Getting started

This page is for people who have never played. In ten minutes you'll understand the rules, play your first game and learn every way to earn gold. Read it in order: each section builds on the one before.

Where to start: five steps

The goal

You are a mage with a tower. Your opponent has one too. You take turns playing cards: building, attacking, gathering resources. There are three ways to win — any one is enough:

Example. In the Archmage's Citadel the tower starts at 20. To win, raise it to 50, bring the enemy tower to 0, or gather 150 of any resource. If both mages reach a goal at the same moment, it's a draw.

What you see at the table

• Tower — your «life» and your goal at once. Down to zero and you lose; up to the goal and you win.
• Wall — a shield in front of the tower. Ordinary damage breaks the wall first.
• Buildings (mines, monasteries, barracks) — your income. Every turn they bring resources.
• Resources (ore, mana, troops) — the money you pay for cards with.
• Hand — six cards. Only you see them; the opponent sees only how many there are.
• The timer shows the seconds left in the turn, and the log shows who played what.

Resources: where they come from and what they buy

At the start of each of your turns, every building brings one unit of its resource. The more buildings, the richer you get each turn. The opponent can knock your buildings down with cards — even to zero, and then that resource stops coming.

Your turn, step by step

A card marked ↻ («Play again») keeps the turn with you: you can play one more card after it.

Turn time is 15 or 30 seconds, set by the duel's creator. Run out of time and the game discards the least useful card for you. 6 missed turns in a row lose the game. If your connection drops, you have 90 seconds to come back.

Damage: wall and tower

Card effects mention two kinds of damage. The difference matters:

• «Damage» breaks the wall first, and the rest goes through to the tower.
• «Tower damage» hits the tower directly; the wall doesn't stop it.

In short: a high wall protects against ordinary attacks, but against «tower damage» only a tall tower helps.

Cards: how to read them

• Name — at the top of the card.
• The number in a circle — the cost. The card's colour tells you what to pay with: red — ore, blue — mana, green — troops.
• Text at the bottom — what the card does. «+6 wall» adds to you, «the enemy loses…» takes from the opponent.
• The ↻ mark — you move again after this card.
• A dim card — you can't afford it yet.

Cards do a few jobs: building (wall and tower), attacking (damage), growing the economy (new buildings) and hindering the opponent (knocking down buildings, stealing resources, swapping walls). A good game mixes a bit of everything.

All 102 cards

Battlefields

Before a game a battlefield is chosen. It sets the starting tower and wall, the number of buildings and the winning goals. The higher the goals, the longer the game.

Ten tips for beginners

1. Keep a wall. Without one, every hit goes straight into the tower.
2. Protect your buildings. A lost mine means less ore every turn until the end of the game.
3. Build the economy early. An extra building at the start pays for itself many times over.
4. Watch the opponent's resources. Saving up troops means an attack is coming: raise your wall.
5. Discard what you don't need. An expensive card you'd need five turns to afford just takes up space.
6. Play «↻» cards first. They give you an extra move almost for free.
7. Count your way to victory. Sometimes it's faster to finish your tower than to break theirs.
8. Remember the resource win. On short fields a stock of 150 builds up faster than you'd think.
9. Stealing works best against the rich. Thief, Tech Theft and Parity are strongest when the opponent has more.
10. Start with small stakes. Experience first, big duels later.

How to play a duel

Join someone's request

Create your own request

The winner takes both stakes; the commission on winnings is 0%. After the game you can click «Rematch». If you don't want to play bots, tick «Do not accept bots».

How to earn gold: seven ways

Gold is the game's currency. You stake it in duels and tournaments, spend it at the market and on adepts, and you can buy it in the app: «Market» → «Buy gold». Here's every way to get it:

1. Duels with bots

The easiest way. The «Play bots for gold» board always has requests — click «Join». Bots also take a seat at your gold requests a few seconds after you create them.

• Win and you take the bot's stake. A stake of 500 → +500 gold.
• Bots vary in strength, from Novice to Titan. Weak ones make mistakes; strong ones think moves ahead.
• Bots play fair and never see your cards.

2. Duels with players

The same, but against real people: join their requests or create your own. Wins raise your rating, shown in your profile. You can challenge a friend straight from their profile.

3. Hourly tournaments

Knockout tournaments start every hour. Open «Tournaments» and sign up in the first 10 minutes of the hour. Lose a match and you're out; win and you go on.

Half of the players get prizes — everyone who wins at least one match. The further you go, the bigger the prize; the champion gets the most and a cup in their profile. Gold tournaments always fill up: missing players are replaced by bots. Details are in the tournament rules.

4. Your own tournaments

Set up a tournament for friends with your own fee. You play in it yourself and can take the top prize.

Example: 8 players at 1000 gold each — a pool of 8000 (with a 0% commission).

5. Adepts — gold while you're not playing

An adept is your personal bot. You buy one, give it a budget and send it on a shift. The adept finds opponents and plays by itself, then brings back the budget together with its winnings. While it works you can do anything — even stay off the site.

Step 1. Buy an adept. «Adepts of the Mage» → «Buy from the Mage». There are two kinds:

• Adept — its skill is random and never changes. Lucky with a strong one? Great — you can also sell it for a lot.
• Adept IQ — starts weak but learns: +1% skill every 100 wins. It can also be trained for gold. The stronger it gets, the more it's worth.

Step 2. Send it to work. «My adepts» → «Send to work». Fill in:

• Budget — how much gold the adept gets for the shift. It's taken from your balance.
• Duration — from 1 hour to 30 days.
• Stakes «from–to» — which requests the adept may play.
• «Back after winning» — the adept returns once it has earned this much.
• «Back after losing» — the adept returns if it loses this much. Your insurance.
• Who to play — players, bots, tournaments.

Step 3. The adept works. It joins suitable requests, creates its own and signs up for tournaments. «My adepts» shows how much money it holds and how many games it has played, and «Watch the game» shows its game live.

Step 4. The adept comes back — and its whole balance returns to you. That happens when:

• the shift time is up;
• it has earned what you asked for;
• it has reached the loss limit;
• the budget no longer covers the smallest stake;
• you clicked «Call back» (if it's mid-game, it returns right after).

Every shift goes into the «Shift journal»: how much you gave, how much came back, how many games and why the adept returned.

A shift example: a budget of 20,000 gold, stakes 500–1000, «back after winning» +5000, «back after losing» −4000.

How to earn more with adepts:

1. Skill matters. A strong adept wins more often — its skill is shown on its card.
2. Always set «Back after losing». A bad shift then can't eat the whole budget.
3. Keep stakes small next to the budget. For example, up to 1/20 of the budget: the adept survives a losing streak.
4. Grow an Adept IQ. Every 100 wins make it stronger and more valuable.
5. Resell. At the «Adept market» you can list an adept for gold for up to 30 days. A 10% commission is kept on a sale. Buy undervalued adepts — their cards show games, win rate, earnings and recent games — and sell them for more.

One player can own up to 10 adepts. An adept never plays against its owner or the same owner's other adepts.

6. The Supreme Mage — free every 6 hours

The amount depends on your status. Collect it every time and that's 4 times a day:

7. The wheel of fortune

A spin costs 25 000 gold and the prize arrives at once: gold, moon cards, the mantle, premium, adepts, gifts, extra spins. Free spins are used before paid ones.

First-day checklist

• Create an account.
• Collect gold from the Supreme Mage.
• Read this page to the end.
• Play 3 games against bots for a small stake in the Archmage's Citadel.
• Play a real player.
• Sign up for a tournament.
• Come back in 6 h for the next gift.

Beginner questions