The Arena

Trying out a deck against an opponent you choose. The match itself has no reward and no risk: nothing is stolen, no mana is spent, and your cards do not wear out. Your advisor pays 250 gold and 200 mana for your first finished practice match.

Build an Arena in a city, open it, and set a match up there.

An Arena also opens the weekly challenge, a ladder of fights that pays once a level each week.

• Choose one of your own decks. It has to be a full deck: thirty cards and a deck master.
• Choose whether you attack or defend. The attacker moves first, and whoever moves second gets The Advance.
• Choose the deck you are fighting. At the moment that is the starter decks.
• Play it out for me runs the whole match on its own. It is off unless you turn it on.
• A mana stock is optional, and it belongs to whoever is attacking, since defending is free. Set one to find out whether that much mana would carry an attack: a full ten-turn curve costs 55.
• The defending side, yours or theirs, stands behind a Town Wall. It starts at the level of the highest Town Wall in your empire, or level 1 if you have none. Set it to 0 for no wall.

Every match is kept as you play it, so a reload puts you back where you were, and each one has its own address. Again, same draw at the end opens a new match with exactly that shuffle, which is how you find out what changing one card did. Your last 20 practice matches are kept; older ones go.

• The match opens with a Mulligan. Tap up to 3 cards of your opening hand to redraw them, then Redraw, or Skip to keep what you were dealt. The other side does the same, on its own.
• A deck that is a retrospective redraws up to 4.
• Drag a card from your hand onto your board to play it. Anywhere on your board works, including on top of cards already standing there. The places it can go light up while you are holding it, and the one under your finger or pointer lights brighter.
• An Action or equipment that needs something to aim at lands on what it is aimed at, so drag it straight onto that card. A card with nothing to aim at cannot be played at all, and a healing card can only be aimed at something that is hurt.
• A minion always goes on your own board. If it needs something to aim at, the cards it can reach rise up once it lands: click or tap one to play it there. Press Escape, tap the minion, or click anywhere else to put it back in your hand.
• A card that hits every minion on a side, or a random one, can be dropped anywhere on either board.
• A Reaction you play is set face down at the end of your board and takes no space. You can have 5 set, and only one copy of each card.
• A Reaction goes off by itself on the other side's turn, the moment its trigger happens. It turns face up so both of you can read it, does what it says, and is discarded. It never goes off on your own turn.
• A Reaction that names the minion it waits for, such as an enemy minion with 4 or more attack, stays set until one like that comes.
• Your Reactions show face up to you. Theirs show as grey cards with a question mark. Minions cannot attack a Reaction; only a card that destroys Reactions can remove one.
• Drag one of your minions onto an enemy to attack it. One of yours that can attack is outlined in green. A minion cannot attack the turn it arrives unless it has Ready or Skirmish, and one with nothing it can reach is not outlined at all.
• While you hold an attack over a target, it shows how much damage it takes to defeat: its health plus its armour. A skull covers any card the attack would destroy, the target or your own attacker. A face-down Reaction can still change what happens.
• If your deck master has a manual Signature, it is outlined in green too. Drag it onto whatever the Signature is aimed at, once a turn, if you have enough mana to pay its printed activation cost. It is outlined only while there is something for it to land on.
• A card on the board shows ⚔ attack and ♥ the health it has left, with its keywords beside them. A deck master shows no attack, because it never attacks.
• A minion with Guard stands on a red background, and the Guards are drawn first on each board, so what an attack has to go through is always at the front of the row.
• A bar appears across the bottom of the picture when a card is hurt, and goes again if it is healed back to full.
• Grey shields just above the right end of that bar are the card's armour, one per point, or one shield and a number above 4. Damage takes them before any health.
• Dragging is the only way to play a card. Tapping a card does not play it.
• Click or tap a card on the board to see it whole: the full card, anything that has changed about it since it was played, and any equipment on it. Either side's cards, at any time.
• Click or tap the picture on any card to open its details, in your hand or in the card you just opened.
• What happened, under the board, lists every move of the match. Any card name in it opens that card, the same as clicking it on the board, so you can read something the other side played and lost.
• End turn when you are done. The button is green when there is nothing else you can do. The other side plays itself, and the page comes up to their board while they do.
• Take over hands your side back to you mid-match, and Skip to the end plays the rest at once.

• Nothing wears, which is the rule and not a gap: practice that costs condition is not practice.

Upgrading the Arena is designed to let you decide more of the opposing deck, a few cards a level, until you can specify all thirty. From level 5 you also choose how it plays.