🧙‍♂️ AniMagica

Raise a war-band of ridiculous beasts. Train them, rest them, scar them, and lead the survivors to the throne.

📜 Story

Twelve elemental clans of beasts send their fiercest champions to the arena. You do not buy a deck, you raise a war-band: every beast you recruit trains, fights, gets hurt, rests and grows. Some fall, the survivors carry the marks of every battle. Only one war-band holds the throne at the end.

🧭 Vision

AniMagica is an auto-battler strategy card game. It is free to play with no pay-to-win. It offers an accessible yet rich game experience that is fun and challenging to master.

A band of veterans. The units are not disposable pieces. Each unit keeps its story (experience, level, 💀 Deaths, battles and kills): it grows when it fights, takes a 💀 Death each time it dies in a battle (COMBAT.md “💀 Deaths”), becomes Injured after 3, and heals when it rests in the 🏡 Refuge (REFUGE.md). The player chooses who fights, who rests and who is sold, so the survivors of the last battle are the ones the player raised. A game ends with the report of the band (the MVP and the veterans).

💡 Inspiration

It borrows some proven and successful concepts like

• “Tavern tier system” from “Hearthstone: Battlegrounds” where players spend coins to upgrade the tavern and unlock stronger, tiered units.
• “lane domination” from “Marvel Snap” where the battlefield is divided into 3 vertical lanes. Winning 2 out of 3 lanes wins you the match.
• “Front and back lines” from “GWENT: The Witcher card game” where the battlefield is divided into horizontal rows affecting abilities and range.

💎 Production value

What sets it apart from the games above:

• 🐼 Units that remember: experience, levels, 💀 Deaths, battles and kills stay with the unit from battle to battle, and merging identical units makes a stronger one (MERGING.md)
• Rest and injury: a unit that rests in the 🏡 Refuge heals, is Rested (+25% 💪 Attack) and may lay eggs; an Injured unit cannot fight until it heals
• 12 clans (target) of animals with humorous audio sound effects, 4 clans drawn for each game, one per element
• 4 elements affecting cards and units with interactive dynamics
• 3 types of unit with different roles and meta
• positioning system: 3 lanes of 2 rows per player, creating unit synergies and movements
• synchronous combat without 1st mover advantage
• deterministic combat resolution with no luck involved
• 🎯 Target game duration: 12 to 20 minutes with a sweet Spot: ~15 minutes.
• Single ⚔️ Combat Round (Auto-battle) of 10 to 20 seconds with a Sweet Spot: ~12 seconds (with a x1/x2 speed toggle and a Skip button).
• Shop & Planning ⚙️️ Phase (Between ⚔️ Combats) of about 30 to 45 seconds: 30 s at turn 0, +1 s per turn, 45 s from turn 15 on (see COMBAT.md “🧰 Preparation phase”).
• Resulting duration estimate, per turn = planning + combat replay at x1 (~15 s) + maintenance (~5 s): a 15 turns game = 15 x 45 s max planning + 15 x 20 s = at most 16.25 minutes (limit 20); the exact sum with the growing planning time is ~14.25 minutes (sweet spot ~15); a 14 turns game is ~13.2 minutes (minimum 12). The speed x2 or Skip shortens the replay (~7.5 s / ~2 s).

🌀 Metas

Many of the metas can be ignored, and the game can be played without any knowledge of these mechanics.

• ☯ Elements
• 🪖 Experience or 🐼 Unit growth, and merging identical units (MERGING.md)
• Movement
• 🏡 Refuge
• …

Of course, experienced players will use and stack these mechanics to their advantage.

🎮 Game anatomy

• Each game picks 8 players of similar skill
• The game randomly selects 4 clans. One clan is drawn for each element to guarantee the presence of all elements at each game. Only clans with enough units are drawn (ELEMENTS.md). These clans define which cards (the counts are in CLANS.md) are available to players, in addition to the spells and the neutral units.
• You start with a new empty deck
• A game is a sequence of turns until only one player is left alive. At Each turn:
  • 👤 Players get limited time to buy and place units.
  • Then, players enter 1-on-1 duels. Up to 4 duels happen at the same time per turn.
  • Duel are random at the beginning then use Swiss-style pairing. which pairs players with others close to them on the ladder and a no-repeat rule. The rule is the same for the server, the bots and the offline game:
    • ⟳️ Turns 1 to 3: random pairs.
    • From turn 4: the closest players on the ladder (💚 Vitality, then lanes won) are paired.
    • No repeat: a player never meets its previous opponent when another pairing exists; then opponents already met are avoided.
    • With an odd number of players, one player has no partner and fights the ghost of the last eliminated player instead (see “Ghost opponent” below and COMBAT.md). It is the player with the fewest ghost fights so far, then the one with the highest 💚 Vitality (the leader), at any turn.
    • Example, 8 players over 5 turns: turns 1-3 are three random rounds (4 duels each, avoiding rematches when possible); on turn 4 the ladder is sorted (e.g. 9, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 3, 2) and neighbours meet (1st-2nd, 3rd-4th…) unless that repeats the previous round, in which case the cheapest alternative is chosen; turn 5 is paired the same way on the updated ladder.
• The game ends when only one player is left.
• A player dies when its 💚 Vitality reaches zero or below.
• After eliminations there can be 7, 5, or 3 players left (and 6, 4 or 2 left after several eliminations in the same turn from an odd count). To fix the odd player count, a player fights the ghost of the last eliminated player.
• A game starts with an even lobby: 8 players, the missing ones are filled with bots (offline: the client always creates 7 bots for the human). An odd lobby is never a valid start. An odd lobby is refused with a clear message. Matchmaking (Rank) always sends 8 players.
  • Defensive path only: if an odd lobby were ever played anyway, the player without partner has a walkover (no battle, nothing changes) because no player is eliminated yet and so no ghost exists. It is never reached in a valid game.

👻 Ghost opponent

• The ghost is a snapshot of the ⚔️ Battlefield of the last eliminated player as it entered its last battle (the fatal one): units with their 💪 Attack, ❤️ Health, 🛡️ Shield, level, XP, 💀 Deaths and enchantments, and its tier. It is reused unchanged every following turn; it does not evolve.
• If several players are eliminated on the same turn, the ghost is the one ranked highest among them (highest final 💚 Vitality, see COMBAT.md “Ranking”).
• The duel against the ghost is a normal recorded duel (replayable): the real player loses 💚 Vitality when the ghost wins (same 💚 Max Vitality Loss rule), and earns XP, lanes won and 💀 Deaths as in any battle. The ghost units are created for the duel and never persisted.
• The ghost never wins the game, is never eliminated, is not a player of the ladder and gets no result: its 💚 Vitality does not matter.
• The UI names the opponent “Ghost of ” (the Oracle preview, the battle report, the combat view).
• Every opponent is named the same way online and offline: a bot is “Bot ”, a human “👤 Player ”, a ghost “Ghost of Bot ” (the battle report and the result panel; the Oracle marks it in the standings). A walkover has no opponent.

🏆 Winning a game

A player’s game ends when they’re eliminated or become the last one standing.

The placements follow the ranking of COMBAT.md (“Ranking”).

• The top 4 players are Winners and gain Rank points based on how long they lasted.
• The bottom 4 players are Losers and lose Rank points.

🪜 The two ladders

There are two distinct ladders. Do not confuse them.

Local ladder (during a game)

After each turn, the 8 players of a game are ranked on the local ladder. It orders the Swiss-style pairing and the in-game standings. The final placement is the elimination order (last one standing is 1st); among players eliminated at the same time, this ranking breaks the tie. The result panel of the end of the game shows this placement among all the players (“You finished 4th of 8”); a shared victory shows no place.

1. Highest 💚 Vitality first.
2. If tied, the player who won the most lanes ranks first.
3. If tied, the one with more units.
4. If tied, the one with the most total attack.
5. If tied, the one with the most total health.

The in-game standings are always shown: online on the board (players list) and the end screen; offline inside the Oracle (visible once it opens), refreshed after each turn. One line per player in ladder order, without rank number: ⚔️ for the next opponent of the player (or the eliminated player whose ghost it fights), the name (🙂 You, 💻 3 for a bot), 💚 and the 💚 Vitality, then its 2 main elements (most units first) on its ⚔️ Battlefield as it entered the last battle, or out once eliminated. Example: ⚔️ 💻 3 💚 9 🔥 3 💧 2. The ties use those frozen boards, never the boards being planned. The standings are the only place that shows the next opponent offline: there is no other message for it.

Global online ladder (across games)

Every player has Rank points (start at 1000, never below 0). The global ladder orders all players by Rank points. It is only used to find players of similar skill when a game is created; it does not affect a game in progress.

Similar skill = close Rank points. The 8 players of a game are the first queued player plus the 7 queued players whose Rank points are the closest to theirs. The accepted gap starts at 100 points and widens by 10 points per second of waiting, so nobody waits forever.

Rank points formula

When a game ends, each player’s placement (1st = last one standing) changes their Rank points like in auto-battlers, with a multiplayer Elo:

• Score S = (N - placement) / (N - 1): 1st = 1, last = 0 (N = 8).
• Expected E = 1 / (1 + 10^((lobbyAverage - rating) / 400)), normalised so the lobby sums to N/2.
• delta = round(K * (S - E)) with K = 40, the new rating is floored at 0.
• 👤 Players sharing a placement (shared victory) share the average score of the places they occupy.

Result: the top 4 gain points, the bottom 4 lose points, the total stays close to zero, and a stronger player gains less (and loses more) than a weaker one for the same placement.

Worked example, 8 players with equal ratings (E = 0.5):

💰 Monetization

👤 Players will be able to purchase vanities like skin and such. The game will never have pay-to-win features as it usually ruins the experience of many players.

