Game Mechanics

### *Goal (win condition)*

The aim of the game is to *destroy your opponent's keystone*. Generally, the idea is to have allied units push past your opponent's forces to the enemy keystone to attack and destroy it.

### *Basics*

At the beginning of each turn, your resources will refresh and you will receive your resource income by one. You can select what type of resource you would like for your income, for a maximum total of 8 minerals and 3 gas (certain cards can allow you to gain more resources past this base limit).

After selecting your income, you can play cards by clicking on them and consuming the required resources. Selected cards have a tick on the top right corner of the card and your consumed resources will be greyed out.

These cards will cause a change on the battlefield by spawning units, building structures, or generating an action. Units will spawn in the waiting area on your side of the map and will take a turn before moving out, buildings will be constructed the turn they are played by an invulnerable worker in the building area, and actions will immediately take effect on the battlefield.

### *Phases of the game*

There are 4 phases in a turn in the game, the Deck Selection Phase, the Planning Phase, the Play Phase, and the Battle Phase.

#### Deck Selection Phase:

This phase occurs only once, at the very beginning of the game. You are shown all of your decks across all races, and may choose one of them. If you do not choose a deck, it will choose a random deck from your race selected in the lobby that is bookmarked (red icon top left of the deck). Note that everyone is in the team chat during *Deck Selection Phase;* so wait until the first planning phase start if you wish you talk strategies with your team.

#### Planning Phase:

This phase also occurs only once, at the very beginning of the game. You will be presented with 3 random cards from your deck, and you will be given the opportunity to replace or keep any number of them. If you click on a card, a red "no" symbol will appear on it. These cards will be shuffled back into your deck, and at the beginning of the first Play Phase you will draw another card for each card replaced in this manner.

#### Play Phase:

At the start of your turn, you draw a card from your deck. After which, during each Play Phase you will select either to increase your mineral or gas income by 1 to a maximum of 8 minerals and 3 gas. These resources are then used to play cards in your hand. This phase lasts up to 45 seconds and you may play as many cards as your resources allow you to play. However, once you press the END TURN button on the screen you will not be allowed to make any other changes. Once every player presses END TURN or if 45 seconds have passed, the game will immediately proceed to the Battle Phase.

#### Battle Phase:

The Battle Phase happens after the Play Phase after everyone has decided on their course of action. This phase lasts for 20 seconds. The cards played during the earlier Play Phase will then take effect on the map controlled by the AI, while the players will observe what happens and decide on what cards they might want to play the next turn.

### *Resources*

As mentioned above, the maximum resource income a player would receive per turn is 8 minerals and 3 gas. Each race has a structure that increases their maximum gas limit as well as other ways to affect their resource limit. Your current amount of resources can be observed on the top right-hand section of your screen in-game.

At the beginning of your first play phase, you will have an income of 1 mineral and will be able to choose to gain either 1 mineral or 1 gas of income. This choice repeats each play phase until either you have 3 gas or 8 mineral income, at which point you will simply gain 1 mineral or gas of income each turn until you reach 8/3.

Some cards have Upkeep, which will reduce your mineral or gas income by 1 as long as the unit/building sent by the card remains alive. Please note that some cards are capable of changing your maximum resource income by either increasing one resource maximum by 1, or by altering your maximum gas and mineral income to a fixed value.

Additionally, the Terran Psi Disruptor reduces the mineral income of each of your enemies by 1 as long as it is alive. This not classified as Upkeep and will thus not be affected by buildings like the Robotics Bay, which remove upkeep. The Psi Disrupter is the only card capable of reducing income that is not related to upkeep.

As of unnatural experiments,

1. **Protoss:** This is the only race capable of changing their maximum resource limits to 6 minerals and 6 gas (using the Void Rift action) as well as permanently increasing their mineral and gas limits beyond 8 and 3 respectively.
2. **Terran**: They have access to cards that are able to temporarily increase their mineral or gas resources for a turn to play cards their maximum resource limits may not allow.
3. **Zerg:** The only race unable to increase their maximum income of 8 minerals or reach 6 gas for Amon, however they have tools to "cheat" out bigger or more units at a lower cost which is unique to them.

#### *Hand Size and Deck Size*

Everyone has a maximum hand size of 8 and if you have 8

   cards in hand, the next card you draw will be discarded. So far the only race with the ability to increase their hand size is Zerg with overlords and overseers increasing hand size by 1 each to a maximum of 12 cards. Every deck is made up of 40 cards. The number of cards remaining in your deck and your hand size can be observed on the top right-hand section of your screen in-game.

