Five Revealed Cards Say "Rest" — Two of Them K.O. Rested Characters, Yet Nothing Revealed So Far Actually Rests a Character

Turning a card sideways to show it has been used — resting — will be familiar to anyone who has played a Bandai card game. The NARUTO Card Game uses the word too: the official how-to-play section states plainly that you “rest your Summon card to bring a Character card onto the field.”

So how do the revealed cards actually handle resting? We searched all 38 entries in our card database for that one word. The answer is five cards — and the breakdown exposes a rather large hole in what has been revealed so far.

24Entries with readable effect textout of 38 registered

5Cards that mention resting

2Removal cards that target rested CharactersJiraiya / Orochimaru

0Cards that rest an opponent's card

About this article: The figures below are tallied from the 38 entries registered in our card database. Sources are the sample images on the official “About NARUTO Card Game” page, the official playmat handed out at Gen Con 2026, and scans of the English demo cards distributed at Gen Con 2026 (SAMPLE watermark, NOT FOR SALE marking); each card page lists its own source URL. The official rulebook has not been published, and the formal definition of resting — including when rested cards ready again — is unannounced. Demo card specifications may differ from the retail product. Where we speculate, we say so explicitly.

1. Five cards say “rest,” and they split into two jobs

Of the 24 entries with readable effect text, five contain the word “rest.” Those five split cleanly into cards that rest something and cards that look for rested things.

Cards that rest something — 3

• N-001DMG1POW3LIFE15Naruto Uzumaki N-001 (Leader / L / DMG 1 / POW 3 / LIFE 15)
  [Recovery] If it is the second turn or later, rest this card and flip all of your CHAKRA face-up.
• N-012DMG1POW3LIFE15Sasuke Uchiha N-012 (Leader / L / DMG 1 / POW 3 / LIFE 15)
  [Recovery] If it is the second turn or later, rest this card and flip all of your CHAKRA face-up. (Identical text to N-001)
• S-001Summon Card S-001
  You may rest this card to summon a Character card.

Cards that look for rested Characters — 2

• N-006COST2DMG1POW7HP4Jiraiya N-006 (Character / SR / cost 2 / DMG 1 / POW 7 / HP 4)
  [Support] Fire Style: Toad Flame Bombs / [During Your Opponent’s Attack] Choose up to 2 rested Characters: K.O. the chosen cards.
• COST2DMG1POW4HP7Orochimaru (Character / SR / cost 2 / DMG 1 / POW 4 / HP 7)
  [Support] Striking Shadow Snake / [During Your Opponent’s Attack] Choose up to 2 rested Characters: K.O. the chosen cards. (Identical text to N-006)

• Rest a card (your own) 3cards（60%）
• Remove rested Characters 2cards（40%）

The wording is consistent across both versions: the first group says “rest this card,” the second says “Choose up to 2 rested Characters.” The game distinguishes rest as an action from rested as a state.

2. Finding 1: Every resting effect says “this card” — nothing rests your opponent

Look at those three cards again. Every one of them says “rest this card.”

• A Leader rests itself to refill CHAKRA
• The Summon card rests itself to put a Character on the field

In other words, within what has been revealed, resting only ever appears as a cost you pay by tapping down your own card. That matches the pattern we found in our article sorting effects by whether they say “your”: costs are, without exception, paid from your own side.

And here is the part that matters:

Not one of the 24 readable cards rests an opponent’s card.

Whatever the game’s equivalent of “tap-down disruption” turns out to be, none of it has been shown yet.

3. Finding 2: Two cards K.O. rested Characters — but nothing explains how a Character gets rested

This is the strangest and most interesting result of the whole tally.

Jiraiya and Orochimaru K.O. only rested Characters — up to two at once. As noted in our survey of removal cards, these are the only revealed cards that name a number and remove more than one Character (the board wipes on Rasengan and Chidori sweep everything, both players included, which is a different tool). The trade-off is severe: if nothing on the board is rested, these cards do nothing.

And yet — not a single revealed card explains how a Character becomes rested.

• Effects that rest your own Characters: 0
• Effects that rest your opponent’s Characters: 0
• The only things anything rests are the Leaders (N-001, N-012) and the Summon card (S-001)

Since no card face says it, the mechanism that rests Characters must live in the rules rather than on a card. What that mechanism is has not been announced.

What we can read into this (speculation): It is hard to ignore that both Jiraiya and Orochimaru carry the [During Your Opponent’s Attack] timing. If these cards are designed to snipe rested Characters the moment your opponent swings, then attacking is what rests a Character — which is how most TCGs work. But this is a hypothesis drawn from where the text sits, not a confirmed fact. The attack procedure is not printed on the official playmat either.

