Inscribed by Archmage Valdross the Eternal · Keeper of the Infinite Turn · Lord of the Simulation Crystal
AutoBattle is an automated card battle game. You build a deck, register it for an Arena cohort, and the Grand Crystal Simulator battles every deck against every other — no clicking required. Your job is to assemble the cleverest 100-card army possible, then watch the results roll in. The better your deck performs, the more Autogold you earn.
Every player fields a deck of exactly 100 cards. Not 99. Not 101. One hundred — the sacred number handed down by the ancient scrolls (and also the database constraint). Deck names must be no longer than 45 characters — brevity is the soul of conquest. Visit the Decks tab to create and edit your decks.
Card Types
| Type | Behaviour |
|---|---|
 Creature | Permanent. Occupies a board slot. Has Health, Melee, and Armor stats. Its Melee contributes to your end-of-turn combat damage; its Armor adds to your combat defense. Persists until its Health reaches 0 or it is destroyed by an effect. |
 Relic | Permanent. An artifact that fires its trigger effects each turn. Relics have no combat stats — no Health, Armor, or Melee — so they can't be damaged or destroyed in combat; only a targeted removal effect can get rid of one. |
 Structure | Permanent. A fortified installation that triggers each turn. Excellent for stacking shields, grinding mill, and anchoring defensive strategies. May have Health and/or Armor stats — an Armored Structure still contributes its Armor to your combat defense even without Health (and so can't be targeted by creature-damage effects). |
 Enchantment | Permanent. A magical aura that lingers on the board indefinitely, firing its effects each turn. Enchantments deal in curses, blessings, and lingering consequences. No combat stats — no Health, Armor, or Melee — so it can't be damaged or destroyed in combat; only a targeted removal effect can get rid of one. |
 Spell | Non-permanent. Played for its effect, then immediately discarded. Powerful and immediate, but gone in a flash. |
Card Rarities & Deck Limits
Infinite cards are available to every player at no cost — the backbone of any collection. All other rarities must be opened from packs in the Market. The rarity also determines the card's power ceiling: commons are workhorses, legendaries are game-enders.
Ability Tags
Every card is automatically tagged based on its abilities. Tags help you filter and browse cards in the Deck Builder, and clicking a tag on a card's page jumps straight to its explanation below. A card can hold multiple tags — and a card with no special effects might only carry its type and rarity tags.
damage
poison
mill
honor
shield
life
antidote
draw
discard
recycle
reanimate
tutor
energy
utilize
sacrifice
destroy
bounce
exile
melee
⚖ symmetric
drawback
scaling
cost modifier
📉 cost scaling
Cards also carry tags for their rarity (common, rare, legendary…), structural type (relic, creature, enchantment…), and — for Creatures — their subtype (Soldier, Frog, Demon…). Use the tag filter bar in the Deck Builder to find cards by what they do, and see the full Tag & Keyword Glossary below for what every one of them means.
The Arena operates in Cohorts — short seasons where players submit their decks for battle. Here is how each cohort unfolds:
A deck must contain exactly 100 cards and be marked ✓ Ready to be eligible for the Arena.
Ten arenas, ten rulesets. Each arena runs its own cohort schedule. Your deck must satisfy that arena's card-legality rules to be enrolled. The same battle engine, validation system, and Autogold rewards apply in every format — only the card restrictions and special rules change.
The on-ramp for brand-new players. Instead of the full card database, you build from a small, hand-curated pool — one clean example of each mechanic (poison, honor, mill, shields, and more) — so there's less to learn before your first battle.
Your deck starts at 30 cards and grows automatically as you play, alongside the pool of cards you can choose from. Reach the final tier and you graduate into the full game — same collection, same nav, same arena access as everyone else.
Deck rules: Only cards in the curated Beginner pool, plus Infinite-rarity cards. Deck size and pool width grow with your tier instead of starting at 100.
Any 100 cards. No restrictions whatsoever. This is the widest meta — every rarity, every strategy, every combination is legal.
Deck rules: Exactly 100 cards, within per-card rarity limits. No other constraints.
Every deck must designate a Champion — a Legendary Creature that lives in its own Champion Zone, separate from your hand, deck, board, and discard. The Champion never shuffles into your deck and is never drawn normally.