### *Fatigue (alternative win condition)*

If a player runs out of cards in their deck (aka fatigue), after their next play phase when they try to draw, their keystone and all their structures will take 100 damage. In the scenario where both teams are relatively equal and most players begin to fatigue, the Keystone will take 100 damage for each player that fatigues on that team, in which case if there are no units left able to damage the keystones, it will come down to which team dies first to fatigue.

## Card Mechanics

There are 3 card types in the game, ***Unit** cards, **Structure** cards* and ***Action** cards.* As you might expect based on the names, Unit cards send units, Structure cards will construct structures and Action cards will cause a direct effect on the battlefield.

Most keywords will be found on Unit cards which will be explained in this section.

### *Unit types*

   There are 3 types of units, aggressive, defensive and tactical.

1. **Aggressive:** These units will attack move towards the enemy keystone and will not retreat.
2. **Defensive:** These units will patrol in your defensive area (halfway between your keystone and the middle of the map) and use their abilities or attack when enemies get close.
3. **Tactical:** These units will attack towards the enemy keystone but will fall back to your defensive area once damaged (usually once their hp drops to half or all shields are lost), until they recover. In the case of carriers, they will also retreat once they run out of interceptors

### *Keywords*

Some keywords are unique to certain races, so only those races would have that particular keyword on their cards.

1. **Rush:** Move out immediately.
2. **Heroic:** Has double life, double shields, +3 armor and +50% attack damage.
3. **Delay:** Wait for one extra turn before moving out.
4. **Transform (TERRAN)**: Shift-click this card to transform it into another card.
5. **Stream (ZERG):** Move out one at a time.
6. **Buried (TERRAN):** This card starts in your discard pile instead of your deck.
7. **Launch:** The stated effect will occur at the beginning of the battle phase when the card is selected.
8. **Channel:** The stated amount of energy will be removed from your keystone, if possible. Then, if energy was removed in this way, the stated effect will occur at the beginning of the battle phase after the card is selected.
9. **Indoctrination(TERRAN):** When units sent by this card kill a unit, send 1 Marine.
10. **Infest (ZERG):** A card afflicted with Infest sends 1 Hydralisk and 4 Zerglings for the player who infested the card each turn it is in your hand.

### *Some common questions/misconceptions about card effects*

How do I get to 6 gas to play Amon?

* Ans: Depends on what race you intend to play Amon with.

1. **Protoss:** Void Rift is one way gets you to 6 minerals 6 gas to play Amon.
2. **Terran:** Terrazine Canisters, Refineries with the +2 gas canisters, cards that reduce the gas cost of hybrids and void cards.
3. **Zerg:** Ominous egg and Mysterious egg.

Do Evolution cards only affect units on the board?

* Ans: **Yes**, including units played the same turn as the Evolution card. It doesn't affect units in overlords, devourers, valkyries, corsairs and prisms

Why is it when I used 22nd reinforcements I did not get any marines even though I have commanders out?

* Ans: It will say on the card how many marines the reinforcements will call in, up to 10 marines per commander. This means that it takes into account how many marines are on the map before the call-down (even those you play on the same turn as the reinforcements) until it fulfills the condition of there being 10 marines per commander, so if you play reinforcements when you have not lost any marines, you will not get any additional marines.
* e.g. you have 4 commanders, 50 marines -> reinforcements gives 0 marines since you already have at least 10 marines per commander.
* e.g. you have 3 commanders, 12 marines -> reinforcements gives 18 marines since you need 18 more marines until you will have at least 10 marines per commander (30 for 3 commanders).

Will playing Conclave Directive discard Warp Assault?

* Ans: **No**, it will not. Conclave Directive will discard cards that send ground units from your deck. However, the card Warp Assault sends warp prisms(which are flying) that contain ground units and not the ground units themselves so they will not be discarded.

Will Blacken the Skies send Baneling Bombs/Aerial Invasion?

* Ans: **Yes**. Similar to conclave directive, when Blacken the Skies discards your hand, these cards that only send overlords will be played out since it only takes into account the overlords being sent that are flying units.

Why when Karax copies a card that has had their unit count increased in some way (Karax Invention/Shakuras Patrol), the card I get only has the base number of units?

* Ans: Karax creates a copy of the card that sent the unit he copies and not the actual card that created that unit, so he will give you the original unit card. In the case of Shakuras Patrol, the standard unit count is 1 of each possible unit that card can generate.