For players who already know how to give orders and want to win more often. It says where the skill is, where the luck is and how big each one is, with the numbers behind it.
Three pets a side on 61 hexagons, eight rounds at most. Every round goes like this:
Each pet gets a move and an action (Strike, a skill or Guard). There are no action points to save. A pet you give no order to guards where it stands.
The Move order bar on the board shows the speeds. A faster pet reaches a tile before a slower one; the slower pet stops one tile short. Pets of equal speed go in an order decided by chance.
There is no order between attacks. A strike lands only if its target is within reach after every pet has moved. Two pets can bring each other down in the same round.
A pet falls if the damage it took this round is at least its hearts. Damage is not carried into the next round. The pet is captured if an enemy that hit it is still standing; otherwise it just falls and nobody takes it.
The match ends when one side has no pet standing, or after round 8. After round 8 the side with more captures wins; equal captures is a draw.
Guessing where the enemy will be is the skill. You do not see the other side's orders, and neither do they see yours. Everything below follows from that.
There are two places, and no others. Nothing else in a match is random: no dice on damage, no critical hits, no misses.
In HODL (Friendly) you play three rivals run by the computer. They are drawn to match the three pets you field:
| What is matched | How close |
|---|---|
| Rarity | The same as yours, pet for pet. Three Rares meet three Rares; a Mythic and two Commons meet a Mythic and two Commons. |
| Strength of each rival | Within 1 point of one of your pets. Strength is attack + hearts + element bonus. |
| Strength of the team | Within 1 point of your team's total. Teams total 19 to 54 points, so that is 2% to 5%. |
| Element edge | Each side's count of enemy pets it has the element edge on. The two counts differ by 1 at most. |
| Never | A card that is in your own team. |
Before round 1 the game shows the three numbers for both sides and says whom the draw favours. An element edge on one pet more counts like two points of strength. If the total is 2 or more in your favour it says "The draw leans your way", 2 or more against "The draw leans to the rivals", otherwise "An even draw". About 6 draws in 10 are even, 2 lean your way and 2 lean against you.
How much a lean is worth, with the same computer playing both sides:
| The draw | Your side wins, of matches with a winner |
|---|---|
| Leans your way | 60% |
| Even | 53% |
| Leans to the rivals | 43% |
So the draw is a nudge, not a verdict. A player who reads the board better than the computer beats a draw that leans against them.
| The hit comes from | Extra damage | Share of all hits in play-outs |
|---|---|---|
| The front half (three sides) | +0 | 79% |
| A back side (two sides) | +1 | 14% |
| Directly behind (one side) | +2 | 7% |
The wedge on a pet's ring shows where it looks. A pet turns to face the way it last moved, turns to what it attacks, and turns to the nearest enemy when it guards. One hit in five lands from the back half, and +2 is often the difference between a pet that stands and a pet that falls.
The ground is drawn for every match, after the teams are set. Every board has the same amount of each kind of thing; what changes is where it lies and how the home tiles are shared out.
| Tile | On every board | What it does | Home to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Road | 7, in the middle | +1 speed for a pet that starts its move on it | — |
| Hill | 6 or 8 | A ranged hit from higher up does +1 (Earth pets +2) | — |
| Water | 2 to 6 | Costs 2 steps to enter (Water pets and flyers 1) | Water |
| Wood | 2 to 6 | Cover: ranged hits do 1 less (Phantom pets ignore it) | Leaf, Insect |
| Lava | 2 to 6 | 1 damage at the end of the round to a pet standing on it (not Fire pets, and not a pet with a Leaf friend beside it) | Fire |
| Ice | 2 to 6 | A pet that steps on it slides one more tile the same way (not Ice pets) | Ice |
| Plain | the rest | Nothing. Both sides always start on plain ground. | — |
Water, wood, lava and ice always add up to 16 tiles. A pet standing on its home tile has +1 heart that round.
Method: the game's own rules file plays whole matches with a fixed computer policy giving the orders for both sides (it walks toward the best target, prefers the back, avoids lava). Teams are random cards; ground and rivals are drawn exactly as in the game. These are not results of human play. They show what the rules and the draw do when both sides play equally well. The play-outs use a fixed random seed, so anyone can re-run them and get these figures; a different seed moves them by 2 or 3 points.
Three pets of one rarity against three of another, 1,600 matches for each pair, on drawn ground. The figure is how often the lower team wins, of matches that had a winner.
| Lower team ↓ against → | Uncommon | Rare | Legendary | Mythic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common | 25% | 14% | 7% | 2% |
| Uncommon | — | 28% | 17% | 6% |
| Rare | — | — | 36% | 19% |
| Legendary | — | — | — | 41% |
One rarity lower wins about 1 match in 3 (25% to 41%). Two lower wins about 1 in 6 (14% to 19%). Rarity is a real advantage and never a guarantee: a Legendary team beats a Mythic team 4 times in 10.
1,500 match-ups, each played 8 times with the same teams, the same ground and the same computer on both sides, changing only the order between pets of equal speed. In 44% of match-ups the result was the same all 8 times. In the other 56% at least one of the 8 ended differently. Between evenly matched teams one contested tile early on can turn the match.
| Across 4,000 matched matches | |
|---|---|
| Average length | 5.8 rounds |
| Went the full 8 rounds | 41% |
| Ended by round 3 | 21% |
| Captures per match, both sides | 2.5 |
| Pets that fell with no one left to take them, per match | 1.6 |
| Draws | 14% |
| A pet saved by its home heart | once in 25 matches |
"Fell with no one left to take them" is the both-fall case: the pets that hit it went down in the same round.
The rivals' leader (the strongest of the three, in the middle) holds its ground until one of its escorts falls. With the computer playing your side against them as they really play, your side won 59% of matches, lost 25% and drew 16%. That is the mark to beat.
What Burn is. You stake three of your own cards. Every pet that falls in the match is destroyed for good. The winner receives one egg for each destroyed pet, and an egg hatches into a card of the destroyed pet's rarity or lower. A destroyed Mythic gives a Mythic egg 20% of the time, a Legendary 45% and a Rare 35%. Against the computer no egg is ever above Rare.
Why the eggs are worth less than what burned. On purpose. If a match gave back as much as it destroyed, two accounts could trade wins and lose nothing, and cards could be turned into better cards for free. Because every Burn match takes more out of the game than it puts back, the number of high cards can only go down through play. That is what keeps a Mythic rare, and it is why Burn cannot be farmed.
Why it is still a fair bet to offer.
What the numbers say about staking a Mythic. A Mythic team is the favourite against anything lower, but not safe: a Legendary team wins 4 in 10 against it, and a Rare team about 1 in 5. Even when you win, each of your pets that fell is gone and comes back as an egg that is a Mythic only 1 time in 5. So over many matches, Burn costs cards. Play it for the stakes and for what a win is worth to you, not as a way to grow a collection.