How Arcana is played

Two players, one board between them. Each brings a deck of 20 cards and a hero with 30 health. Reduce the opposing hero to zero and you win. There is no other win condition — and no deck-out penalty: a player who runs out of cards simply draws nothing.

Who starts is random. The player going first draws 4 cards; the player going second draws 5 (1 extra for the disadvantage). Both then get one mulligan: swap away any cards you do not want, draw that many replacements, and the cards you returned are shuffled back — a card you threw away cannot come straight back to you. The mulligan has 30 seconds on it.

• 30

  Hero health

• 20

  Cards in a deck

• 10

  Mana, at the ceiling

• 6

  Board slots per side

A turn begins with your mana growing by one — to a maximum of 10 — and refilling completely. Unspent mana does not carry over. You then draw a card, and every unit you control is ready to attack.

On your turn you may play units and spells you can afford, attack with any ready unit, and end the turn, in any order. A round is both players taking a turn; the arcana above the board counts in rounds, not turns.

You have 60 seconds. Run out and the turn ends itself — miss 3 in a row and you forfeit the match. Disconnecting is not instant defeat: you have 120 seconds to come back, and a match survives a server restart.

A unit you played this turn cannot attack — it has to survive to your next turn first, unless it has Rush. Each unit attacks once per turn.

An attack is a simultaneous exchange: your unit deals its attack to the defender, and the defender deals its attack straight back. Anything at zero health or less dies, both at once if that is how it falls. A unit may attack the enemy hero instead — unless the defender controls a Taunt unit, in which case the Taunt must be dealt with first.

Damage is permanent for the rest of the match. Nothing heals a damaged unit back up; healing applies to heroes, and only up to the health they started at.

A unit carries at most one keyword, printed on the card. These are the four, in the engine's own words:

• Tauntenemy units must attack this unit.
• Rushcan attack the turn it is played.
• Wardthe first damage this unit would take is prevented.
• Lifestealcombat damage dealt by this unit heals your hero.

Ward stops the first instance of damage the unit would take, from any source — a strike, a spell, a sweep — and is then spent for the rest of the match.

Instead of a keyword, a unit may carry an ability: a standing attack bonus it grants or receives. A card has one or the other, never both — and never both with a Summon effect either.

• Beast +1Your other Beast units have +1 attack.
• Adjacent +1Adjacent units have +1 attack.
• Early arcana +1While an early arcana is active, this unit has +1 attack.
• +1 per BeastThis unit has +1 attack for each other friendly Beast unit.

Auras are recomputed from the board as it stands, never written into the unit. They appear and vanish on their own as units are played, die, change position or the arcana rotates — and they stack, so two Beast-buffing units make a third Beast hit for both. An aura only ever reaches your own board.

Adjacency is a real position: the board has no fixed slots, and where you drop a unit decides who it stands beside. One ability instead counts the board: a rally reads how many of its tribe stand beside it and grows by that much, and shrinks again the moment one of them falls.

A Summon effect fires once, the instant the unit lands, and then it is finished. What it writes is permanent: unlike an aura, nothing is handed back when the units it counted die, or when the unit that cast it does.

• Summon: +1/+1 per WildSummon: this unit permanently gains +1/+1 for each other friendly Wild unit.
• Summon: Giant +1/+1Summon: your other Giant units permanently gain +1/+1.

This is the one place health moves for a reason other than damage — which is exactly why it is a Summon and not an aura. A unit that arrives on a wide board of its own tribe arrives much larger than it is printed, so the order you play your turn in is part of the card.

A Summon never reaches the opponent's board, never counts the unit casting it, and never reaches units played after it.

A spell resolves and is gone. Two of them ask you to pick a unit first; the rest resolve the moment they are cast. These are the effects in the game:

• Deal 2 damage to a chosen unit.Needs a target
• Restore 4 health to your hero.
• Draw 1 card.
• Give a chosen friendly unit +2/+1.Needs a target
• Deal 3 damage to the enemy hero.
• Deal 2 damage to all enemy units.
• Give your Order units +1/+1.
• Deal 1 damage to every unit, yours included.