At the start of each game, your Champion waits in the Zone, ready to be deployed. When you have enough energy to pay its cost, the engine will play it automatically (or hold for a better moment, depending on your Battle Plan). After being destroyed or returned, the Champion goes back to the Champion Zone — not to your discard — and can be replayed next turn, each time at an increasing additional cost.
Deck rules: Strict singleton — every card in the 100-card pool must appear exactly once. A Champion must be designated (a Legendary Creature card). No duplicate cards of any rarity, including Infinite.
Same Champion Zone mechanic as Champion Singleton Arena — a Legendary Creature that sits outside your normal 100-card pool and gets replayed from its own Zone after being destroyed or returned — but without the singleton restriction.
Deck rules: Exactly 100 cards, within per-card rarity limits (same as Standard Arena). A Champion must be designated (a Legendary Creature card). No other constraints.
The people's arena. Uncommon, Rare, Mythic, and Legendary cards are forbidden. Only Common and Infinite cards are permitted — the workhorses of the collection.
Pauper rewards deep knowledge of the Common card pool. The ceiling is lower, but so is the floor — everyone fights on equal footing, without legendary power pulling the strings.
Deck rules: Only Common (rarity ×15 limit) and Infinite (unlimited) cards. No other rarities.
100 cards of peak power. Only Legendary and Infinite rarity cards are permitted — no Champion designation, no mid-tier cards. Pure legendary firepower.
The Legendary Arena is the highest-ceiling open format. Games are decided by which legendary suite synergizes best, not by who drafted better commons.
Deck rules: Only Legendary (×1 limit) and Infinite (unlimited) cards. No Champions allowed.
Neither floor nor ceiling. Uncommon, Rare, and Mythic cards — plus Infinite — are the building blocks here. Commons and Legendaries are both excluded.
Journeyman is the proving ground for mid-range strategies. The card pool is broad enough for real deck construction choices, but constrained enough that raw power level doesn't dominate.
Deck rules: Uncommon (×10), Rare (×7), and Mythic (×3) cards, plus Infinite (unlimited). No Commons, no Legendaries, no Champions.
Bring your best deck and test it against a pool of AI-controlled bot opponents. No restrictions on cards — this is the open format against machine intelligence.
Bots aren't random — each day they clone the previous day's top-performing Standard Arena decks, so you're facing real, proven strategies. To keep things a real challenge, bots also play with a handicap: 107 starting life, 7 starting honor, 7 starting shields (instead of the usual 100/0/0), and one extra card in their opening hand. Bot Challenge is a good environment for testing new builds before entering competitive cohorts, and for earning Autogold when the other arenas are between windows.
Deck rules: Exactly 100 cards, within rarity limits. No other constraints. Opponents are bot-controlled decks with the handicap described above.
No deck building required — or permitted. When you register for a Random Arena cohort, a 100-card deck is generated from your collection automatically. You cannot choose the cards. You cannot edit the deck. What you drafted is what you play.
Every player's deck is generated fresh for each cohort. Your collection breadth matters: a wider collection gives the generator more to work with.
Deck rules: Deck is randomly generated from your collection at registration time. No manual editing allowed.
The rules change every cohort. Each Chaos Arena cohort activates two global effects (chosen independently, so the same effect can be picked twice — doubling it) that apply to every battle in that season — both players, every game. No card restrictions apply, but the field is permanently tilted.
Deck rules: Any 100 cards within rarity limits. Two of the following Chaos Effects are active for the entire cohort (possibly the same one twice):
The active effects are displayed on the cohort lobby and are the same for all participants. Build accordingly.
Draft is a three-phase format: draft → build → battle. Decks are built from cards you pick during the draft, not from your permanent collection.
Phase 1 — The Draft. Players sit in a pod (2–16 seats, 8 by default, with bots filling empty chairs). Each player receives a pack of 15 cards. Pick 1, pass the rest to the next player. Packs 1 and 3 pass to the left; pack 2 passes to the right. Repeat until all 3 packs are exhausted — each player drafts 45 cards in total.
Phase 2 — Deck Building. After the draft closes, you have a limited window to construct your 100-card deck from your 45 drafted cards. Slots that remain unfilled are padded automatically with Infinite-rarity cards. You can also auto-build if you don't want to manually construct.
Phase 3 — The Battle. Once all seats have submitted (or the build deadline expires), a single cohort launches that bundles 10 round-robin rounds — every deck battles every other deck 10 times over — so the pod winner is decided by a larger sample than one pass alone. The draft cohort follows the same validation and rewards flow as any other arena.