As our survey of the 12 cards that mention attacking found, there are twelve attack-related cards and not one of them says what happens to the attacker afterwards. That blank and this one are two sides of the same gap.

4. Finding 3: CHAKRA never rests — the game tracks two separate states

One more thing only became clear once everything was tallied.

The NARUTO Card Game has two vocabularies for “already used”: rest and face-down. In the revealed text, the two never once overlap.

All four cards that mention flipping face-up or face-down are talking about CHAKRA.

Rest (sideways) Leaders, Summon card, Characters5cards

Face-up / face-down CHAKRA in every case4cards

Cards using both N-001, N-012 — different targets2cards

The two Leaders (N-001, N-012) use both words — but even within one sentence the targets stay separate.

[Recovery] If it is the second turn or later, rest this card (the Leader goes sideways) and flip all of your CHAKRA face-up (CHAKRA turns over).

The Leader gets “rest”; the CHAKRA gets “face-up.” These are not synonyms being varied for style — one effect is moving two different state systems at once.

To summarise:

• Rested / active (orientation) — applies to Leader cards, the Summon card and Characters. Zero cards say “rest your CHAKRA”
• Face-up / face-down (which side is showing) — applies to CHAKRA. Face-down [Support] cards are also placed this way (reading face-down Supports). The only confirmed way to flip CHAKRA back face-up is a Leader’s [Recovery]

That CHAKRA is tracked by which side is showing makes sense given it is a fixed pool of exactly five cards (our complete CHAKRA guide): flipping cards over makes the remaining count readable at a glance in a way that turning them sideways would not.

5. What does the Refresh Phase actually refresh?

Any discussion of resting eventually runs into the same question: when does it come back?

The official playmat handed out at Gen Con 2026 confirmed the turn structure: Refresh → Draw → Main → End.

1. RefreshRefresh Phase
2. DrawDraw Phase
3. MainMain Phase — likely where [Activate: Main] happens
4. EndEnd Phase

The name Refresh suggests rested cards straighten up here. But if that were the whole story, it raises a question about why the Leaders’ [Recovery] exists at all.

• If the Refresh Phase readies rested cards and flips CHAKRA back face-up, there would be little reason to rest your Leader to do the same thing
• If the Refresh Phase readies only rested cards, then [Recovery] is the sole way to flip CHAKRA face-up — and “rest your Leader” reads clearly as the price you pay for it

Within the revealed text the second reading fits better, but that is still speculation. The playmat prints phase names only; it says nothing about what happens in each phase.

6. What is still unknown

Resting is one of the least-defined areas in everything revealed so far.

• How a Character becomes rested. Whether attacking rests it, and whether anything else does, is unannounced
• What a rested card can no longer do. Cannot attack? Cannot block? Cannot use effects? None of it is stated officially
• What the official term for the opposite state is. Only “rest” appears on card faces; the word “active” does not appear once in the 24 readable entries
• What the Refresh Phase actually processes, and how that divides responsibility with a Leader’s [Recovery]
• What it costs to have your Leader rested. Leaders carry combat stats of DMG 1 / POW 3 (how to choose a Leader), so resting one may carry risk — but nothing official says so
• How often the Summon card S-001 can be used per turn. If resting is the cost and nothing readies it, once per turn follows — but this is not stated

Summary

• Of the 24 entries with readable effect text, 5 mention resting — 3 that rest a card (the [Recovery] on N-001 and N-012, plus Summon card S-001) and 2 that target rested Characters (Jiraiya N-006, Orochimaru)
• All three resting effects say “rest this card.” Zero cards rest an opponent’s card
• Two cards K.O. up to two rested Characters, yet no card face explains how a Character becomes rested. The mechanism appears to live in the rules, and has not been announced
• The 5 “rest” cards and the 4 “face-up / face-down” cards share no targets whatsoever. Resting is for cards on the field; flipping is exclusive to CHAKRA
• The likely readying point is the Refresh Phase (confirmed by the official playmat), but how it divides labour with a Leader’s [Recovery] is unannounced

Every revealed card is catalogued in our card database, term definitions in the glossary, and keyword notations in the keyword list. To study the rules ahead of release, start from the improvement roadmap.

Related articles

• The complete CHAKRA guide — how a five-card resource pool works
• The turn runs in four phases — confirmed by the official playmat, along with eight board zones
• Six of the seven revealed removal cards come from face-down Supports
• Twelve cards mention attacking — seven of them are on the receiving end