Raids and blockades

If you win an attack you choose one of two things, not both: take their resources, or blockade their port.

• A raid takes only what is standing above the safe line. 300 of each resource is always safe, and each of a city's Storehouses adds 25% of its room.
• A city holding less than its safe amount loses nothing, however big the fleet that beat it.
• Gold is not stored and is never taken.

A blockade nearly stops a city trading at all, including with your own cities on the same island, and stops it attacking across the sea. Their decks can still move and fight on the island they are on.

The deck you used stays at the port holding the blockade, so anybody on that island can attack it to break the blockade or take it over.

• Open the city you want to raid from its island. Its page lets you choose which of your own cities to sail from, the deck to send, and how many transports go with it.
• How many transports you send is your guess. Nobody knows what they will be holding when your deck lands, and a bigger hold brings more home.
• The deck that sails is the deck that fights, exactly as it stood when it left, whatever you do to it afterwards.
• A deck that is out cannot be sent again or changed until it is home.
• The battle is fought the moment your fleet lands. You do not have to be there.
• If you lose, each of your cards destroyed in the battle drops one condition grade, and so does your deck master. If the deck you send has Fragile cards, you are asked to confirm first.
• If you are in the game when it lands, a box offers you control of your side. You play by hand only if the defender takes control too. If they do not, the decks play it and you are told, with a link to the result.
• Raiding an inactive player is the exception. If they had not played for more than 7 days when you launched, and have not come back since, take control and you play your side by hand on your own. Their deck plays theirs.

• Every deck is in one of your cities, kept in that city's Curator's Office. A new deck starts in the city whose office you made it at.
• A city is defended by a deck in that city. If it holds more than one, choose which in the Defence box on its Town Wall's page. Otherwise the first deck there that is home and not empty defends it.
• A deck in another city does not defend this one. Send it here from that city's Port.
• To defend a city with a deck, build a Curator's Office there. Each level holds one deck.
• A city with no deck at all is defended by its Town Wall alone. The wall still has to be brought down, and a weak attacking deck can lose to a high one.
• A raid can only take a deck from the city it leaves from. Choose a different city to use the decks there.
• Defending never damages your cards, whether your city holds or falls.

• Open the Port of the city the deck is in, choose the deck and the city, and send it.
• The city you send it to needs a Curator's Office with a free slot. A deck on its way there already takes its slot.
• Or swap it for one of that city's decks: choose the deck under Swap with. Both leave at once, each on its own city's ships, and land together. A swap needs no free slot.
• Across the sea it needs a free transport and waits for the Port to load it. To a city on the same island it walks.
• It stops defending the city it left straight away. It defends, and can raid from, the other city once it arrives.

The warning goes out when the attacking deck sets off, not when it arrives, so you have the crossing to decide what to do. Your General is shown on a red background while an attack is on its way to you.

• When a battle starts at one of your cities you have 60 seconds to take control of it. A box appears wherever you are in the game, and you can take control or let it play itself.
• You are only asked if you have been in the game in the last 5 minutes. Otherwise the battle plays itself straight away.
• If you do nothing, both decks play themselves using their presets. That is the normal way a raid is fought.
• The attacker is asked at the same moment, but can only play by hand if you take control too. Nobody can make you fight live.
• The exception is being away: if you had not played for more than 7 days when the raid was launched, and have not been back since, the attacker can play their side on their own. Your deck plays yours, exactly as it would have.
• You play one battle by hand at a time. Attacks on your other cities while you are playing are fought by the presets.
• Attackers hitting the same city queue up and fight one at a time, and each new battle offers you the controls again.

• You get 90 seconds a turn.
• The bar at the top right of the board shows the time left in the turn, yours or theirs.
• A turn that ran out, or that ended within a second of its last action, is followed by a 5 second break so it can finish playing out. The break does not come off your time.
• A turn you let run out is played for you by your presets, and you get the next one back.
• Every turn in a row that you let run out takes 30 seconds off the next one, down to 15 seconds.
• Doing anything at all, ending your turn included, puts you back to the full 90 seconds, for the turn you are in as well as the next one. The 90 runs from the start of the turn, so the time you have already spent in it still counts.
• When you both play by hand, you choose your opening hands at the same time, with 60 seconds for both. A hand not chosen in time is chosen by your presets, and it does not shorten your first turn.

• Winning does not move the resources at once. They are loaded at the speed of the port the attack was launched from.
• What is being loaded leaves the defender's store straight away. They cannot spend it and the next attacker cannot take it.

• While your fleet is loading, Come home now lets you leave early. You are shown what would stay behind before you confirm.
• You take the share of the loot that has been loaded. Whatever is still on the quay goes back to the city you raided.
• Your fleet is home a crossing after it leaves, not after the loading would have finished.

Anybody who lives on the island where the battle happened. Nobody else.

No other player can raid or blockade you for your first 7 days, and raiding another player ends that early. See new-player protection.