Quick Draft — a shorter, cheaper variant built for new players. Instead of 3 packs of 15, you draft the same single 5-card pack 3 times in a row (15 cards total), and your deck fills to 45 cards instead of 100. Everything else about the three-phase flow is identical.
You can join a public lobby in the Draft Hub, create a private draft and invite friends with a code, or start a Solo lobby to draft immediately against an all-bot pod instead of waiting for a human roster to fill. Bot players also fill any open seats left in a public/private pod once it starts.
A Battle Plan is a set of strategic instructions attached to your deck. The engine follows these instructions during every battle — choosing which card to play first, when to hold energy, how to pick targets, which of your own cards or permanents to spend on a cost, which card to discard when over the limit, and when to deploy your Champion. Battle Plans are configured in the Deck Builder and apply across all arenas (fields that don't apply to a given arena are silently ignored).
Type Order — you drag card types into a priority ranking (e.g. Creatures first, then Structures, then Spells).
Tag Order — like Type Order, but by ability tag (Poison, Draw, Melee, ...) instead of card type. A card matching several tags uses whichever tag ranks best.
Each match is played as two games — one where Player A goes first, one where Player B goes first. The player who wins the most games wins the match. If each wins one, it is a draw.
Each game is a turn-based simulation. Both players start fresh:
| Resource | Starting Value | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
 Life | 100 | Reduced by enemy damage and Poison. Reach 0 and it's over. |
| Honor | 0 | Increased by honor effects. Reach 100 and you win outright — but fall to -100 and you lose. |
| Energy | 0 | Gain 1 basic energy at the start of each turn. Spent to play cards. Some effects grant bonus or ephemeral energy. |
| Shield | 0 | Reduces incoming damage — both counted as combat defense against melee attackers, and absorbing direct damage effects before Life is lost. Decays by 1 at the start of each turn. |
| Poison | 0 | At the start of your turn, you take damage equal to your poison stacks (absorbed by your Shields first, same as any direct damage), then stacks decrease by 1. |
Starting Life and the Honor win/dishonor threshold both scale down together in smaller-deck formats: Beginner Mode practice rounds and Quick Draft use the format's target deck size (e.g. 45 for Quick Draft) in place of the standard 100 — so in a Quick Draft match, 45 Honor wins and -45 Honor loses, not ±100. Standard 100-card play always uses the full 100/-100.
Turn Sequence
each_opponent_turn fire in seeded random order.each_turn fire in seeded random order.end_of_turn fire. Then, after armor recovers, Melee Combat resolves: the active player's non-utilized permanents deal damage equal to total melee minus the opponent's total armor and current shields. Melee Combat — At the end of each turn (step 6, after triggers), the active player's non-utilized permanents deal melee damage to the opponent. Here is how it resolves:
- Total Melee — Sum the Melee stat of every non-utilized permanent on your board. Utilized permanents (spent as an additional cost this turn) do not contribute.
- Opponent Defense — Sum the Armor stat of every permanent on the opponent's board, then add the opponent's current Shield count. This total is their combat defense.
- Combat Damage —
Total Melee − (Opponent Armor + Opponent Shields) = Combat Damage. If the result is 0 or negative, no damage is dealt. - Life loss — Combat Damage is dealt directly to the opponent's Life. Shields have already been factored into the defense calculation above.
- Passives fire — If the opponent loses life, their
on_life_losspassives trigger. If any damage was dealt, youron_damage_dealtpassives trigger.
The dual role of Armor: A permanent's Armor stat serves two purposes simultaneously — it reduces damage dealt to the permanent itself by targeted effects, and it reduces your opponent's melee combat damage every turn. A heavily armored board is both a tough target for spells and a stiff wall against melee attackers.
Shields as combat defense: Your current Shield count is added directly to your combat defense alongside your board's Armor. Stacking shields through structures or relics not only protects you from direct damage effects but also softens melee attacks — making shield generation a viable defensive strategy even against heavy melee boards.
A game ends the moment any of these conditions are met. The match winner is whoever wins more of the two games.
