Complete Rules & Mechanics

Two automatons battle with 3 Aliens and a deck of 50–60 Tactic cards. You win by either:

1. Knocking out all 3 of the opponent's Aliens, OR
2. Causing the opponent to fail their Draw Phase (they cannot draw enough cards — "deck-out").

• Exactly 3 Aliens, all unique.
• Tactic deck: 50–60 cards (every non-Alien card; Spawns are Tactic-deck cards).
• Max 3 copies of any one card name.
• The 3 Aliens must span ≥ 2 affinities and the Tactic deck ≥ 4 distinct species — validated at deck save and at contest entry.

Aliens — permanent units placed at game start. Each carries an Affinity, Name, Species, an HP value, and an Ability. Aliens start face-up in the Alien Zone. When an Alien's HP reaches 0 it flips face-down (KO'd) — it is NOT removed; it can no longer act and its corresponding Tactics can no longer be activated.

Species Tactics — all non-Alien deck cards, in three subtypes:

• Attack — deals damage. One per Alien per turn.
• Special — utility / setup. No per-turn limit.
• Counter — reactive defensive cards.

Spawns — neutral cards (no Alien requirement): Basic, Counter, Sector (Sector Zone, global continuous), Equip (attach to an Alien, face-up), Continuous (face-up ongoing effect).

Every Alien and Attack card has one of ten affinities: Plasma, Mycelial, Cryo, Meteoric, Ion, Atmospheric, Solar, Void, Psionic, Alloy (plus Universal, which is always neutral). When an Attack is super-effective against the target Alien's affinity it deals +2 bonus damage. A card may also carry its own explicit super-effective list, which stacks on top of the wheel.

The ten affinities form a fixed wheel. Reading clockwise:

Plasma → Mycelial → Cryo → Meteoric → Ion → Atmospheric → Solar → Void → Psionic → Alloy → (back to Plasma)

Each affinity is super-effective against the next two affinities clockwise, and is weak to the two affinities immediately before it (the two that count it as their super-effective target). Universal is outside the wheel — it never gives or takes the bonus.

The wheel below is interactive — hover or tap any affinity to trace its matchups: a green line to each affinity it is super-effective against, a red line from each affinity it is weak to.

• Alien Zone — your 3 Aliens, placed at start.
• Command Zone — Attack/Counter/Special/Spawn cards, face-up (activated) or face-down (set).
• Deck — face-down, 50–60 Tactic cards.
• Discard — used / destroyed / spent-as-energy cards.
• Reactor Zone — face-down energy storage; hand cards become energy here.
• Sector Zone — Sector cards; their effects hit both players.

1. Determine priority (coin flip).
2. Reveal all 3 Aliens face-up.
3. Shuffle decks.
4. Draw 5 cards.
5. Before turn 1, the second player may bank up to 2 hand cards into their Reactor Zone.

Each turn is Draw → Activation → Energy.

Draw Phase. Draw until you hold exactly 5 cards. If you cannot draw enough → you lose (deck-out). If you already have 5 at the start of Draw Phase, instead mill the top deck card into the Reactor Zone (except on turn 1); if you cannot place that card → you lose.

Activation Phase. Take exactly ONE primary action: activate one Tactic, declare one attack with an Attack Tactic, set one card face-down, or pass. No open-ended action chains — card effects may explicitly grant a bounded follow-up action (see §8–§11).

Energy Phase. Resolve status effects (§12), then end the turn — the opponent begins their Draw Phase. (Reactor income is the start-of-turn +2 ramp, the second-player pre-bank, and mill-on-full — see §8; the working hand is kept, it is not banked here.)

• Energy = hand cards placed face-down into the Reactor Zone. There is no separate mana deck.
• Reactor Ramp: at the start of every turn you gain +2 Reactor energy automatically. This is abstract energy — it is not drawn or milled from your Deck, so it never affects deck-out (deck-out is checked only in the Draw Phase). It stacks on top of the second-player pre-bank and the mill-on-full income.
• To activate a card, send Reactor cards to the Discard equal to its cost.
• Energy is paid immediately on activation — even if the card is later negated or blocked.

An attack is your single primary action for the turn — one Attack Tactic, declared by one of your Aliens. “One Attack per Alien per turn” is a ceiling for effects that grant a follow-up Assault — not a promise that every Alien attacks each turn. Damage always lands on one specific Alien, reducing that Alien's HP — there is no shared HP pool. Damage persists between turns — there is no automatic HP recovery. All 3 Aliens are active simultaneously and share one Reactor Zone.

• Counter cards may activate during the opponent's turn.
• To use a Counter from the field it must have been set face-down for at least one prior turn.
• A Counter may be activated from hand only during your own turn.
• Face-down cards create hidden information / bluffing — a set card may be a no-op filler.

When an Alien's HP hits 0: flip it face-down (KO'd), it can no longer act, and its corresponding Tactics in the Command Zone may be discarded. Aliens are spent capital — no redeploy.

Recycling. When an Alien is KO'd, shuffle from the Discard back into the Deck only the cards that can still be used: Species Tactics belonging to your still-live Aliens, plus neutral Spawns. A KO'd Alien's own Species Tactics are dead — they stay in the Discard (shuffling them back would only seed the Deck with un-activatable draws and unfairly drag out a losing position). Resolved automatically.

An Alien may hold only one status at a time; a second is ignored. All statuses resolve at the end of the Energy Phase.

• Jammed — cannot activate that Alien's Tactics. End of Energy Phase: flip 2 coins; any heads → recover; double tails → stay Jammed.
• Corroding — at end of Energy Phase, take 1 damage.
• Fluxed — that Alien's corresponding Tactics cost +1 energy. End of Energy Phase: flip 1 coin; heads → recover; tails → remain Fluxed.

Aliens have abilities that may be Passive, Active, Once-per-battle, or Repeatable.

1. All 3 of the opponent's Aliens KO'd → you win.
2. Opponent cannot draw to 5 during their Draw Phase → you win.
3. Opponent has 5 cards at Draw Phase start AND an empty deck (cannot mill to the Reactor) → you win.

A safety cap (30 rounds) resolves runaway matches by surviving Aliens, then total Squad HP (Σ of the 3 Aliens' HP), tiebreak to priority.