Advanced Persistent Threat 2025

Welcome to the world of strategic cyber warfare, where nation state hackers engage in a constant battle for global network dominance. Can you become the ultimate Advanced Persistent Threat?

Players begin by choosing an Adversary card to represent them and placing the rest back in the box.

The game consists of Staging Servers, Production Servers, Software, Malware, Exploits and Zero Days.

To begin, players take a Staging Server, Small DDOS Zero-Day card, and reference card and place them on the table in front of them. This is your Network into which you will be playing cards

Shuffle the remaining cards and deal 5 to each player, placing the rest of the deck face down in the center of the table.

Decide who goes first and take turns going clockwise around the table.

Each turn is made up of 4 steps.

First, check your Network for any cards with mandatory or optional “beginning of your turn” effects. These trigger now.

Second, draw a card from the deck and place it in your hand

Third, play one card from your hand.

Production Servers, Staging Servers, and Software are played into your Network. Malware is played into other players' networks, and Exploits can be played for an instant effect. When playing any card, read the effects out loud and perform their action.

Software and Malware card effects apply to the whole Network.

Software has positive effects and can only be installed above a server that does not have any other Software or Malware installed above it

Malware can be installed on top of Software canceling out the Software effect.

If a Server is Uninstalled, Deleted, or Stolen, any Software or Malware installed above that Server are also discarded or stolen with it.

If a Server instructs you to “return this card to your hand” only the server card is returned. Any cards above it are discarded.

Exploit cards can be played for immediate effects and must then be discarded

You can also play as many Zero-Day cards as you want, during any players’ turn

Fourth and lastly, discard down to a maximum of 7 cards

The first player to have 6 servers in their network wins!

If the deck runs out of cards before any player reaches 6 servers, the player with the most servers wins.

—description from the designer