Some cards carry keyword abilities — passive traits and special effects that go beyond simple stat bonuses. Every card is also automatically tagged based on what it does. This section is the full lexicon: click any tag on a card's page and you'll land right here.
| Tag | Covers |
|---|---|
| Damage |
Deals damage — to the opponent's Life, to one of their permanents, to a random or the weakest creature, or to every permanent matching a tag or cost filter. Damage to a permanent is absorbed by its current Armor first; damage to a player is absorbed by their Shields first. A few cards instead deal damage to yourself — a Drawback effect, but still absorbed by your own Shields first the same way. |
| Poison |
Inflicts Poison stacks on the opponent — or, for a Drawback card, on yourself. At the start of a poisoned player's turn, they take damage equal to their stack count (absorbed by their own Shields first, same as any direct damage), then the stack decreases by 1. Either direction is blocked by the poisoned player's own Antidote. |
| Antidote |
Cures Poison — either by removing a set number of your own stacks outright, or by granting standing immunity for as long as the card is in play (Poison effects targeting you fail outright). A card can do either or both; check its own text for which. |
| Mill |
Moves cards directly from the top of the opponent's deck into their discard pile, without them being drawn — or, for a Drawback card, from your own deck. A milled card can still come back via a Recycle effect — but only if its owner plays one. Either direction is blocked by the milled player's own Prevent Mill, and still triggers the milled player's own On Mill passives. |
| Honor |
Gains you Honor, or reduces the opponent's — or, for a Drawback card, reduces your own. Honor is a secondary win condition — reach 100 and you win immediately regardless of Life. Dishonor is the flip side: reduce an opponent's Honor to -100 and they lose outright — dishonoring them is a legitimate win condition in its own right, not just denial. Your own Honor never drops below 0 from a self-inflicted Drawback effect, though, so there's no risk of dishonoring yourself. Any Honor reduction is blocked by that player's own Prevent Honor Loss. Some cards instead require Honor as an additional cost to play — see Pay Honor below; unlike a reduction effect, Prevent Honor Loss does not block a cost you've chosen to pay, and you can never pay more Honor than you have. Honor can also be paid repeatedly as a triggered ability (e.g. "each turn, pay Honor → then..."), not just once at play — if you can't afford it that turn, the ability simply does nothing that turn. In smaller-deck formats (Beginner Mode practice, Quick Draft), both thresholds scale down to match the deck size instead of ±100 — e.g. ±45 in a Quick Draft match. |
| Shield |
Grants Shields, which reduce incoming direct damage and contribute to your combat defense against melee attackers. Shields decay by 1 automatically at the start of each turn. A Drawback card may instead strip Shields from you directly. Gaining Shields (for yourself) is blocked by an opponent's Prevent Shields. Some cards instead require Shields as a cost — either once to play, or repeatedly as a triggered "pay Shields → then..." ability — and you can never pay more than you have. |
| Life |
Gains you Life directly, or removes Poison stacks (protecting your future Life). A Drawback card may instead grant Life to your opponent. Some cards instead require Life as a cost — either once to play, or repeatedly as a triggered "pay Life → then..." ability — and you can never pay more than you have. |
| Draw |
Draws extra cards from your deck into your hand, beyond your normal one-per-turn draw. A Drawback card may instead make your opponent draw. |
| Discard |
Sends cards straight from a hand into that player's discard pile — distinct from Mill (which removes from the top of a deck, never drawn) and from being played (which requires paying its cost). Can hit the opponent's hand, or — as a Drawback — your own. Also usable as a cost: discard N of your own cards, either once to play the card at all (as an alternative or supplement to its Energy cost), or repeatedly as a triggered "discard → then..." ability. |
| Recycle |
Shuffles some (or all) of your discard pile back into your deck — a second chance at cards you've already played, or that were milled away. Also usable as a cost: recycle N of your own discarded cards, either once to play the card at all, or repeatedly as a triggered "recycle → then..." ability. |
| Reanimate |
Puts one or more permanents straight from your discard pile into play, matched by tag and optionally by cost — a random match, or every match. Unlike Recycle (which only returns cards to your deck), Reanimate skips the draw step entirely. The permanent enters as a fresh copy (full health/armor, no memory of how it died) and triggers On Enter normally, but does not count as being "played" from hand. |