🚩 Locations

⚔️ Battlefield

Orientation. This spec is written in portrait terms: the 3 lanes are vertical columns (left, center, right), the rows are front and back from the enemy side down to the player, and the player is at the bottom. The ⚔️ Battlefield zone and the combat replay draw this same grid in both orientations of the screen: in landscape the grid is not turned, only the place of the zones changes (landscape: the 🧺 Marketplace on the full width at the top, then the 🏡 Refuge, the ⚔️ Battlefield and the Oracle). The words “left / center / right lane” and “front / back row” therefore mean the same on every screen.

The screen turns. The orientation follows the window: portrait when it is taller than wide, landscape otherwise, at the start and each time it changes, any number of times (portrait, landscape, portrait…). The game in progress is kept: every zone is laid out again with its cards, doors and title, and the zoomed card and the tooltip close. The turn waits while something moves (the end of a turn and its combat, an animation that locks the UI, a drag) and happens when it is over, in the last orientation of the window (none when the window turned back meanwhile). The menus are laid out again.

Each player has its own section of the ⚔️ Battlefield, which is structured into a 3x2 grid. There are 3 Vertical 🛣️ Lanes. Each 🛣️ Lane contains 2 rows: Front and Back, giving you a total of 6 positions on your side of the ⚔️ Battlefield, mirrored by 6 on the opponent’s side. You can deploy one unit per position, giving you the possibility to engage up to 6 units per combat (at most 2 per lane). 🛣️ Lanes confine combats: units interact only within their 🛣️ Lane (units cannot change lanes, see COMBAT.md MOVE). 🛣️ Lane pairing is mirrored: the Left lane faces the opponent’s Left lane (same lane index; the combat pairs lane i of player 1 with lane i of player 2). 🛣️ Lanes are resolved in the order center, left, right.

At the start of the game, the player has limited coins to buy units. For this reason, not all positions are available. The positions and lanes open progressively based on the ⟳️ Turn number: a lane at a time, a pair of positions: the center lane at turn 1, the left lane at turn 3, the right lane at turn 5; the ⚔️ Battlefield is complete at turn 5. The number of lanes with an open position defines how many vitality points can be lost (1, 1, 2, 2, then 3): a lane opens exactly when a lane is added to the cap. The table below shows the ⟳️ Turn at which a position is open.

The income grows by 1 every turn up to turn 6, then by 1 every 2 turns, and never above 12 (it starts at 4 coins). The bonuses of the cards (income+) come on top of the table.

† 💚 Max Vitality Loss: from turn 12, or once 3 players remain, every 💚 Vitality loss costs +1 more (overtime rule, see COMBAT.md, After each battle).

A unit cannot be dropped on a closed position (the drop is refused). A drop with no slot chosen is auto-placed (below). The client and the server share one rule for deploying, undeploying and reordering: open slots of the turn, no Injured deployment, the deployment traits, the 🏡 Refuge capacity (6); the ideal row is a hint, never a refusal. An injured unit leaving the battlefield does not change which slots are open: open slots depend only on the ⟳️ Turn.

A unit bought while the player owns the same card (⚔️ Battlefield or 🏡 Refuge) merges into it (MERGING.md): the bought card takes no slot, and a merged unit on the ⚔️ Battlefield keeps its slot (the survivor is the ⚔️ Battlefield one). Dropped on the ⚔️ Battlefield, such a purchase needs no free or open slot and moves no unit, whatever the slot it is dropped on: no slot preview, the unit in place stays, the bought card goes from where it was dropped to the 🪦️ Graveyard. Merging is how a few slots hold more power: a Double occupies one slot with the summed stats of two units, so it is also a bigger target for the lane.

🐼 Unit placement

👤 Players group their units by vertical 🛣️ Lanes, with each unit assigned to one of 2 horizontal rows.

A unit is in its ideal row only when its type matches the table above (🗡 Melee in the Front row, 🏹 Shooter and 🪄 Spellcaster in the Back row). This is strict: no other row counts as ideal for a type. A ranged unit may stand in the Front row: it reaches more of the lane but fights next to the enemy 🗡 Melee (Disrupted, COMBAT.md). The UI hints (slot highlight when dragging, warning on drop) and the bots follow this rule.

Automatic placement. When a unit is deployed without a chosen slot (auto-deploy, a unit displaced by a deployment, the bots), the game picks the slot in this order, among the open and empty slots only (a displaced unit first tries the ideal row of its own lane, see COMBAT.md, then follows this order):

1. the ideal row of the unit type; inside the row the leftmost lane first (left, center, right);
2. if no slot of the ideal row is available: the other row (a 🗡 Melee whose Front row is full goes to the Back row, a ranged unit whose Back row is full goes to the Front row), leftmost lane first;
3. if no slot is available there is no automatic placement: the player must free a slot, a displaced unit goes to the 🏡 Refuge, and a bot with a full ⚔️ Battlefield replaces its weakest unit.

Dropping on a closed cell. A unit dragged from the ⚔️ Battlefield and dropped on a closed cell (or on no cell) always returns to its original slot, never to a new one; the slot preview shows it while dragging. A card that comes from the 🧺 Marketplace or the 🏡 Refuge and is dropped there takes the automatic placement above. For a unit dragged from the 🧺 Marketplace, the preview says what the drop does: if the ⚔️ Battlefield has an open empty cell, that cell (the automatic placement) is highlighted and the text is “Buy + Deploy”; if the ⚔️ Battlefield is full, the locked cell stays highlighted with the lock icon and the drop is refused.

Preview text of a purchase. Dropping a unit of the 🧺 Marketplace on an open cell also shows “Buy + Deploy”. The text over the dragged card is the plain Buy, except when the drop also does something: a unit bought and deployed reuses the three-line text of the spells (Buy, +, Use, each line with its own color and size) with its last line replaced by Deploy, and a purchase that merges into an owned unit replaces it by Double, Triple, Quad, Quintuple or Sextuple.

The bots also move a unit placed by the fallback to its ideal row as soon as a slot of that row is available (moving a unit inside the ⚔️ Battlefield is free).

No penalty outside the ideal row. A unit outside its ideal row suffers no penalty other than the position itself: a unit with no enemy in range moves for free until one is (a 🗡 Melee in the Back row attacks once the cell in front of it is free), see COMBAT.md.

1. Front Row

• Occupies the first row, closest to the enemy.
• Absorbs most incoming 💥 Damage as a barrier to protect the Back Row.

2. Back Row

• Farthest from the enemy, housing the 🏹 Shooters and 🪄 Spellcasters.
• Enemy 🗡 Melee units cannot touch it until the cell in front is cleared (COMBAT.md, Placement tactics).

🏡 Refuge

Capacity

• The 🏡 Refuge holds at most 6 cards (units, eggs and other cards together), shown as 2 rows of 3.
• A full 🏡 Refuge cannot receive an egg: a unit with 🟢 Egg Layer lays nothing (no roll is made).
• An injured unit (3 💀 Deaths or more) takes no slot: the 🏡 Refuge can overflow for injured units, with no limit and no special row (COMBAT.md “💀 Deaths”).

🧹️ Maintenance order

At each 🧹️ Maintenance, the 🏡 Refuge steps run in this order:

1. Mentoring XP is given. Then every unit with 💀 Deaths that is in the 🏡 Refuge heals 1 💀 Death and gains a 🛡️ Shield of round((🎖️ Level + ⭐ Tier) / 2) (it is not the Rested state below).
2. Identical units merge, ⚔️ Battlefield and 🏡 Refuge (MERGING.md); this runs after the level-ups and the 🏡 Refuge count.
3. Egg laying: eggs evolve, then Egg Layers lay (only if the 🏡 Refuge has room).
4. As the last action, injured units (3 💀 Deaths or more) are undeployed from the ⚔️ Battlefield to the 🏡 Refuge, whatever the room. They heal from the next 🧹️ Maintenance.

Staying in the 🏡 Refuge

After staying in the refuge for 1 ⟳️ Turn,

• The unit is 🟢 Rested for its next battle if it is deployed (counted by the 🧹️ Maintenance): 💪+25% 💪 Attack for that battle only (TRAITS.md “⚔️ Combat start traits”), shown by the info scroll of the zoomed card, not by the card description (UNITS.md “🃏 Card details”), and by a rested marker on its combat card, in the 🏡 Refuge and on the ⚔️ Battlefield. It is not the 🛡️ Shield of the rest: that one comes only with a healed 💀 Death (🧹️ Maintenance step 1) and is permanent. A unit that fought last ⟳️ Turn, or that was bought this ⟳️ Turn, is not Rested. A merge keeps the 🏡 Refuge turns of the survivor, so a unit that rested stays Rested when a fresh copy merges into it (MERGING.md). The bots deploy a Rested unit first when units are otherwise equal.
• The same counter feeds Hibernation (VALUE turns, TRAITS.md) and Rested (1 turn). Only the 🧹️ Maintenance counts it: a unit moved 🏡 Refuge, ⚔️ Battlefield, 🏡 Refuge during the planning phase keeps its count; an injured unit sent back to the 🏡 Refuge as the last action of the 🧹️ Maintenance starts counting at the next one.
• A unit with 🟢 Egg Layer lays, with a chance of 1/3, the first egg of the egg chain of its own clan (a 🐸 Frog layer lays 🐸 Frog eggs, a 🐓 Rooster layer a Dormant egg). Nothing is laid by a clan without egg chain or when the 🏡 Refuge is full.
• Egg chains (tag Developing of the egg stages, TRAITS.md “Developing is a tag”: one stage per 🧹️ Maintenance spent in the 🏡 Refuge): 🐓 Rooster = Dormant egg, Developing egg, Hatching egg, Hatchling prodigy; 🐸 Frog = 🐸 Frog eggs, Tadpoles, Legged tadpoles. A new egg does not evolve the ⟳️ Turn it is laid.
• Mentoring (single definition of the rule, linked from COMBAT.md): at each 🧹️ Maintenance, a unit with 🟢 Mentoring resting in the 🏡 Refuge gives +1 XP to the next unit (the next unit in the 🏡 Refuge order). It allows freshly bought units to catch up.
  • A 🔮 Spell between two units is skipped: the mentor gives to the next unit after it.
  • The rookie must have a lower level than the mentor, must not be injured (3 💀 Deaths) and must not be at the max level (level 5).
  • No chaining: only the unit’s own trait gives XP, a mentored unit does not pass it on. The mentor earns nothing.
  • The transfer is shown in the 🏡 Refuge by a continuous, discreet energy flow from the mentor to its rookie. When the pair spans the two rows of the 🏡 Refuge, it is drawn as two stubs (out of the end of row 1, into the start of row 2).
  • This XP is outside the 1 XP per battle cap and is granted before the level-ups of the same 🧹️ Maintenance, so it can make the rookie level up at once.