Damage spells may be aimed at either side's unit; a buff may only be aimed at one of yours. The game highlights exactly the targets the engine will accept — if it is not highlighted, it would be refused.

This is the part no other card game has. Above the board sits a tarot arcana, and it applies to both players at once. It holds for 2 rounds, then the next one turns over.

A match draws 6 of them from a spread of 22: 2 early, 2 mid and 2 ending, in that order and never repeating. 10 arcana are dealt today; the remaining 12 positions of the spread have never been turned over.

The last one does not rotate away. Both ending arcana drain both heroes every round, so a match that reaches them ends — there is no stalling past the spread.

Stat bonuses an arcana grants are written into the unit as it is played, so a rotation never takes them back. Cost changes are not: they apply while the arcana holds and stop when it turns.

A deck is exactly 20 cards — not a card fewer, not a card more, or it cannot be taken into a match. You may hold 2 copies of a card, and a single copy of a legendary. You may keep 5 decks, one of them active; the active deck is the one matchmaking uses.

You can only build with cards you own. An incomplete deck can be saved and come back to — the 20-card rule is checked when you activate it and again when a match starts.

The catalog holds 105 cards across five rarities. Packs contain 5 cards and cost 100 coins, and every pack guarantees at least one card of rare or better.

The pity counter is real and it is shown to you: a legendary is guaranteed at the latest in every 20th pack, and the counter resets whenever a legendary drops. The number on your home screen is the server's counter, not an estimate.

• common

  50%

  per card · max 2 per deck

  5 dust · craft 20

• uncommon

  28%

  per card · max 2 per deck

  20 dust · craft 80

• rare

  14%

  per card · max 2 per deck

  50 dust · craft 200

• epic

  6%

  per card · max 2 per deck

  150 dust · craft 600

• legendary

  2%

  per card · max 1 per deck

  400 dust · craft 1600

Coins come from playing: 60 for a win, 20 for a loss, and 50 for showing up each day. A new account starts with 400. Nothing in the game can be bought with money.

A pull you already hold at the deck limit is not wasted. It arrives as Arcane Dust instead — the pack still opens with that card, and the copy you cannot use becomes currency. Dust crafts any specific card you are missing, at 20 dust for a common up to 1600 for a legendary. Crafting costs more than disenchanting pays, so dust is a way to finish an album rather than a way around packs.

A day has a theme. One arcana is ascendant each day, and it is dealt into every match played that day — it replaces one draw of its own phase, so the spread keeps its length and its early-to-ending arc. The day is UTC, and the arcana is derived from the date alone: everyone is playing under the same one, and no server decides it.

You are offered 3 quests a day, one of each difficulty, drawn from a pool of 15. Progress is measured from what the match actually did, and a match must reach turn 4 before it counts towards anything — a conceded opening does not farm a quest. One quest a day can be swapped for another.

• 20 + 80 XP

  easy quest

• 30 + 120 XP

  standard quest

• 45 + 180 XP

  hard quest

Showing up is its own ladder. The login streak runs on a repeating 7-day cycle that escalates and then resets, and the last day pays a pack rather than coins. Miss a day and the streak survives: one missed day is forgiven, and another becomes available every 7 days. You are told the streak was kept only after it has been kept.

• Day 1

  30

• Day 2

  40

• Day 3

  50

• Day 4

  60

• Day 5

  75

• Day 6

  100

• Day 7

  1 pack

Ranked matches carry a rating, and the rating carries a tier. A tier is a floor as well as a badge: once you have reached one, losses cannot drop you back out of it, so a bad evening costs you rating but not the thing you climbed to.

• Bronze

  0+

• Silver

  1000+

• Gold

  1150+

• Platinum

  1300+

• Diamond

  1450+

• Arcane

  1600+

A season also runs a 30-level pass. Every level costs the same 600 XP — flat, not escalating, because a rising curve against a season deadline makes the last levels unreachable for the players who most need a reason to keep playing. A win pays 60 XP and a loss pays 25; quests pay the rest.

The track leans on prestige — card backs, avatars and titles — rather than currency, and what each level holds is shown in the game rather than here. Nothing on it can be bought.