| Tutor |
Searches your library (the cards you haven't drawn yet) for a specific card by name, or a random card matching a tag, and puts the result(s) into your hand or straight into play — permanents only for the "into play" option. Unlike Reanimate (discard pile) or Recycle (shuffles blind, no searching), Tutor lets a card find something specific from the cards still left to draw. The searched-for card(s) are removed from the library and it's reshuffled afterward, so it never reveals the rest of the deck's order. |
| Token Copy | Conjures a fresh copy of a named permanent straight into play — unlike Tutor, nothing is removed from your library or discard pile; the copy is created from nothing. To balance that, a token copy is fragile: whenever it leaves play for any reason — bounced, destroyed, killed, sacrificed, milled off a board wipe — it doesn't go to your hand or discard pile like a real card would. It's Exiled instead, vanishing from the game entirely. |
| Energy |
Affects the resource spent to play cards from hand — granting bonus, ephemeral, or restricted energy (see the Energy info-box above), or draining the opponent's energy pool. A Drawback card may instead grant Energy to your opponent. |
| Utilize |
Taps one of your own permanents — either as this card's additional cost to be played, or as part of its own effect. A permanent tapped this way can't be tapped again until it resets at the start of your next turn. |
| Sacrifice |
Destroys one of your own permanents — either as this card's additional cost to be played, or as part of its own effect. Unlike Utilize, the permanent doesn't stay in play: it's actually killed, so its On Death and On Leave triggers both fire before it goes to your discard pile. A card with this cost simply can't be played if you have no eligible permanent to sacrifice. Always a Drawback. |
| Destroy |
Permanently removes one or more opponent permanents from the board and sends them to the discard pile. Indestructible permanents are immune. |
| Bounce |
Returns a permanent to its owner's hand instead of destroying it — it can be replayed later, but leaving play still resets anything tied to being on the board (Utilize state, ongoing buffs). |
| Exile |
Removes a card from the game entirely — it never lands in any discard pile, deck, or hand, so Recycle, Reanimate, and every other recursion effect can never get it back. Unlike Destroy, Exile bypasses Indestructible — nothing protects a permanent from being exiled. Can also target cards straight from a hand, discard pile, or the top of a library, and can be paid as a cost by exiling cards from your own discard pile — either once to play, or repeatedly as a triggered "exile from discard → then..." ability. |
| Melee |
This card has a Melee stat above 0 — it contributes directly to your combat damage each turn. See Melee Combat above. |
| Keyword | Effect |
|---|---|
| Lifelink ×N | When your board deals combat damage, you gain N × combat damage Life. |
| Honorlink ×N | When your board deals combat damage, you gain N × combat damage Honor. |
| Drawlink ×N | When your board deals combat damage, you draw N × combat damage cards. |
| Shieldlink ×N | When your board deals combat damage, you gain N × combat damage Shields. |
| Millbound ×N | When your board deals combat damage, the opponent mills N × combat damage cards from the top of their deck into their discard pile. Blocked by prevent_mill. |
| Honorbound ×N | When your board deals combat damage, the opponent loses N × combat damage Honor — same as Reduce Opponent Honor, this can push them below 0 and all the way to a dishonor loss (-100, or a smaller-deck format's scaled equivalent). Blocked by prevent_honor_loss. |
| Passive | Effect |
|---|---|
| Prevent Mill | While the card granting this is in play, you cannot be milled — Mill effects (including Millbound) targeting you fail outright. |
| Prevent Honor Loss | Your Honor cannot be reduced by opponent effects (including Honorbound). |
| Prevent Shields | Your opponent cannot gain Shields while this is in play. |
| Passive | Fires when... |
|---|---|
| On Tag Played | ...you play any card with the matching tag — permanent or spell. The only tag-watcher that reacts to spells, since a spell resolves and goes straight to your discard pile without ever entering your board. |
| On Tag Enter | ...a permanent with the matching tag enters play on your board (is played from hand). |
| On Tag Leave | ...a permanent with the matching tag leaves your board for any reason — destroyed, killed, sacrificed, or bounced back to hand. |
| On Tag Death | ...a permanent with the matching tag actually dies — killed, destroyed, or sacrificed. Narrower than On Tag Leave: a permanent bounced back to hand did not die, so only On Tag Leave fires for it, not On Tag Death. |