🧺 Marketplace

• The 🧺 Marketplace offers a random choice of 🐼 Unit & 🔮 Spell cards based on its ⭐ Tier.
• The tier of the card is lower or equal to the tier of the 🧺 Marketplace, with one exception: the 📦 Shoe fallback below. The effect MarketExcludesCardsBelowTier only raises the minimum tier of the cards offered; it never lets a card above the tier of the 🧺 Marketplace appear. A card above the tier of the 🧺 Marketplace can only appear through the fallback.
• The cost of a 🐼 Unit card and of a 🔮 Spell card is equal to its ⭐ Tier. Their cost ranges from 1 to 7 🪙 Coins (7 tiers). The Oath of allegiance lowers the cost of the units by 1, never below 1 coin.

You can perform these actions:

• Buy cards in exchange for coins. A unit bought while the player owns a non injured unit of the same card merges into it at once (Double, Triple …), so the purchase is allowed with a full 🏡 Refuge; the bought card takes no slot. Rule: MERGING.md. A purchase that does not merge still needs a free 🏡 Refuge slot. A spell used at once (dropped on a unit of the 🏡 Refuge, or consumed on purchase) takes no slot either: a full 🏡 Refuge never refuses it; only a spell bought to be kept in the 🏡 Refuge needs a free slot. In the drag preview of the 🏡 Refuge, a purchase that merges makes no room for the bought card: the other cards do not move.
• Sell cards back, from the 🏡 Refuge or the ⚔️ Battlefield (units) and the 🏡 Refuge (spells). A unit sells for max(0, max(1, floor(cost / 2)) - 💀 Deaths) coins, where the cost is its tier: half its cost rounded down, minimum 1, minus its 💀 Deaths (a ⭐ Tier 6 unit: 3, 2, 1, then 0 from 3 💀 Deaths). A merged unit (Double, Triple …) sells for that value x its copies, see MERGING.md. A unit with 3 or more 💀 Deaths sells for 0: this is intended. It is Injured (COMBAT.md “💀 Deaths”) and can heal in the 🏡 Refuge instead of being sold. A spell sells for 50% of its cost, rounded down, with a minimum of 1 coin, like a healthy unit. Examples: a 🔮 Spell of ⭐ Tier 1, 2 or 3 gives 1 coin; a 🔮 Spell of ⭐ Tier 4 or 5 gives 2 coins; a 🔮 Spell of ⭐ Tier 6 or 7 gives 3 coins. A temporary discount on the cost of units never lowers the sell value. A card tagged NotForResell can never be sold back.
• Refresh the cards available in exchange for 1 coin
• Upgrade the 🧺 Marketplace to access more powerful cards. The cost of upgrading increases for each tier (table below). When upgraded, it automatically refreshes the cards available.
  • The current cost diminishes by 1 coin at the beginning of each turn, except turn 0 (full price), with a floor of 0: an upgrade can be free: it then costs no coins (the player still triggers it).
  • The discount is not kept when upgrading: the cost of the next tier restarts at its full price from the table.
• Market cost reducers: market reduce next spell cost, market reduce next unit cost (${VALUE} coins) and market reduce upgrade (${VALUE} coins off the next upgrade) keep a pending discount until it is used (it is not cleared at the start of a turn, unlike the Oath of allegiance). It applies to the next spell, the next unit or the next upgrade, then is consumed. Discounts of the same kind add up, a cost never goes below 0, the unused part is lost. market free upgrade upgrades the 🧺 Marketplace at once without paying. When an effect would change nothing (🧺 Marketplace at maximum tier, upgrade already free) the spell is not consumed and a message says why. The reduced cost is displayed by the card price and by the upgrade button.

The table below shows the number of cards offered by type. The percentages of unit types are per-slot probabilities: each unit slot independently draws its type with these percentages (they are not exact quotas of an offer).

When the 📦 Shoe has no copy left of the drawn type, the fallback order is:

1. another unit type of the same tier (with the percentages of the tier);
2. a unit of the next tier (tier + 1, then tier + 2, …), never above the maximum tier. This is the only case where a unit above the tier of the 🧺 Marketplace is offered (for example, tier 2 units complete a tier 1 🧺 Marketplace when the 📦 Shoe lacks tier 1 units).

A unit is never offered twice in one offer. The 🔮 Spell keeps its own slot.

What a unit may have at each tier (no trait or enchantment before tier 2, no 🏹 Shooter before tier 3, no 🪄 Spellcaster before tier 4) is the table “Progression by tier” of UNITS.md.

The table below shows the cost of upgrading the 🧺 Marketplace.

🪦️ Graveyard

• The 🪦️ Graveyard is public: all players see all the dead cards, and which ones are theirs versus the other players’ ones (their own cards are visually marked, the others show the name of their owner; a filter shows mine / others / all).
• When a 🐼 Unit is sold to the 🧺 Marketplace, it will appear in the 🪦️ Graveyard.
• When a 🔮 Spell is cast, it will appear in the 🪦️ Graveyard.
• When a 🔮 Spell is sold, it appears in the 🪦️ Graveyard too, like a sold 🐼 Unit (and with the same animation): its copy never goes back to the 📦 Shoe.
• A 🃏 Card in the graveyard is not recycled. It reduces the number of copies available in the 🧺 Marketplace for every player: the shared pool is reduced by the dead cards of all the players. A powerful card can be bought then resold to prevent other players to acquire that copy.

📦 Shoe

• The cards available for a game are placed in the 📦 Shoe.
• All players share the same pool of cards.
• Each different card is present in 6 copies (the maximum number of copies of a merged unit, MERGING.md). Each time, a player acquires a card; it reduces its availability for the other players. Copies absorbed by a merge go to the 🪦️ Graveyard and are not recycled.
• Once a card is purchased or placed in the 🧺 Marketplace, it is removed from the 📦 Shoe.
• Non purchased cards are put back in the 📦 Shoe at the end of a ⟳️ Turn or when the marketplace is refreshed.
• A 🃏 Card created by an effect (for example a unit that gives a 🔮 Spell) is not taken from the 📦 Shoe: it does not reduce the copies available.

⟳️ Turn

• A turn has 3 main phases.
• All phases except the preparation are fully automatic.
• In the preparation phase, the player decides how to spend his turn income (🪙 Coins). The player has to balance his spending upgrading existing units with 🔮 Spells, or upgrading the marketplace ⭐ Tier to buy stronger units.

1. 🧹️ Maintenance phase

• Removes the temporary traits (none in the DB today: see TRAITS.md “Permanent and temporary traits”). The permanent traits stay.
• Removes the units with the trait Ephemeral first: they leave the game, the copy of the 📦 Shoe goes back to it, any other one (a spirit, a clone) is gone; never to the 🪦️ Graveyard. The maintenance runs behind the closed doors, so on the board each of them keeps its last image in its slot: once the doors are open, it phases out (it flips to edge-on with spectral colors and fades out), then the ⚔️ Battlefield and the 🏡 Refuge are laid out.
• Returns surviving units to their initial combat position
• Resurrects dead units to their initial combat position
• Applies the traits of the maintenance, after Ephemeral and before the level-ups: Cannibalism eats the lowest ❤️ Health other living unit of the same zone (⚔️ Battlefield or 🏡 Refuge, ties by position), which goes to the 🪦️ Graveyard, and gains half (rounded down) of its 💪 Attack and ❤️ Health, or loses half of its own (min 1) when there is nobody to eat. The Mercenary is paid afterwards, once the income is received.
• Restores ❤️ Health to the maximum value
• Grants 🪖 Experience earned in the ⚔️ Battlefield
• Upgrades units that deserve it to the next level
• Counts the ⟳️ Turn spent in the 🏡 Refuge by each unit that stayed there: a unit deployed afterwards is 🟢 Rested for its next battle (REFUGE.md)
• Merges identical units (⚔️ Battlefield and 🏡 Refuge) that were not merged on purchase, after the level-ups and the 🏡 Refuge count and before the egg laying (MERGING.md)
• Increases the income of the turn (BATTLEFIELD.md)
• Gives player its income in 🪙 Coins (At the first turn, income=4 🪙 Coins, BATTLEFIELD.md)
• Refreshes the 🧺 Marketplace with new random cards
• Once the Oracle is visible, it always shows the in-game standings with your next opponent marked (⚔️) and the main elements of every board (ANIMAGICA.md “Local ladder”).

2. 🧰 Preparation phase

You take strategic and tactical decisions to prepare for combat. A limited amount of time is given to this phase. It increases at each turn: 30 s at turn 0, +1 s per turn, 45 s from turn 15 on.

⚔️ Combat replay duration used for the game length budget: ~15 s at speed x1, ~7.5 s at x2, ~2 s with Skip; maintenance and transitions ~5 s.

Trading cards

Each card has its own abilities. There are 🐼 Unit cards to fight and 🔮 Spell cards to boost your units.

• You can buy a card from the 🧺 Marketplace by dragging it to the 🏡 Refuge
• You can sell a card by dragging it to the 🧺 Marketplace.
• Unspent 🪙 Coins carry over to the next turn, but you lose 1 coin as a bank fee. If you have only 1 unspent coin, then it will be lost.

