Playing by hand
A Normal game seats you with another person at a shared tabletop with hints off: nothing is enforced or automated. You two keep the rules, exactly as across a real table — the site just holds the cards where you put them and shows both of you the same board. This page is the whole of what you need to know.
1. Sitting down
On the Decks page, open a deck and press Normal (or Invite a friend and send them the code). When the second player arrives the table opens. The opening roll has already been made and its winner goes first with their two runes channeled; the phase strip at the top sits on Draw and your deck pulses — click it.
Want a mulligan? Right-click a hand card → Deck bottom, then click your deck to draw. The other player sees only that a card went down and one came up, never which.
2. The turn, phase by phase
The strip at the top lights the current phase and the line under it says what that phase asks for, with the action as a button. It moves along by itself as you do the thing; nothing stops you doing anything else, and you can click any phase chip at any time.
| Awaken | Ready everything of yours that is tapped: Ready all, or click each card. |
|---|---|
| Beginning | Hold: +1 point for each battlefield you control (the marker on it says who does). Your score is yours to keep — the other player cannot touch it, nor you theirs. |
| Channel | Click your rune deck twice — three times on your very first turn if you went second. |
| Draw | Click your deck once. |
| Main phase | Yours to play as you please (below). |
| Ending | Heal all clears the damage on your units; anything “this turn” ends. Then End turn. |
3. Playing cards and paying for them
- Play a unit or gear: drag it from your hand to your base (or right-click it → To base). Units enter tapped, as printed; click to ready one that arrives ready (Accelerate).
- Pay energy: click a rune to tap it, one per energy. Pay power: right-click a rune → Rune deck (bottom) — that is a recycle, one pip per rune.
- Cast a spell: drag it from your hand to your trash (or right-click → Trash). Both players see its name in the history; say what it does in the chat if it needs saying. Spells never sit on the board.
- Hide a card: right-click a hand card → Hide at… a battlefield. The other player sees a card back there. Play it later by dragging it out.
- Equip: drag a gear onto a unit; Unequip from the gear's menu.
- Champion: right-click your champion card → To base when you play it.
4. Moving, fighting, scoring
- Move: drag a unit to a battlefield (or back to base). A move taps the unit — click it.
- Showdowns and combat: talk them through. When a unit is dealt damage, right-click it → Damage + (either player may mark damage on any unit). A unit whose damage reaches its Might dies: drag it to its owner's trash.
- Buffs, stuns, Empowered: right-click the unit → Buff, Stun, Empower. Anything else you need to track: Add a counter… with whatever label you like.
- Conquer: click the battlefield's controlled by pill to set it to you (right-click clears it), then give yourself the point in the toolbox.
- Win: the game ends the moment a score reaches the Victory Score (8).
5. The toolbox and the rest
The Toolbox button beside the settings cog holds everything else: draw, channel, shuffle, Look through the deck (a search — take what you need by its menu; the deck shuffles itself as you close it), points, XP, Roll d6 / d20, tokens, Heal all, End turn.
- Dice on the table: drag a die from the toolbox onto a card or a spot; it asks for a value (or rolls). Click it to change or pick it up. Both of you see it.
- Tokens: Recruits, Sand Soldiers, Gold and the rest, put down where you say.
- Piles: click a trash or banishment to see it; theirs too.
- Chat: the tab on the right edge. Space is not used with hints off — there are no prompts.
6. Hints on
If you would rather the table keep the rules — open showdowns and combats, pay costs, resolve the chain, score, and light up what you can play — either player can press Hints on in the toolbox. Play resumes from the turn player's Main Phase with the board as it stands, so make sure it is in a state the rules can pick up (units where they belong, damage marked). Hints off, in the ⚙ menu, hands it back to you. Switch as often as you like.
Practice (against the bot) opens with hints off too, in its own way: your turns are yours by hand — nothing enforced, no help — while the bot plays its own turns by the rules, its hand hidden as ever. When you end your turn the table catches up on your board as it stands (showdowns, combats, scoring), the bot takes its turn and you answer its plays through the normal prompts, and your next Main Phase is by hand again. Turn hints on for the full table on your turns too. The Sandbox on the Decks page is a table for one with no bot at all, both seats yours.