| On Opponent Tag Played | ...your opponent plays any card with the matching tag — permanent or spell, same spell exception as On Tag Played. |
| On Opponent Tag Enter | ...a permanent with the matching tag enters play on your opponent's board. |
| On Opponent Tag Leave | ...a permanent with the matching tag leaves your opponent's board for any reason. |
| On Opponent Tag Death | ...a permanent with the matching tag dies on your opponent's side — same bounce exception as On Tag Death. |
| Timing | Fires when... |
|---|---|
| When Played | ...immediately when you play the card from hand (permanent or spell). |
| On Leave | ...the card itself leaves your board for any reason — destroyed, killed, sacrificed, or bounced back to hand. |
| On Death | ...the card itself actually dies — killed, destroyed, or sacrificed. Narrower than On Leave: a card bounced back to hand did not die, so only On Leave fires for it, not On Death. |
| Start of Turn | ...the start of your own turn, every turn it's in play. |
| End of Turn | ...the end of your own turn, every turn it's in play. |
| During Opponent's Turn | ...once during each of your opponent's turns, every turn it's in play. |
| Passive | Boosts |
|---|---|
| Amplify: Poison +N | Every Poison stack you inflict, by +N. |
| Amplify: Mill +N | How many cards your Mill effects remove from the opponent's deck, by +N. |
| Amplify: Recycle +N | How many cards your Recycle effects shuffle back into your deck, by +N. |
| Amplify: Shield +N | The Shields granted by your gain-shield effects, by +N. |
| Amplify: Draw +N | The cards drawn by your Draw effects, by +N. Does not affect your automatic once-per-turn draw — only card-triggered draw effects. |
| Amplify: Damage +N | Every non-combat damage effect you deal, by +N — Deal Damage to Player, to a (random/weakest/tagged) creature, cost-filtered damage, all of it. Does not affect Melee Combat damage. |
| Amplify: Life Gain +N | The Life gained by your gain-life effects, by +N. |
| Amplify: Honor +N | The Honor gained by your gain-honor effects, by +N. |
| Passive | Effect |
|---|---|
| Anthem: Melee +N | Your other matching permanents in play get +N Melee. |
| Anthem: Armor +N | Your other matching permanents in play get +N Armor. |
Cost Modifier — A static passive that raises or lowers the energy cost to play matching cards (Creatures, by default) for either player, while the source is in play. One flexible mechanic covers all four directions: tax your opponent's matching cards (a benefit), discount your own (a benefit), or — as a Drawback — tax your own or discount your opponent's. Multiple sources stack by simple addition, and the effective cost can never drop below 0 — or a higher minimum, if a discount specifies one (e.g. "cost 1 less, to a minimum of 1 energy").
Scaling — A cross-cutting flag on any card whose amount isn't a fixed number, but derived live from game state, recounted fresh every time the effect resolves. Two modes exist: a live count of cards matching a tag in a zone — your or the opponent's board, discard pile, or hand (e.g. "deal damage to the opponent equal to your [station] permanents in play", or "draw cards equal to [spell] cards in your discard pile"); or Typeburst — the number of different permanent types (Creature/Relic/Structure/Enchantment/Spell, max 5) across your own board and discard pile combined (e.g. "deal damage equal to the number of different permanent types you control and have discarded"). If a tag-count effect's own zone is the same one being counted, the count is taken before that effect starts changing it, so a card that recycles cards equal to a count of your own discard pile counts the pile as it stood the moment the card resolved, not as it shrinks partway through. A Scaling card still carries its plain category tag too (e.g. a card that deals scaling damage is tagged both Damage and Scaling).
Drawback — A cross-cutting flag on any card that carries a genuine downside for its own owner: an effect that hurts you or helps your opponent, or an Utilize/Sacrifice/Pay Honor/Pay Life/Pay Shields/Discard/Recycle/Exile-from-Discard cost. These exist so you can build higher-risk, higher-reward cards — a big payoff paired with a real cost, rather than a strictly upside effect. Every cost type below can appear either as a one-time additional cost to play the card, or as a repeatable triggered ability ("each turn, pay/discard/etc. → then...") that simply does nothing on a turn you can't afford it. A Drawback card still carries its plain category tag too (e.g. a card that poisons yourself is tagged both Poison and Drawback) — Drawback just makes the "this card also costs you something" pattern separately filterable and searchable in the Deck Builder.