Deploying units

By strategically placing them on the ⚔️ Battlefield, you create interactions, build traps and advantages.

• You move cards into the ⚔️ Battlefield to involve them in the next combat.
• When you drag and drop a card onto a lane, the card is automatically placed at its optimal position if available. If the position is already occupied by an existing card, then the existing card is moved to its optimal row if empty, otherwise to another empty cell of the ⚔️ Battlefield, and only when there is no empty cell it is dismissed from the ⚔️ Battlefield and moved to the 🏡 Refuge.
• You can freely move cards back and forth from the ⚔️ Battlefield and the 🏡 Refuge.

Using spells

• You can use your 🔮 Spells cards to boost your units and influence the combat in your favor.
• A 🔮 Spell is never consumed automatically: the player always consumes it with a drop.
• There are 2 types of 🔮 Spells, depending on what they act on:
  • Global spells have no target. They only need to be used to be consumed (ex: “1 Gold coin”, “Renewal of 🔥️ Fire”). Drop them anywhere on the ⚔️ Battlefield, on an empty position or not, or onto another card of the 🏡 Refuge.
  • Targeted spells need a specific and compatible target unit (ex: “Bloom of Life”, “Protection from 💧 Water”). Drop them onto a unit of the ⚔️ Battlefield or of the 🏡 Refuge: the card is activated and attached to that unit. A targeted spell dropped on an empty position is refused (“You must use this 🔮 Spell on a 🐼 Unit”).
• Independently of its target, a spell is kept or used when it is bought, depending on its trigger:
  • A spell with the trigger On spell use can be bought into the 🏡 Refuge and kept, then used later with another drop. It can also be bought and used in the same drag (dropped on the ⚔️ Battlefield or onto a card of the 🏡 Refuge).
  • A spell without it (only On purchase, or only a future event like On next turn start) cannot be bought without being used: the purchase drag is also the use (“buy and use”). A global one is dropped on the ⚔️ Battlefield or the 🏡 Refuge (ex: “Renewal of 🔥️ Fire”; “Delayed Gratification” is used at that drop and its effect comes at the next turn start). A targeted one must be dragged from the 🧺 Marketplace straight onto a unit (ex: “Protection from 💧 Water”), otherwise the drop is cancelled and nothing is bought.
• A position is never the target of a 🔮 Spell: no 🔮 Spell is attached to an empty position.
• A 🔮 Spell that would change nothing on its target unit (ex: “Elixir of Life” on a unit without 💀 Death) is refused and is not spent. The refusal depends on the target, whatever its zone.
  • A spell that is only bought (stored in the 🏡 Refuge, without being used) is never refused for the units it needs (units on the ⚔️ Battlefield or in the 🧺 Marketplace, a unit to reroll, to destroy, two units to eat): those requirements are checked only when the spell is used (the buy and use drag, or the cast from the 🏡 Refuge).
  • A spell that grants traits (traits+: “Protection from X”, “Last Breath Gift”, “Pass the Torch”) is refused when the unit already has ALL the traits of the spell (“This unit already has ❤️ Health transfer”). 🧬 Traits do not stack. 🔮 Spells are cast in the 🏡 Refuge or the 🧺 Marketplace: the traits they grant last until the maintenance when they are temporary (none today), and for the whole game when they are permanent (see TRAITS.md).
  • A spell that grants a protection replaces the protection that the unit holds, whatever its element; it is refused only when the unit already holds that very protection. See TRAITS.md, “Defensive traits”.

3. Battle phase

Orientation. The descriptions of this spec (lanes left / center / right, rows front / back, “vertical” moves along a lane, player A at the bottom) are written in portrait terms, see BATTLEFIELD.md. The combat replay and the ⚔️ Battlefield zone draw this same grid on every screen: the lanes are columns, player A (cells 0..1) at the bottom and the enemy (cells 2..3) at the top. Only the place of the log changes:

🛣️ Lane resolution order (center, left, right) and the cell numbers of a lane (0 = player back row … 3 = enemy back row: 2 rows) do not depend on the orientation. The cells of a lane run from the bottom (0) to the top (3).

• The battle or combat is a duel between two players.
• Each player starts with 9 💚 Vitality. You only get eliminated when your 💚 Vitality hits 0 or less. Losing a battle doesn’t knock you out right away.
• Only units in the ⚔️ Battlefields engage in battle.
• Battle resolution is fully automatic and resolved separately for each lane.
• 🛣️ Lane-ordered Resolution: center, then left, then right.
• Goal is to have the final duel by turn 15 at the latest to keep sessions short with predictable duration. ⟳️ Turn 15 is the last turn: when more than one player is still alive after its battle, the game ends and the player with the highest 💚 Vitality wins. A tie is broken by the most lanes won over the whole game; if it is still a tie, the victory is shared.
• Ranking (the local ladder during a game and the final placements):
  1. 👤 Players alive come first, ordered by 💚 Vitality, then lanes won over the game, then number of units on the ⚔️ Battlefield, then total 💪 Attack, then total ❤️ Health.
  2. Eliminated players come after: the later the elimination, the higher the rank. 👤 Players eliminated on the same turn are ordered by their final 💚 Vitality (it can be negative after the fatal battle: -1 beats -4), then by the same criteria as above (lanes won, units, 💪 Attack, ❤️ Health).
  3. The order is deterministic (the id is the last resort), but a rank is shared only when every criterion is equal. Example: on turn 9, A ends at -1 and B at -4, both eliminated; C was eliminated on turn 7 with 0. Placements: A, B, C. If A and B were both at -1 with 5 lanes won each, the player with more units ranks higher. The game result still decides the end of the game and its winners; the placements feed the Rank points.
• Ghost opponent (rule: ANIMAGICA.md “Ghost opponent”): the duel is a normal recorded duel against the snapshot: the real player’s 💚 Vitality, XP, 💀 Deaths and lanes won are applied as in any battle, and the lanes won by the ghost are counted for nobody. The ghost has no 💚 Vitality that matters, never wins, is never eliminated, is not counted in “players alive” (overtime) and does not appear in the ranking. Nothing is ever written to the eliminated player it comes from.
• Estimated game length: A player who loses every duel dies on turn 5 (1+1+2+2+3). A player who wins half their duels loses about 2.8 💚 Vitality by turn 4, then about 1.1 per turn after that. That puts the median elimination around turn 10 and the final duel around turns 12–14.

After each battle:

• The player who controls more lanes is declared the Winner.
• The Winner keeps its current 💚 Vitality, even if they lost a lane.
• The Loser loses 1 💚 Vitality per lane lost, up to the turn’s 💚 Max Vitality Loss (BATTLEFIELD.md: 1, 1, 2, 2, then 3).
• If both players control the same number of lanes (for example 1-1 plus a tied lane), nobody is the Winner and nobody loses 💚 Vitality.
• What the combat triggers change: the stats and traits given by an effect triggered DURING the combat are battle-only (restored when the battle ends). The effects of On combat surviving, On combat end and On combat lost (raised once the lanes are decided) are permanent.
• On combat lost is raised once, for the Loser only, right after the battle (after On combat end, the XP write-back and the 💚 Vitality loss), on all the cards of the Loser. A tie is not a lost combat. A loss that costs 0 💚 Vitality still counts: lost means the opponent controls more lanes.
• Overtime rule: From turn 12, or once three players remain, every 💚 Vitality loss costs +1 (applied after the cap, only when a 💚 Vitality is lost).

⚔️ Combat log

The log of the replay (the panel and the console) presents all the units at the beginning, then refers to a unit only by its alias.

• Presentation (one line per unit, the allies first, then the enemies): UNIT_TYPE_EMOJI ELEMENT_EMOJI (ENEMY-#|ALLY-#) «CARD_NAME» ATTACK_EMOJI ATTACK_VALUE HEALTH_EMOJI HEALTH_VALUE [DEFENSE_EMOJI DEFENSE_VALUE], for example 🗡🔥ALLY-1 «Wolf» 💪3 ❤️4 🛡️2. The emoji and their value are written together (no space), the defense is left out when it is 0, # is the index of the unit among the units of its side (base 1) over the whole battle, and a unit that is summoned during the combat is presented when it arrives.
• Panel: the log panel shows every line until its space is full, and only then do the oldest lines leave at the top (the latest lines stay visible). A scrollbar shows where the visible lines are in the log, and the mouse wheel over the panel scrolls back to read the lines that left; a reader who scrolled back keeps the lines in place while new ones come.
• 🛣️ Lane verdict: the line that ends a lane (Center lane: The enemy wins) is colored by its outcome for the player: the red of the cells of the ⚔️ Battlefield for a loss, the yellow of the won title for a win, the color of the log for a tie.
• Alias: every following line names a unit by UNIT_TYPE_EMOJI ELEMENT_EMOJI (ENEMY-#|ALLY-#) written without space (🗡🔥ALLY-1): never its name, nor its stats, nor a suffix such as (enemy).
• Result of the combat: at the end, one line per unit that received something, by its alias: 🗡🔥ALLY-1 receives 💀+1 💀 Death, XP+1 (the part that does not apply is left out, a unit that received nothing has no line). They replace the two lines of the totals (🐼 Units that received a 💀 Death, XP gained).
• Two units that attack each other in the same simultaneous group are told once, ALLY-1 & ENEMY-1 attack each other, then the two damages are explained on two separate lines (ALLY-1 deals 💥3 to ENEMY-1 (❤️ 4 → 1)). Any other attack is one line: ALLY-1 attacks ENEMY-1 for 💥3 (❤️ 4 → 1).

🛣️ Lane resolution

Before each round, check if: * both players have no active units left; it’s a tie — no points are lost * one player has no living units in a lane, they lose that lane * No-progress: a round with no attack and no move ends the lane with a tie when both sides have units alive.

