freely, true or false, but you may not show your face-down identity to prove a claim.

Rules: TR1.5, TR10.5

Open conversation during the game: claims, accusations, offers and threats. It is allowed and expected. Deals are never binding.

Rules: TR10.5

The starting state of every non-Leader identity. A face-down identity has no name, role or abilities as far as the game is concerned. Only its controller may look at it. Players sometimes call it veiled or hidden.

Rules: TR3.5, TR3.6 See also: Face up, Unveil

An identity whose front is visible to everyone. Face-up identities have their full characteristics, so their abilities work and their role is public.

Rules: TR3.4

The keyword on every non-Leader identity. It keeps the identity face down from the start of the game, turns it face up if you lose, and lets you turn it face up yourself by paying its unveil cost whenever you have priority. Unveiling is a special action: it doesn’t use the stack and can’t be responded to.

Rules: TR4.1, TR4.2 See also: Unveil cost, Special action, “When … is unveiled”

What you pay to turn your identity face up, printed after the word Unveil. It can be mana, life, discarding, sacrificing or exiling. Some unveil costs include X, which carries over into the rest of the card’s text.

Rules: TR4.2, TR4.5

A triggered ability that fires when the identity is turned face up by the unveil action. It goes on the stack, so players can respond to it and it can be countered. It does not fire when an identity is revealed because its player lost.

Rules: TR4.3

An ability that applies while the identity is being turned face up rather than afterwards, like The Wearer of Masks choosing what to copy. Nobody can act in between.

Rules: TR4.4

A restriction on unveiling, found on Guardians. An Undercover identity can only be unveiled once, earlier in the game, another non-Leader identity has been revealed, or a player other than you has attacked a Leader player.

Rules: TR5.1, TR5.2

Turned face up for everyone to see, for any reason: unveiled, or shown because its player left the game. Undercover cares about revealed non-Leader identities.

Rules: TR5.2, TR7.3

You choose X as you unveil and pay it. Any other X on the same identity uses that same number. If an identity is turned face up without the unveil action, X is 0.

Rules: TR4.5

What happens to a player who loses or concedes. Their cards leave with them, their face-down identity is revealed, and the game remembers which team they were on.

Rules: TR7.1, TR7.4

Everyday word for a player who has lost and left the game. An eliminated player still shares in their team’s win.

Rules: TR6.7, TR7.4

The team a player belonged to when they left the game, judged from the last identity they controlled. It is what lets a dead Assassin share in an Assassin win.

Rules: TR7.4

Leaving the game voluntarily. Conceding always works and can’t be replaced, so effects that change what happens when you would lose do nothing when you concede.

Rules: TR6.10

A game nobody wins. In Treachery that happens when every remaining player loses at the same time and no team meets its win condition.

Rules: TR6.9

The game zone for objects that aren’t in play but still affect it, like commanders and emblems. Identities live here all game, next to your commander, and can’t be moved out.

Rules: TR3.2, TR9.2

The right to take an action. Players receive priority in turn order during most steps and after each spell or ability is put on the stack. Nobody has priority during the untap step, normally not during cleanup, and never while something is resolving.

Rules: TR4.2

Where spells and abilities wait to resolve, last in, first out. Unveiling skips the stack. Unveil triggers use it.

Rules: TR4.2, TR4.3

An action a player takes that doesn’t use the stack, like playing a land. Unveiling is one, which is why nobody can respond to the flip itself.

Rules: TR4.2

An ability that starts with when, whenever or at. It goes on the stack the next time a player would receive priority, and can be responded to or countered.

Rules: TR4.3

An effect that changes an event as it happens, usually worded with instead or as. It never uses the stack. Unveil itself is built from replacement effects, and so are cards like The Treacherous Masochist.

Rules: TR4.1, TR6.9

Game checks that happen whenever a player would receive priority, such as a player at 0 life losing. Several players can lose in the same check, which is how simultaneous losses happen.

Rules: TR6.9

The multiplayer structure Treachery uses: everyone plays for themselves on the surface, may attack any opponent, and every player can affect every other player.

Rules: TR1.4, TR10.1

Active player, non-active player order. When several players have things to do at once, such as triggers to put on the stack, the active player goes first and the others follow in turn order.

Rules: TR10.6