| Effect | What it does |
|---|---|
| Deal Damage to Self | Deals damage to your own Life, absorbed by your own Shields first — the mirror image of Deal Damage to Opponent Player. Because you're both the one dealing and the one taking the damage in the same instant, both On Damage Dealt and On Life Loss passives fire for you (normally these land on two different players). |
| Gain Poison (self) | Poisons yourself instead of the opponent. Blocked by your own Antidote, and still triggers your own On Poisoned passives. |
| Lose Honor (self) | Reduces your own Honor. Blocked by your own Prevent Honor Loss. |
| Pay Honor (additional cost) | Requires N Honor to play this card, spent the moment it's played — you simply can't play the card without enough Honor banked. Unlike Lose Honor above, this is a cost you're choosing to pay, not damage being done to you, so Prevent Honor Loss does not exempt you from it. Can also appear as a repeatable triggered ability ("each turn, pay N Honor → then...") instead of a one-time play cost — if you can't afford it that turn, the ability just does nothing that turn. |
| Pay Life (additional cost) | Requires N Life to play this card, spent the moment it's played — you simply can't play the card without enough Life to spare. Works exactly like Pay Honor above, just spending Life instead, and can likewise appear as a repeatable triggered ability instead of a one-time play cost. |
| Pay Shields (additional cost) | Requires N Shields to play this card, spent the moment it's played — you simply can't play the card without enough Shields banked. Works exactly like Pay Honor above, just spending Shields instead, and can likewise appear as a repeatable triggered ability instead of a one-time play cost. |
| Lose Shield (self) | Strips Shields directly from you. |
| Mill Self | Mills your own deck instead of the opponent's. Blocked by your own Prevent Mill. |
| Opponent Gains Life | Grants Life to your opponent instead of yourself. |
| Opponent Draws a Card | Makes your opponent draw instead of you — refilling their hand, and triggering their own On Draw passives, not yours. |
| Opponent Gains Energy | Grants Energy to your opponent instead of yourself, letting them play more/bigger cards this turn. |
| Discard Self | Discards N cards from your own hand. See Discard. |
| Discard (additional cost) | Requires discarding N of your own OTHER cards to play this card — the card being played never counts toward its own cost. You simply can't play it without enough spare cards in hand. Can also appear as a repeatable triggered ability ("each turn, discard N → then...") instead of a one-time play cost. |
| Recycle (additional cost) | Requires shuffling N cards from your own discard pile back into your library to play this card — unlike Discard above, this doesn't touch your hand at all. You simply can't play it without enough cards in your discard pile. Can also appear as a repeatable triggered ability instead of a one-time play cost. |
| Exile from Discard (additional cost) | Requires removing N cards from your own discard pile entirely (see Exile) to play this card — those cards are gone for good, not shuffled back like Recycle. You simply can't play it without enough cards in your discard pile. Can also appear as a repeatable triggered ability instead of a one-time play cost. |
| Effect | What it does |
|---|---|
| Remove Opponent Energy | Destroys N of the opponent's Energy. Setting amount to 0 removes all of their energy. |
| Return Opponent Permanent | Returns N random opponent permanents of the chosen type (Creature, Relic, Structure, Enchantment, or any Permanent) back to the opponent's hand. Untargetable permanents cannot be returned this way. See Bounce. |
| Return Own Permanent | Returns N of your own permanents of the chosen type back to your hand — useful for resetting enter-the-board triggers or protecting key cards. |
Autogold (AG) is the sacred currency of my realm. New players begin with 777 AG — a royal stipend of fortune. Spend it in the Market on card packs to expand your collection.
Ways to Earn Autogold
- +1 AG — Complete a pre-validation shard while the Arena registration window is open
- +5 AG — Run a retroactive validation shard on an older finalized cohort that still has open shards
- Submit a valid battle validation that matches the majority consensus after a cohort closes
- Earn a Cohort Trigger Bonus (+8 AG) when your deck registration causes a new cohort to be queued
- Earn a Queue Extension Bonus (+77 AG) when your deck registration causes a brand-new cohort to be created in the queue
- Receive 1 AG consolation when the validation round is already full (once per round)
- Earn Arena win rewards when your deck wins matches in a finalized cohort
Card Packs in the Market
- Standard Pack — 3 AG · Contains 5 cards of mixed rarity
- Premium Pack — 8 AG · Contains 5 cards weighted toward higher rarities
- Premium 10-Pack — 72 AG · Ten Premium Packs bundled together (50 cards) at a discount off the per-pack price
Pre-Validation — Earn While You Wait
While the Arena registration window is still open, pre-validation shards are always available. Run a slice of the current cohort's matches early and earn +1 AG per shard. Pre-validation runs against the live registered pool — the moment a new deck registers, the next shard reflects it.