In the combat replay the outcome of a lane is shown without text on the board:

• The cells not opened yet are drawn like the open ones, darkened, not with the red block of the ⚔️ Battlefield zone.
• At the end of a lane nothing is laid over its cells, whatever the outcome: no light, no darkening; the result icon says it.
• The verdict in words (“You win”, “The enemy wins”, “Tie”, in the message log only) comes at the end of each lane.
• The result icon of each lane comes only at the end of the combat, all at once with the result panel, and only on the lanes opened this turn (at least one open slot, BATTLEFIELD.md), even when no unit fought there; a closed lane has none. It is a win, loss or tie icon seen from your side, centered across the lane, with a glow: yellow for a win, black for a loss; a tie has a light black shadow instead. Along the lane: a win sits at the center of the enemy front cell, a loss at the center of your front cell, a tie at the middle of the lane.
• The title of the result panel (“You won the battle!”, “You lost the battle”, …) sits in the upper part of the grid. When the battle is lost it is red and sits inside your half of the ⚔️ Battlefield (the half of your units). When the battle is won it is bright yellow, a tie stays white.

The units in the combat replay:

• No rectangle is drawn around a unit; only the yellow band of the lane that is playing marks the replay.
• Stat changes play the buff/debuff animation of the spells on the property of the card, with the cause floating above the unit, before the action they change, one step ahead:
  • the 💪 Attack changes of a hit: Dominance, Resonance, the round doubling and Disrupted, as one change of the 💪 Attack (+25%, -50%, combined as the damage combines them), each cause named (Dominance +25%, Disrupted -50%, Round x2);
  • the round effects (poison, venom) and the transfers, before the values change. The changes caused by a hit (lifesteal, fury) are shown at the hit. The damage keeps its hit FX and its floating number.
• A melee attack winds up backwards first, then leaps toward its target and retreats home.
• A spent protection (the first hit of its element) shrinks and fades out.
• A dead unit fades out, its protection and the shader of its element (flames, waves, wind, leaves of its frame) with it, and is hidden only then: the end of its lane and a summon in its cell wait for it.
• The name of a trait or an enchantment used flashes on its unit as the step it is used for starts, then fades out: on the top edge of an enemy, on the bottom edge of your unit, the next names further away from the unit.
  • 🧬 Traits: the combat start traits (🏁 First Strike, Pack Instinct, Rested…) on the first step of the lane, a protection on the hit it negates, Dodge on a hit it lowers, Backlash, Overflow 💥 Damage, Ricochet, 🛡️ Shield Piercing, Fury and Lifesteal when they change something, Charge on the attack that follows its move, Poisonous when it poisons, 💪 Attack / ❤️ Health Transfer at the death of the giver.
  • An enchantment is named by its trigger (On Hit, On Kill…), on the step that raised it.

⚔️ Combat start

Before the first round of a lane (and only when both players have a living unit in it), in this order: the stat effects of the combat start traits (herding, pack instinct, rested, intimidate), then 💪 Attack / ❤️ Health mimicry, then the strikes (first strike: flat damage equal to the level of the unit to the closest enemy, resolved as steps of the round 0). If a side has no living unit left after the strikes, it loses the lane without any round. See TRAITS.md “⚔️ Combat start traits”.

Battle Flow: Per Round

A battle is a series of Rounds until all lanes are resolved. Per Round

• A unit is considered active if:

  • It is alive (❤️ Health > 0)
  • It has 💪 Attack > 0

• Row-ordered resolution: 🐼 Units on both sides act simultaneously in this order:

  • Front row units act then damage is applied
  • Back row units act then damage is applied (the 🏹 Shooters and 🪄 Spellcasters of a back row act together: two of them may hit the same target)

• 💥 Damage is calculated based on the unit’s 💪 Attack, modified by 🕯️ Enchantments

• The target’s 🛡️ Shield uses this formula: lostShield = min(shield, damage); shield -= lostShield; 🛡️ Shield points lost are lost permanently.

• The target’s ❤️ Health uses this formula: lostHealth = min(health, damage - lostShield); health -= lostHealth;

• When a unit is dead (❤️ Health <= 0), it is immediately removed from the ⚔️ Battlefield. This frees the space for other units to move.

• A unit can only perform one action per round, but special enchantments can allow a unit to perform additional actions.

• To ensure combat termination and prevent an endless fight: after round 6, damage doubles at each round, compounding (round 7 = x2, round 8 = x4, round 9 = x8, …).

• All modifiers are applied before resolving calculation.

• Defensive traits: dodge (-50%) lowers the damage taken, never below 0 damage. A Protection from negates the first hit of its element in the battle (the damage then is 0, an ATTACK of 0 damage in the replay), see TRAITS.md.

• 💥 Damage routing: see TRAITS.md, “💥 Damage routing traits”. A share of the damage of an attack can be sent back to the attacker (backlash) or spill to a second enemy (overflow damage, ricochet). These secondary hits raise On wound / On kill on the receiver, the receiver earns the XP of the battle (XP section below), but they are not an ATTACK: no On hit for the source, and they never chain.

• Close combat penalty: Disrupted, -50% damage dealt (the unit no longer takes more damage), flat. 💥 Damage is rounded to the nearest 🧮 integer once all modifiers are applied.

🐼 Unit capabilities

The range defines which enemies the attacker can reach, counted in cells of the lane (1 = touching). Close combat is defined by touching an enemy 🗡 Melee unit.

The ranges follow the rows of a side: 🏹 Shooter = rows (2), 🪄 Spellcaster = 2 x rows - 1 (3, the whole lane from its back row).

• 🗡 Melee units attack the enemy unit they touch.
• 🏹 Shooter units attack the enemy in range with the “Lowest (❤️ Health + 🛡️ Shield)”. From the back row a 🏹 Shooter reaches the enemy front row only; from the front row it reaches both enemy rows.
• In case of ties for the Weakest policy, the tiebreak is the closest, then front-to-back.
• 🪄 Spellcaster units attack the enemy in range which is the furthest away: from any row they reach the whole lane, so the enemy back row first (the last living enemy when the enemy back row is empty).
• MOVE costs the action: a unit with no enemy in range moves one cell along its lane, over an empty cell, towards the cell from which its target (the closest enemy it can reach) is in range. That MOVE is its action of the round: it attacks in a later round, once its target is in range. A 🗡 Melee walks next to its target; a back-row 🏹 Shooter (range 2 only) steps up one cell to reach the enemy back row; a 🪄 Spellcaster never needs to move.
• Taunt: when an enemy that has the trait taunt is in range of the attacker, the attacker must target a taunting enemy; its target policy (closest, weakest, furthest) chooses among the taunting enemies in range only. A taunting enemy out of range changes nothing.
• Charge: a unit with the trait charge that has just moved attacks in the same action, if the cell it moved to puts an enemy in range (the target is chosen like any other, taunt included). It still moves one cell per round: a target that is still out of range after the move is attacked in a later round.
• The Disrupted penalty applies as soon as a 🏹 Shooter or a 🪄 Spellcaster touches an enemy 🗡 Melee (after the 🗡 Melee moved next to it, or when the two stand face to face).

💪 Attack priority

At the start of the combat, units receive order of attack based on their row that stay constant for all rounds. * The front row units receive the highest priority, then the back row. * Even a unit change row or walks into an enemy cell, it keeps the priority of its original home row.

Placement tactics

The row of a unit decides its attack priority (above), what it reaches (the ranges count cells) and how soon it is touched by an enemy 🗡 Melee.

📝 Notes: * (1) A 🗡 Melee behind an ally cannot pass it: it can only move through empty cells, so it attacks once the cell in front of it is free (its ally moved on or died). * (2) A 🏹 Shooter or a 🪄 Spellcaster suffers the close combat penalty (Disrupted) as soon as it touches an enemy 🗡 Melee.

Targeting example

🛣️ Lane with player A at the bottom of the table, player B at the top (on every screen). A’s 🏹 Shooter stands in the front row. B has a 🗡 Melee (front, ❤️ Health 10) and a 🏹 Shooter (back, ❤️ Health 3 + 🛡️ Shield 1). Both are in range (distance 1 and 2), so A’s 🏹 Shooter picks the weakest: ❤️ Health + 🛡️ Shield = 4 for B’s 🏹 Shooter, against 10, and attacks B’s 🏹 Shooter. From A’s back row the same 🏹 Shooter would reach B’s front row only (distance 3 to B’s back row). A’s 🪄 Spellcaster would target B’s back row, the furthest, from any row.

Weakest tie example

A’s front 🏹 Shooter faces B’s front 🗡 Melee (❤️ Health 4, 🛡️ Shield 0) and B’s back 🏹 Shooter (❤️ Health 2, 🛡️ Shield 2). Both have ❤️ Health + 🛡️ Shield = 4, so the tiebreak is the closest: A’s 🏹 Shooter attacks the 🗡 Melee (distance 1, against 2).

MOVE examples

Numbering the cells of a lane from A’s back row (0) to B’s back row (3): A’s front row is cell 1, B’s front row is cell 2.

• Advance: A has a front 🗡 Melee (cell 1) and B only a back 🏹 Shooter (cell 3); B’s front cell 2 is empty. Round 1: A’s 🗡 Melee MOVEs to cell 2 (its action, no attack). When the back row acts, B’s 🏹 Shooter touches an enemy 🗡 Melee: it ATTACKs, Disrupted (-50% damage dealt) by the close combat. Round 2: A’s 🗡 Melee ATTACKs the 🏹 Shooter.
• Long walk: A’s back 🗡 Melee is on cell 0 and B’s last unit, a 🪄 Spellcaster, is on cell 3: A’s 🗡 Melee MOVEs to cell 1 in round 1, to cell 2 in round 2, and ATTACKs in round 3. Meanwhile the 🪄 Spellcaster casts every round.
• Step up: A’s back 🏹 Shooter (cell 0, range 2) has only B’s back 🪄 Spellcaster left (cell 3): it MOVEs to cell 1 in round 1 and shoots from round 2.
• Clash: A’s back 🗡 Melee advanced to cell 1 and B’s back 🗡 Melee is on cell 3, cell 2 is empty. Both want cell 2 in the same step with the same attack priority (back row): player 1’s unit moves in, the other one stays on its cell and waits this round. With different priorities, the higher one (the lower home row) moves in first.
• Blocked: a 🗡 Melee whose way is taken by an ally stops behind it: if it does not touch an enemy it does nothing this round.

