Yuga Labs has released Mudwater, a trading card game built around Bored Ape Yacht Club. It’s a competitive game for two players, with digital cards on Solana and a physical side still to come. You can play it online now. Swamp Origins is the first collection, and current Ape and Mutant owners get free packs of it.
How Mudwater plays
Games are quick. Players take turns putting cards onto a three-by-three grid. Each new card’s numbers are checked against the cards on the edges beside it, and if its number is higher, it takes the opponent’s square. You can’t start with strong cards: you build them up one level at a time. The game ends when the grid is full, and whoever holds the most squares wins.
Games played with NFTs you own have something at stake. Both players put up one card chosen at random, and the winner takes both.
Exhibition, the entry-level web2 mode, drops that rule. It has computer opponents, matchmaking and games with friends, and you don’t need to collect any cards to play it.
The Swamp Origins collection
There are 120 designs in Swamp Origins. Some of them also come in foil or serialized versions, and eight cracked-ice editions are one of a kind. The supply is capped at 240,000 packs with ten cards in each, so 2.4 million cards in total. Collectors can hunt for rare versions while also building a deck that wins matches.
Sealed product can be traded as well. Put 24 digital packs together and you get a box. Ten boxes make a case. You can split either one back down. Cards, packs, boxes and cases all trade on their own, so players choose between buying singles, opening packs and keeping product sealed, the same way they would with physical card games.
Free packs for Ape holders
Bored Ape holders can claim ten packs per Ape, and Mutant Ape holders can claim two. The claim window shuts on 19th January 2027. Claims go through Totems, which sit on Ethereum, while the packs and cards are on Solana.
Existing holders receive 71% of all cards. Partner communities, Otherdeed holders among them, get 3%. Just 20% is sold directly.
Physical cards
Yuga’s plan keeps the physical cards in a vault. Owners will be able to redeem an NFT and get the physical card shipped to them, or mail in a physical card to have it tokenized. Yuga says both options are coming soon.
Fees and early trading
Every trade has a 2.5% royalty and a separate 2.5% reflection fee. The reflection fee is used to buy ApeCoin APE $0.1089 ▼ -10.9%, which goes out to Mudwater holders.
On OpenSea, unopened packs are the most active market so far, with about $620,600 in cumulative trading. The lowest listed pack was about $72, and roughly 1,700 wallets held at least one.
Single cards have reached $294,900 in cumulative volume, held across around 1,825 wallets, with a floor of about $0.87. Boxes have reached $38,500 in cumulative volume and have a floor of $1,577. Across packs, cards and boxes, trading volume comes to roughly $954,000.