How to play

Two sides face each other across a river. Each side owns two Guard Towers (one per lane) and one Core Tower. Destroy the enemy Core to win at once, or finish the match with more crowns.

• A destroyed Guard Tower is worth 1 crown. The Core is worth 3 crowns and ends the match immediately.
• The Core Tower sleeps until it is damaged or one of its Guard Towers falls. Guard Towers (1500 HP) are awake from the start; the Core has 2600 HP.

• Your deck has 6 cards. You hold 4 at a time; the rest wait in a queue. Playing a card brings in the next one and sends the played card to the back of the queue.
• You start with 5 energy (max 10). It refills by 1 every 2.8 s, and twice as fast during the last minute of regulation and in overtime.
• Each card shows its energy cost. The server rejects a play you cannot afford.

• Mouse: drag a card onto the board, or click a card and then click the board. Touch: drag a card, or tap a card then tap the board. Keyboard: 1 to 4 pick a card, Esc cancels.
• While a card is selected, the legal drop zone glows green. You can only deploy on your half of the arena, away from the river and from towers.
• After you destroy an enemy Guard Tower, that lane's enemy half opens up for your deployments, as far back as the fallen tower.
• A new creature needs about 1 second to wake up. It can be attacked but cannot act yet.
• Swarm cards spawn several bodies at once (Sproutlings ×4, Gloombats ×5).

• Melee creatures fight up close and are the best answer to towers.
• Ranged creatures shoot over a distance; only ranged units and towers can hit flying creatures.
• Tanks soak damage. Boulderon only attacks towers and explodes when it dies.
• Swarms overwhelm slow targets but die to splash. Gloombats fly over the river and ignore the bridges.
• Support creatures keep a squad alive: Petalyn heals allies around it and cures their burn, poison and paralysis.
• Siege creatures only attack towers, from far away: Cannonclam out-ranges a Guard Tower but is fragile if caught.
• Ground creatures cross the river only on the two bridges. Each creature picks the lane it was dropped in.
• Creatures attack the nearest enemy they can reach; otherwise they march on their lane's Guard Tower, then the Core.
• Armor (Steelhorn, Aegirax) cuts a fixed amount from every hit, after the element multiplier. Heavy creatures also resist being shoved back.

• Every creature has a gold evolution meter under its health bar. It fills with the damage it deals, the damage it takes and the health it heals (healers earn it too).
• When the meter is full the creature evolves: it glows for 1 second, during which it is invulnerable but cannot act. It keeps the same share of its health, loses every status effect and comes back bigger, stronger and with a new ability.
• Each body evolves by itself: in a swarm, the sprouts that fought most evolve first.
• Legends do not evolve (Solarion, Aegirax): they are already at full power.

Every creature has one of eight elements. A hit is multiplied by how the attacker's element matches the defender's: ×1.5 when it is super effective, ×0.75 when it is resisted (the same element also resists itself), ×0.5 when it barely scratches, and ×1 otherwise. Armor is subtracted after that. Towers have no element and always take ×1.

• Burn. Takes 30 damage per second for the duration (ignores armor).
  Inflicted by: Flarlet 30%, Blazefang 60%, Solarion 100%
• Poison. Takes 20 damage per second for the duration (ignores armor).
  Inflicted by: Sproutlings 30%, Thornpack 65%, Bloomara 50%
• Paralysis. Moves and attacks at half speed, and a quarter of its attacks fizzle.
  Inflicted by: Zappit 30%, Voltmane 50%
• Freeze. Frozen solid: cannot move or attack.
  Inflicted by: Frostail 15%, Glaciovix 30%
• Sleep. Cannot act until it takes damage, which wakes it.
  Inflicted by: Gloombats 12%, Duskwings 20%

• Burn (15) and poison (10) hit every 0.5 s, ignore armor and elements, and do not wake a sleeper.
• Some creatures cannot suffer a status: fire cannot burn, steel and grass cannot be poisoned, electric cannot be paralyzed, ice cannot be frozen. Legends have extra immunities.
• Stuns (Zappit) and slows (Frostail, Aegirax) are short and separate; heavy hitters can also knock lighter creatures back.
• A status that is already on a creature only refreshes its timer (they do not stack). Petalyn's aura cures burn, poison and paralysis; evolving clears every status.

• Legends (Solarion, Aegirax) cost 6 energy and are far stronger than ordinary creatures. A deck may hold at most 1; the server refuses a deck with more.
• They do not evolve, and each is immune to some status effects.

1. A 3-second countdown, then 3:00 of regulation time.
2. If one side has more crowns when time is up, it wins.
3. If crowns are level, overtime (60 s) starts: the first tower to fall decides the match.
4. If overtime also ends without a tower falling, the side with more total tower health left wins.
5. If that is also equal, the match is a draw.
6. If both Cores fall at the same moment, the side with more crowns wins; otherwise it is a draw.

• The match keeps running on the server if you lose your connection. Your site reconnects automatically.
• You have 30 seconds to come back. Return in time and you resume exactly where you were. Fail to, and you forfeit: the opponent wins.
• If both players are gone for the grace period, the match is voided (no winner, no rating change).
• If the game server itself fails mid-match, the match is voided and nobody is penalised. Results are saved only once a match ends.
• Opening the game in a second tab or device takes over the session; the older one is told it was replaced.

• Ranked needs a signed-in wallet. Opponents are matched by rating; the window widens the longer you wait. Results update an Elo-style rating and the leaderboard.
• Practice runs in your browser against a bot (easy, normal, hard). It is not recorded and never changes your rating or earns rewards.
• Spectating is read-only and slightly delayed, so a stream cannot be used to coach a live player. Spectators never see a player's hand.

• Entry is free. There is no entry fee, no staking and no token purchase.
• If the operator turns rewards on, a verified ranked win can earn a fixed SOL amount from a funded treasury. Rewards are off until an admin configures an amount, a daily budget and per-player limits.
• Forfeits, draws, voided matches, very short matches, idle opponents and matches over the daily limits pay nothing.
• A reward is only marked paid after the transfer is finalized on Solana and the amount is verified on-chain. Until then it shows as pending, with its transaction link once one exists. See the Rewards page.
• $KOP is the project's ticker and branding only. Holding it does nothing in the game.