Actions:

• All actions are carried out automatically.

• 🐼 Units have 1 action per round.

• If there is an enemy within reach, the action is always an ATTACK.

• There are only 2 possible actions: ATTACK and MOVE. The MOVE costs the action: one cell per action, so a unit that moves does not attack in the same round, except a unit with charge. There is no PREPARE action any more: a unit that can neither attack nor move waits.

• ATTACK:

  • 🐼 Units attack the first reachable enemy based on the unit type target policy.

• MOVE (a unit with no enemy in range):

  • 🐼 Units can only move vertically (along their lane, in portrait terms) through empty cells.
  • 🐼 Unit cannot change lanes or move horizontally (across lanes, in portrait terms).
  • A unit with no enemy in range walks towards the closest enemy it can reach, over empty cells only: a unit of either side on the way blocks it, then it waits.
  • It moves one cell per round towards the cell from which its target is in range (next to it for a 🗡 Melee); it attacks in a later round, once the target is in range (a unit with charge attacks at once when the move put an enemy in range). When two units want the same empty cell, the unit with the highest attack priority (home row) moves in, then player 1; the other one stays where it is and waits this round.
  • The steps of a row group are resolved before its damage is computed: a 🏹 Shooter or 🪄 Spellcaster that a 🗡 Melee of the same group has just reached is Disrupted at once.
  • A unit that only moved in a battle neither attacked nor took damage: it earns no XP for it (XP below).

• 🕛 End of a lane: the combat replay walks every unit left back to its home cell (its home row on its own side), so that each one stands in its camp when the result is shown. Only the view moves: the units keep their slot of the ⚔️ Battlefield.

💀 Deaths

• Each time a unit dies in a battle it receives a 💀 Death. A 💀 Death is only a cost: it gives no ❤️ Health and changes no stat.
• There is no maximum number of 💀 Deaths. A unit with 1 or 2 💀 Deaths is unchanged, except for its sell price.
• Each 💀 Death lowers the sell value of a unit (MARKETPLACE.md “Sell cards”).
• A unit with Half-life revival that dies sees its max ❤️ Health halved (rounded up).
• A unit with 3 💀 Deaths or more is injured: it cannot be deployed, and it does not fight: a unit injured on the ⚔️ Battlefield during the 🧰 Preparation (an Elixir of 💀 Death) sits the battle of the turn out. At the end of the 🧹️ Maintenance (the last action, so that it does not heal a 💀 Death for free) an injured unit of the ⚔️ Battlefield is automatically undeployed to the 🏡 Refuge. The injured units take no slot of the 🏡 Refuge capacity: the 🏡 Refuge can overflow for them, with no limit and no special row. They are never sold automatically.
• The combat card of an injured unit (3 💀 Deaths shown by the 3 skulls) draws neither the animation of its element nor its colors: its frame, its image, its 🎖️ Level, XP, trait, trigger and unit type icons and its protection circles are drawn in a dark greyscale. It gets them back when it is healed.
• Rest: a unit that spent the 🧹️ Maintenance in the 🏡 Refuge heals 1 💀 Death and, only when a 💀 Death was healed, gains a 🛡️ Shield of round((🎖️ Level + ⭐ Tier) / 2) (a unit without 💀 Deaths gets nothing).
• The 🔮 Spell “Elixir of Life” heals all the 💀 Deaths (no 🛡️ Shield). The 🔮 Spell “Elixir of 💀 Death” adds a 💀 Death and gives 💪 Attack equal to its value, and works also on a unit that is already injured (4 💀 Deaths, 5…).
• A unit with 🟢 Mentoring staying in the 🏡 Refuge allows to train the next generation (rule: REFUGE.md, “Mentoring”).

XP: 🪖 Experience points

Progression has 5 levels. Merging identical units (Double, Triple …, MERGING.md) is the other, bigger way to grow a unit.

• A unit earns 1 XP per battle if it attacked (an attack action or a combat start strike) or took damage (to health or shield, from any source), whether it survives or not.
• The maximum is 1 XP per battle. Kills, assists and the number of attacks are worth nothing more.
• Idle units that neither attack nor take damage (a unit alone in a lane the opponent left empty, or blocked behind an ally that never fights) receive no free XP.
• 🔮 Spells and 🕯️ Enchantments can add 🪖 Experience points.
• Mentoring as an academy: a unit with Mentoring gives some XP per turn to the next unit of the 🏡 Refuge, outside the 1 XP per battle cap. Full rule in REFUGE.md, “Mentoring”.

📶 🎖️ Levels

• All units start at level 1 and the maximum is level 5.
• In exchange for 🪖 Experience points (XP), a unit increase its 🎖️ Level.

• Each level reached adds 25% of the printed 💪 Attack and 25% of the printed ❤️ Health of the card (the 💪 Attack and ❤️ Health of the card itself, not the current values), the same for every unit type: level 2 = +25%, level 3 = +50%, level 4 = +75%, level 5 = +100% in all. Each bonus is rounded to the nearest 🧮 integer, with a minimum of +1.
• 🎖️ Levels deliberately don’t touch 🛡️ Shield.
• Examples (💪 Attack/❤️ Health): 1/1 becomes 2/2, 3/3, 4/4 then 5/5; 8/8 becomes 10/10, 12/12, 14/14 then 16/16; 20/7 becomes 25/9, 30/11, 35/13 then 40/15.
• A level 5 unit needs 12 XP, at least 12 battles (see DECISIONS.md, “Levels 4 and 5”). XP above the maximum level is lost.
• 🎖️ Level still feeds first strike (damage = level, 1 to 5), the by level effects and On level up (see TRAITS.md, TRIGGERS.md).
• On the combat card (board and replay) the level is a level icon and its number only, next to the XP icons; both are hidden at level 1.

🗿 Clans

• Each clan represents a group of loosely related animals.
• Each clan is restricted to one of the 4 ☯ Elements (no clan is ◯️ Neutral).
• 🔮 Spells have no ☯ Element or 🗿 Clan: any 🐼 Unit can receive any 🔮 Spell (see SPELLS.md).

Metas notation (what the clan units favour in their stat budget, compared to the tier average of the same unit type):

• Atk++ / Atk--: the clan units have a higher / lower 💪 Attack budget than the tier average.
• Def++ / Def--: same for 🛡️ Shield, ❤️ Health--: same for ❤️ Health.
• -: the clan has no specific meta (no clan-specific stat tendency).

🧬 Traits: the traits are specific to an ELEMENT, not to a clan. A trait reserved to some elements may be carried by the units of every clan of these elements; the list comes from the DB (☯ Elements of the 🧬 Traits table) and is in TRAITS.md “☯ Element-specific traits”. A trait for ◯️ Neutral is allowed to every element. A clan has no trait of its own.

🗿 Clan design

• All 🗡 Melees, 🏹 Shooters, 🪄 Spellcasters MUST be aggressive units
• If we use defensive unit, then we will design them specifically
• Each card MUST use a specific ⭐ Tier and a specific 🐼 Unit 🧬 Type and a 🗿 Clan
• Each clan MUST have most of its unit using its main animal
• All UNIT MUST Be identifiable INSTANTLY at sight on what they
• The higher the tier, the more powerful the unit MUST BE. It MUST be visually clear
• a TIER 4 must look stronger than a TIER 3 and so on
• All units >= ⭐ Tier 4 MUST have Magic
  • With ⭐ Tier 4, 🗡 Melee => Fist or Weapon must have some magic to it
  • So a unit with a KNIFE CANNOT be a 🪄 Spellcaster because it is MISLEADING
  • READABILITY and IDENTIFICATION are essential
• 🗡 Melee tiers are 1-2-3-4-5-6-7
• 🏹 Shooters tiers are 3-4-5-6-7
• 🪄 Spellcaster tiers are only 4-5-6-7

🃏 Card distribution

This is the target distribution of cards in the game (the cards of the game are still far from it, see “Current distribution” below). The 240 units (20 x 12) are for the 12 clans; only 4 clans (one per element, about 80 units) plus the neutral units are in the shoe of a game. When a clan is drawable: ELEMENTS.md “Reactivity”. ⭐ Tier thresholds: 🏹 Shooters appear from tier 3, 🪄 Spellcasters from tier 4 (see MARKETPLACE.md).

🎯 Target distribution

• Each clan requires approximately 20 cards
  • 9 🗡 Melees
  • 6 🏹 Shooters
  • 5 🪄 Spellcasters

• The 24 neutral units (target) are available in every game: about 11 🗡 Melees, 7 🏹 Shooters and 6 🪄 Spellcasters (the 9/6/5 ratio), with the same tier thresholds.

Current distribution

Generated by tools/card_distribution/card_distribution.py --write from game/frontend/public/cards.json (the card data is never edited by the script); refresh it after the cards change.

Current cards for sale (generated from cards.json, the NotForSale cards are not counted); gap = current - target (negative: cards missing).

🔮 Spells: 55 (target 55, gap 0).

Gap per clan and tier, melee/shooter/spellcaster (negative: missing, positive: surplus):

• ◯️ Neutral: (current count, no tier target)

☯ Elements

A unit is always associated with one of the 4 elements + ◯️ Neutral (no clan is ◯️ Neutral):

1. ◯️ Neutral
2. 🌿️ Earth
3. 💧 Water
4. 🔥️ Fire
5. 🌪️️ Wind

Reactivity

• Some elements react together and some don’t
• ◯️ Neutral element doesn’t react with any other element.

