In a battle, players take turns playing Enhancement cards to make their characters stronger.

Unlike popular trading card games like Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering, Redemption has no built-in resource system; that is, players are not required to meet any requirements or pay any costs in order to put cards into play.

Restrictions or penalties are instead placed on the special abilities of the cards themselves in order to balance game play.

Each Character, Enhancement, Site, Covenant and Curse card belongs to one or more brigades, indicated by the color of their icon box.

The colors of the good brigades are Blue, Clay, Gold, Green, Purple, Teal, Red, Silver and White, and the colors of the evil brigades are Black, Brown, Crimson, Gray, Orange, Pale Green and Yellow.

A card with a rainbow icon box belongs to all brigades of the corresponding good or evil alignment.

[5] Several artists have contributed, including Mike Bennett, Jeff Haynie, Michael Carroll and Mark Poole.

[citation needed] Additionally, recent (as of this writing) final releases of several long-running trading card games, including Lord of the Rings[7] and Star Trek,[8] make Redemption the second-oldest trading card game in consistent production, only behind Magic: The Gathering.

In the March 1996 edition of Arcane (Issue 4), Andrew Rilstone pointed out that "CCGs need variety.

"[10] In the March 1996 edition of Dragon (Issue 227), Rick Swan stated that "Redemption plays like a stripped-down Magic: The Gathering game, too slight to sustain the interest of hard-core card players, but good for beginners.