Full Validation — After the Gates Close
After each Cohort's battle window closes, a 10-minute Validation Window opens. During this time, any player can:
Each validation round accepts a maximum of 20 submissions. If the round is full, you still receive 1 AG consolation for your noble effort — but only once per round.
You can run validations from your browser on the Arena page, or from the terminal using the script found on your Profile page. Both methods count equally.
What Is a Shard?
A cohort with N registered decks produces N×(N−1) individual games — every deck battles every other, twice (once as first player, once as second). For large cohorts this is hundreds or thousands of games, which would be slow to validate as a single block. The cohort is therefore divided into shards — smaller, independently verifiable slices of the full battle set.
Pre-Validation Shards
While the Arena registration window is open, pre-validation shards are served live. As new decks register, the next shard is recomputed to include them. Running a pre-validation shard earns +1 AG and contributes to the cohort's eventual confirmation — it is not wasted work.
How Each Battle Is Hashed
Every battle runs under a seeded random number generator. The seed is derived from the cohort ID and the two deck IDs involved — nothing else. This means:
Why Hashing Prevents Cheating
A cheater attempting to falsify results faces an impossible problem: the hash of a shard is sensitive to every bit of every battle record inside it. Changing even one win/loss flips the hash entirely. To submit a false hash that matches the majority, the cheater would need every other validator to also run the wrong results — which cannot happen if they are running the official (or correctly re-implemented) simulator honestly.
What the Hash Covers
| Field | Why it's included |
|---|---|
| Winner (deck A or deck B) | The primary result — which deck won the match. |
| Game 1 / Game 2 outcomes | Each two-game match is tracked individually, not just the overall winner. |
| Final Life, Honor, Turn | Verifies the simulation ran to the correct terminal state, not just that someone declared a winner. |
| Play log digest | A compact fingerprint of every card played each turn — catches engines that produce the right final score through the wrong simulation path. |
The full hash format and byte layout are documented in the Validator Protocol Tomes. If you are writing a custom validator, matching the hash format exactly is the final and most critical step.
🔮 Writing Your Own Validator — A Warning and an Invitation
The AutoBattle battle engine is a deterministic simulation. Every match is seeded, every trigger fires in the same order, every coin flip lands the same way given the same input. This means: if you implement the engine correctly, your results will match every other validator's results exactly. If you get one thing wrong, your hash will be wrong, and the Crystal will reject your submission.
Implementing the engine yourself is powerful black magic. Seasoned wizards have done it in Go, in Python, in JavaScript. It requires intimate knowledge of:
- The exact order of trigger resolution (seeded RNG, not shuffled)
- The precise moment ephemeral energy is spent vs. basic energy
- How Utilize costs are resolved and when permanents reset
- How variable Utilize amounts (1–10 permanents) are selected without replacement
- The difference between
each_turn,end_of_turn, andeach_opponent_turn - Which effects can be passive-intercepted and in what order
- The exact hash format submitted to the validation endpoint
These are not casual matters. Whole afternoons have been lost in the pursuit of a disagreeing hash. The Crystal does not negotiate.
But for those who dare — the 📖 Validator Protocol Tomes contain the full specification: every effect, every phase, every edge case. It is dense. It is thorough. It is, according to one champion who preferred to remain anonymous, "genuinely the most interesting thing to read at 2am."
The official pre-compiled validators are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows on your Profile page. If you're writing your own: implement first, test against a known payload, compare hashes. The Tomes are your only guide. There is no customer support in the dark arts.
Once a Cohort is finalized, standings are calculated from all confirmed battle results:
| Metric | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Win Rate | Match wins ÷ total matches played in this cohort |
| Wins / Losses / Draws | Raw match record (each match = 2 games, winner takes the match) |
| Tiebreaker | When Win Rate is equal: more wins ranks higher. Still tied: fewer losses ranks higher. Draws are better than losses — a draw does not lower your rank, a loss does. |
The Champions page shows the overall top players across all arenas, plus per-arena breakdowns of top decks and top players — both all-time and recent.
Your deck's arena win rate influences the Auto Create feature — it biases card selection toward cards that have historically performed well. Auto Create always seeds your deck with 15–40 Power Stations as an energy backbone. Build wisely atop that foundation.
Every player has a public profile page showing their decks and record, accessible via the Share button on any deck.
May your draws be favourable and your relics fire true.
— Archmage Valdross the Eternal
Year of the Infinite Turn · Cohort Season Unknown · Updated with New Enchantments and Dark Arts