1. ◯️ Neutral element doesn’t affect and is not affected by other elements.
2. 🌪️️ Wind dominates the 🌿️ Earth by eroding it.
3. 🌿️ Earth dominates the 💧 Water by absorbing it.
4. 💧 Water dominates the 🔥️ Fire by extinguishing it.
5. 🔥️ Fire dominates the 🌪️️ Wind by consuming its air.

• The four elements form a clean cycle (🌪️️ Wind > 🌿️ Earth > 💧 Water > 🔥️ Fire > 🌪️️ Wind).
• Each game draws one clan per element (up to 3^4 = 81 combinations), so the full cycle is present every game.
• Only playable clans are drawn. A clan is playable when it has at least 50% of its target units (CLANS.md “Card distribution”, rounded up) for each tier and type checked: 2 of the 3 tier-1 melee and 1 of the 2 tier-2 melee (the first 🏹 Shooters are tier 3, not checked today). The percentage and the last tier checked (2 today, 4 when the tier-4 spellcasters exist) are configurable.
• Fallback: when none of the 3 clans of an element is playable, the best clans of that element are drawn (most thresholds met, then most units; random among ties), so every game still has 4 clans, one per element. These rules disappear by themselves as the clans get their cards.

Neutrality

• The neutral units don’t belong to any clan and use the ◯️ Neutral element.
• They are essential because they are available in every game independently of which clans are available.

🟢 Buff and 🔴 Debuff during 💪 Attack

☯ Elements only give upside: nothing in a lane can punish a placement.

Between enemies

• The reaction is evaluated at each hit, on the pair (attacker, target). When the element of the attacker dominates the element of the target, the attacker receives a temporary 💪 Attack buff called 🟢 Dominance (+25% damage dealt) for that hit. The target gets no debuff: Dominance is ONE term. The card shows what it beats (“beats 🌿️ Earth”).
• ◯️ Neutral units never dominate and are never dominated.

Between allies

On the ⚔️ Battlefield with the placement in the same lane, allies can affect each other:

• A unit gets the state 🟢 Resonance (a state, not a trait: nothing grants it) (+25% damage dealt) when both units of its lane share the same, non-neutral element: itself and its living ally (a lane holds 2 units per side). A unit alone is not a Resonance lane.
• Only the allies that are alive count, at the moment of each hit: when the ally dies, the survivor loses 🟢 Resonance.
• Resonance is on or off: the same +25% whatever the number of sources. No 🔮 Spell or 🕯️ Enchantment grants or removes it.
• Dominance, Resonance and Disrupted are states computed at every hit, with no row in the DB (TRAITS.md “States that are not traits”). Percentages: Dominance +25%, Resonance +25%, Disrupted -50% damage dealt.

Flat reactions

Every reaction is on or off: there are no levels, no +/++/+++ and no stacks. A second source of the same reaction does nothing.

• 🔴 Disrupted (-50% damage dealt) is the close combat penalty (COMBAT.md): a 🏹 Shooter or a 🪄 Spellcaster touching an enemy 🗡 Melee.
• 🟢 Dominance and 🟢 Resonance add up (+25% and +25% of the 💪 Attack: +50%). Disrupted is a separate factor of the damage.

Examples:

A mixed lane (🌪️️ Wind, 🌿️ Earth) has no Resonance and no penalty: every unit takes the plain damage.

Vibe

🃏 Cards

🃏 Card types

• There are 2 card types:
  • 🐼 Unit cards: Each unit card represents an animal. After being bought, the card can be placed in the ⚔️ Battlefield or in the 🏡 Refuge.
  • 🔮 Spell cards: A spell applies an enchantment to a unit or to the world itself.
• 🔮 Spells are elementless: a 🔮 Spell has no 🗿 Clan or ☯ Element, so any 🐼 Unit (of any 🗿 Clan, or ◯️ Neutral) can receive any 🔮 Spell.

🐼 Unit types

There are 3 types of 🐼 Unit cards.

🚩 Locations

A card can only be in one of these locations:

🔮 Spells

• 🔮 Spells can be purchased in the 🧺 Marketplace or earned through enchantments.
• Each spell MUST define the 🕯️ Enchantment that they trigger.
• The description is generated automatically by the enchantment.
• A spell can hold both an enchantment and traits; both are applied. The traits that the enchantment does not name (${TRAITS}) follow it in the description: on the same line after “,” (ex: It gains +50 🛡️ Shield, 🔥 Protection), or on their own explained line in the long description.
• A spell with several enchantments on the chosen unit says “Choose a unit. It gains” once: the next enchantments follow on the same line after “,” without the words they share with the previous one (ex: Choose a unit. It gains +1 💀 Death, +15 💪 Attack).

🔮 Spell cards

🐼 Units

🐼 Unit design

• There are 7 tiers. Every unit has a max budget of 7 value points per tier; a neutral unit (no clan, no clan synergy) has 8 value points per tier. The budget depends on the unit type (factor on the 🗡 Melee budget): 🗡 Melee 1, 🏹 Shooter 0.9, 🪄 Spellcaster 0.8 (the more a type reaches and is protected, the fewer points its stats may hold; COMBAT.md “🐼 Unit capabilities”). The budget is not rounded.
• The cards of the data were restated for this rule (7 value points per tier, 8 neutral). A few are still pending: the units over budget even at tier 7, the spells, and a couple of cards that need trait or enchantment data first.
• Stats have different valuations:
  • 1 🛡️ Shield point cost 0.5 value point.
  • 1 💪 Attack point cost 1 value point.
  • 1 ❤️ Health point cost 1.5 value point.
• A unit is also expected to be worth at least 90% of its budget.
• Each 🧬 Trait and each ✴️ Effect has two fields in the DB (Rationale says why):
  • point: a flat number of value points, a whole number without limit (a trait can be worth 30 or -30), can be 0;
  • percent: a share of the value points of a unit of the card tier, from 0 to 1 (negative for a drawback), can be 0. Most combat traits are worth a constant share of the unit (dodge about 26%, shield piercing 17%, ricochet 15%), so their value in points grows with the tier; the points are round(percent x 7 x tier) (7 per tier, also for a neutral card).
  • The value of the trait or of the effect is whichever of the two is larger in absolute value (a tie keeps point). The value of a card adds them to the stat points, with the tier of the card.
• Each 🕯️ Enchantment costs the value of its ✴️ Effect.

🃏 Card 🔢 Value =
  💪 Attack × 💪 Attack 🪙 Cost +
  ❤️ Health × ❤️ Health 🪙 Cost +
  🛡️ Shield × 🛡️ Shield 🪙 Cost +
  🧬 Trait value (point or percent) for each 🧬 Trait +
  🕯️ Enchantment value (point or percent of its ✴️ Effect) for each 🕯️ Enchantment

• Examples:

The 🏹 Shooter is allowed from tier 3 and the 🪄 Spellcaster from tier 4, so the cells below those tiers are never used (n/a).

• ❤️ Health share: the share of its stat points (💪 Attack, ❤️ Health and 🛡️ Shield valued as below) that a unit puts in ❤️ Health, 1.5 x ❤️ Health / (💪 Attack + 1.5 x ❤️ Health + 0.5 x 🛡️ Shield). Each unit type has a band: the data check warns about a card below the floor or above the ceiling; the ideal is the target of the design, never checked.

• In 💪 Attack per ❤️ Health point (A / H = 1.5 x (1 - share) / share): 30% = 3.5, 40% = 2.25, 50% = 1.5, 60% = 1.0 (💪 Attack = ❤️ Health, the most common stat line), 65% = 0.8, 75% = 0.5.

• 🗡 Melee holds the most ❤️ Health (front row, attacks the closest enemy, no close-combat penalty), the 🏹 Shooter the least (back row, range 2, attacks the weakest, Disrupted (-50% damage dealt) when touching an enemy 🗡 Melee), the 🪄 Spellcaster is between them (back row, range 3: the whole lane).

• Exempt from the check: a card with the tag NotForSale, Developing, Inactive or StatExemption (a declared exception, for example a support caster); a card with the trait Ephemeral, 💪 Attack mimicry, ❤️ Health mimicry, 💪 Attack assimilation or ❤️ Health assimilation (their stats come from elsewhere); and every ⭐ Tier 1 card (one ❤️ Health point moves the share by 20 to 30 points: 3/1 = 33%, 2/2 = 60%, 1/3 = 82%). The list is kept in one place in TRAITS.md “❤️ Health share exemptions”.

• The budget check of the data is a warning, not an error.

Progression by tier

What a unit may have, by tier. The 🧺 Marketplace of a tier offers the units of its tier (MARKETPLACE.md); a new feature appears at the tier where its cell turns ✅, so a new player meets one idea at a time.

• No trait or enchantment before tier 2, no 🏹 Shooter before tier 3, no 🪄 Spellcaster before tier 4.
• The rules are checked on the data when the cards load (tierOneUnitIsPlain, tierAllowsType in card-validators.ts) and by a test that compares this table with the code.

⭐ Tier 1 units (onboarding)

• A purchasable ⭐ Tier 1 unit has no trait and no enchantment: a new player first learns the stats (💪 Attack, ❤️ Health, 🛡️ Shield) and the 🗡 Melee fight, before reading any ability. ⭐ Tier 2 is the first tier where a unit may have one.
• The data check warns about a ⭐ Tier 1 unit with a trait or an enchantment, naming the card (tierOneUnitIsPlain in card-validators.ts). It does not check the spells (a ⭐ Tier 1 spell is an enchantment), nor any card that cannot be bought: a card with the tag NotForSale is never verified, and neither are the Inactive and Developing ones (eggs, spirits, cards created by effects, unfinished cards). The cards that still break the rule are listed in the test TierOneUnitIsPlain, until they are fixed in the database.

🐼 Unit states

A unit state is a condition of a unit that the rules compute from the game (the elements, the positions, the 🏡 Refuge, the 💀 Deaths, the battle) or that its card carries as a tag. It is not a trait: it has no row in the DB, no value points, and no 🔮 Spell gives or removes it (TRAITS.md “States that are not traits”). The info scroll of the zoomed card explains the ones that apply (“🃏 Card details” below).

🃏 Card details (zoom)

When neither side of the card has that room (portrait), the scroll goes below the card, else above it, centred on it; in landscape, when neither side of the card has the width of the scroll, the card slides horizontally toward its closer screen border, just enough to leave that width on its other side; the card is never resized, and the scroll always stays inside the screen.

A click on a card shows it in full (the zoomed card). Beside it, never over it (on its right, else on its left, touching the card frame), a scroll like the tooltip one lists what the card does not show, in this order, one note per line:

1. The unit type and its behaviour in combat: reach, target, Disrupted for a 🏹 Shooter or a 🪄 Spellcaster touched by a 🗡 Melee (COMBAT.md “🐼 Unit capabilities”). An empty line follows.
2. 🎖️ 🎖️ Level, the 🪖 XP to reach the next level (or “max”) and what the next level gives: 💪 Attack and ❤️ Health (COMBAT.md “Levels”, the copies of a merged unit included). An empty line follows.
3. Merge, a merged unit only: Triple: 3 copies of the card merged into one unit, then Not the sum: each added copy gives 50% of the card stats, here 💪+5 💪 Attack, ❤️+3 ❤️ Health and 🛡️+1 🛡️ Shield (what the copies added, MERGING.md “Stats of a merge”; the 🛡️ Shield only when they added some). An empty line follows. Then, from a Triple, Merge boost: ... says which trait is held twice or which value is multiplied (MERGING.md “Merge boost”). Only here: the card description does not explain the merge.
4. Developing, a card with the tag Developing only (an egg stage, TRAITS.md “Developing is a tag”): 🥚 Developing: at each 🧹️ Maintenance it spends in the 🏡 Refuge it evolves into <next stage>; it never merges (no “into” for the last stage of a chain, REFUGE.md “Egg chains”). Only here: the card description does not explain the tag.
5. Rested: on the ⚔️ Battlefield, or “if deployed” in the 🏡 Refuge (REFUGE.md). Only here: the card description does not explain Rested, the stats of the card do not show its +25% 💪 Attack (applied at the start of the battle).
6. Each trait with its explanation.
7. The element of the card, then its Dominance: Dominance 🌪️ > 🌿 > 💧 > 🔥 > 🌪️: 🔥 Fire beats 🌪️ Wind: +25% damage; a ◯️ Neutral unit has no Dominance (ELEMENTS.md). An empty line comes before and after it.
8. Resonance when the unit is on the ⚔️ Battlefield and the other unit of its lane has the same element (ELEMENTS.md).
9. Last, after an empty line, everything about the 💀 Deaths: 💀 Deaths below the injury with what happens at 3 💀 Deaths (Injured: back to the 🏡 Refuge, cannot be deployed until it heals), or the explanation of Injured (COMBAT.md “Deaths”). Only here: the card description does not explain the 💀 Deaths, the combat card shows their count (💀 n).

A note that does not apply is left out, and there are never two empty lines in a row. The scroll closes with the zoomed card.

🗡 Melees cards

🏹 Shooters cards

🪄 Spellcasters cards

🕯️ Enchantments

The huge diversity of possible enchantments gives a significant depth to the game. Powerful strategies emerge when combining enchantments from different units.

• Some units have one or multiple enchantments
• 🔮 Spells can attach extra enchantments to a unit
• Some traits are temporary and are removed during the maintenance phase.
• 🕯️ Enchantment effects are permanent when triggered in the 🏡 Refuge, or the 🧺 Marketplace.
• 🕯️ Enchantment effects are temporary when triggered in ⚔️ Combat, except the effects of On combat surviving, On combat end and On combat lost, which are permanent.
• There is no limit to the number of enchantments that can be applied on a unit during the game
• Exception: a unit cannot hold more than 1 protection (Protection from 🔥️ Fire / 💧 Water / 🌿️ Earth / 🌪️️ Wind): a spell granting another protection replaces the one the unit holds, see TRAITS.md
• There is a wide variety of ✴️ Effects on which enchantments are based:
  • 🧺 Marketplace accelerators: they can reduce the cost, affect the cards available and their stats, …
  • 🃏 Card pullers: they give extra cards. The tier mp pullers give cards of the 🧺 Marketplace tier. The tier x pullers (e.g. Unbound Mana Gift) are an exception: they give cards of the tier X of the card value, even above the 🧺 Marketplace tier.
  • ⚡ Trigger repeaters: they allow repeating the effect by triggering it multiple times.
  • 🐼 Unit boosters: they increase the unit stats like attack, health, shield, experience.
  • Stat equalizer / sharer: prop equalize attack health raises the lowest of the 💪 Attack / ❤️ Health of the unit to the highest of both (the 🛡️ Shield is untouched, nothing happens when they are equal). prop give to random in group GIVES a copy of the current values of its 💪 Attack / ❤️ Health / 🛡️ Shield (the listed properties) to ${VALUE} random other units of the group; the giver keeps its values (“give” = share). With fewer candidates than ${VALUE}, all of them receive it. Both follow the permanence rule above (battle-only in ⚔️ Combat).
  • 🔮 Spell casters: cast spell (on itself), cast spell on group, cast spell on random in group, cast spell on target apply the enchantments of the spell named by 🃏 Card to the target(s) as if the spell had been played, but the spell card does not exist: no purchase, no cost, no tier, nothing in the 🪦️ Graveyard (a temporary card holds the enchantments and is dropped). cast random spell tier mp / x pick the spell like the card pullers (from the shoe pool, no copy consumed), then cast it on the unit. The triggers of the cast spell fire normally, but On spell use / On spell use by ally are NOT raised for the cast (it is not a played card). A spell cannot be cast from its own cast (recursion guard on the name of the spell: a chain of casts A -> B -> A stops before it casts B again; the played spell is not part of the chain, so a played spell that casts itself is applied twice). A spell that needs a unit is not cast (warning) when there is no unit; a spell without target is cast once, whatever the size of the group. Casts do nothing during a ⚔️ Combat (spells are not used there).
  • 🔮 Spell amplifiers: these are the most powerful enchantments as they have a compounding effect. they increase the spell stats like attack, health, shield, experience.

🕯️ Enchantments parameterize an ✴️ Effect with

• ⚡ Trigger: when the effect applies
• 📊 Properties: what the effect affects
• ⏳ Duration: how many times its triggers activate before they are consumed (⏳, default 1). -1 = unlimited, except that a one-shot trigger (On deploy, On purchase, On sale, On spell use, On next turn start) is always consumed once on a card. The exception does not apply to an enchantment that a spell installed on the player (Legion of the endless, 🔮 Spell Stream Infinity, Eternal ☯ Element Rebirth: market card replace by … On purchase): it reacts to every purchase, -1 for the whole game, n for n purchases.
• 🧬 Traits: which traits to grant
• 🃏 Card: which card to grant

The enchantment name format is {effect}{properties}[🎯triggers][🃏card][🧬traits][⏳duration]. There is no ⏰ Delay parameter. A delay is expressed with a future-event trigger (On next turn start, …); a counter or countdown (“every Nth”, several turns) may be designed later together with the server persistence of the applied enchantments.

⚡ Trigger repeaters (extra on deploy, extra on turn start, extra on turn end, extra on death): the rows are kept in the data. Only extra on deploy repeats its trigger today; the three others have no effect yet (no card uses them).

🕯️ Enchantments are further parameterized by the 🐼 Unit or 🔮 Spell with

• 🔢 Value: which number to apply to the properties (the 🔢 Value of the card; a prop+ that is the 2nd or later enchantment of a card reads a second 🔢 Value, which must then be given and not 0: Elixir of 💀 Death has 🔢 Value 1 = 💀 Death, second 🔢 Value 10 = 💪 Attack)
• 👥 Group: which units to select and to affect

Market cost reducers (market reduce next spell cost, market reduce next unit cost, market reduce upgrade, market free upgrade): see MARKETPLACE.md.

🕯️ Enchantment list

✴️ Effects

Rounding of the computed values

There is no single rule: every computed value follows the rule of the code that computes it. Rounding “to the nearest” is JavaScript Math.round, which rounds a half up (0.5 gives 1). “Can be 0” means that a small base gives nothing.

🔮 Spells that destroy or mutate

• Return to ashes (get coins from destroyed units): every unit of the ⚔️ Battlefield, then of the 🏡 Refuge, goes to the 🪦️ Graveyard (never recycled, no 💀 Death, no XP) and the player gains the original cost of each + 1 coin per unit. The spell is refused, not consumed, when the player has no unit (“You have no unit to destroy”). Visual FX: the units burn one after the other (350 ms apart) with the shader FX ashes-burn (the card burns from its bottom up, chars with glowing cracks, crumbles into ash flakes), embers rise from each card, the coins of each unit fly to the purse as it burns and the coin widget flashes at the end.
• Unstable Mutation (prop+ random by percentage): the chosen unit gains one random property among the listed ones (💪 Attack or ❤️ Health) by VALUE % of its current value. Visual FX: the existing kaleidoscope (kaleidoscope-reforge, the unit mutates) then the FX of the property that was drawn (attack-bonus for 💪 Attack, bloom-growth for ❤️ Health). The description shows the % after the value of each property (“+200% 💪 Attack, +200% ❤️ Health”).

Parameters

• ✴️ Effects support the following parameters:

• The parameters are defined on the 🕯️ Enchantment (properties, traits, card) or on the 🐼 Unit or 🔮 Spell (group, value).

✴️ Effect list