Game Rules — Spark Nexus
A fast 1v1 card battler built entirely from user-created cards. This document is the rules reference for players.
Design note: rarity has zero effect on in-game power. Card strength is governed by a power budget that also sets energy cost. Rarity only affects scarcity. This keeps games fair for players with few rare cards.
1. Objective and setup
- Two players, each with a 30-card deck (max 3 copies of any card) and one bound Patron (chosen in the deck builder).
- Each player has a hero at 30 HP and three towers (left, mid, and right) at 10 HP each.
- The board is three lanes. Each lane has 2 creature slots (6 total) and one tower.
- A creature can attack the enemy hero only after its own lane's tower is destroyed (other lanes' towers may still stand). Reduce the enemy hero to 0 to win.
- Coin flip decides who goes first. The second player draws 1 extra card and starts with 2 hero armor as compensation.
- Opening hands: first player draws 3, second player draws 4. One mulligan: select any cards to shuffle back and redraw that many.
- Board limit: 6 creatures per side (2 per lane). When you play a creature you choose an empty lane slot. Hand limit: 9 (drawing past it destroys the drawn card, revealed to both players).
- Empty deck: each further "draw" instead deals fatigue damage to your hero (1, then 2, 3, …).
2. Turn structure
- Start of turn: gain your energy for the turn; your creatures each gain 1 Charge; start-of-turn effects (Regenerate, Burn) resolve; draw 1 card.
- Main phase: in any order — play cards (pay energy), attack with creatures, use activated specials (pay Charge), Kindle (see §3), activate your Patron once per game (see §4).
- End of turn: end-of-turn effects resolve (Poison ticks); unspent energy is lost.
Energy: turn 1 gives 1 energy, growing by 1 per turn to a cap of 10.
Turn timer: 75 seconds. Timing out ends the turn; 3 consecutive timeouts is an auto-concede.
3. Kindle (unique mechanic)
Once per turn, you may Kindle: discard a card from your hand to gain +1 energy this turn. The discarded card is gone for the game (it can trigger nothing). Kindle is the pressure valve that keeps dead cards useful and makes hand size a resource.
4. Patrons (unique mechanic)
Each battle-ready deck binds exactly one Patron. You choose it in the deck builder — it is part of your final build, not picked mid-match. Both players see each other’s Patron at match start.
Once per game, during your main phase, you may activate your Patron by paying its energy cost from your normal energy pool. You cannot activate it again that match. Patron effects are not card specials: they use their own targeting rules and can bend defaults (for example Null Spark skips on-death, Spirewright can restore a destroyed tower).
| Patron | Cost | Ability |
|---|---|---|
| Ember Broker | 1 | Pay 1. Permanently increase your max energy by 1 (cap still 10) and gain +1 energy this turn (net: same current energy, +1 permanent max when under the cap). |
| Cinder Cartographer | 2 | Look at the top 3 cards of your deck; put 1 into your hand; put the other 2 on the bottom in their original order. |
| Brazier Warden | 2 | Shuffle your hand into your deck, then draw that many cards (normal fatigue / overdraw rules). |
| Flux Weaver | 3 | Set each of your creatures’ Charge to 3. Requires at least one creature. |
| Anvil Twin | 4 | Choose any creature. Swap its Attack and current Health; if new Health exceeds max Health, raise max Health to match. |
| Null Spark | 5 | Remove a chosen enemy creature from the game. On-death does not trigger. |
| Chronarch | 6 | Your creatures that are allowed to attack this turn may attack again (attacksThisTurn resets). Does not grant Eager to creatures played this turn. |
| Spirewright | 7 | Choose one of your destroyed towers; restore it to 5 HP. Standing towers, Guard, Bastion, and hero-access rules apply normally afterward. |
5. Towers and combat
A creature may attack once per turn (creatures can't attack the turn they're played unless they have Eager). Combat is lane-aware:
- If the attacker's lane has an enemy Guard, that attacker may only combat-attack that Guard (not other creatures, not the tower, not the hero).
- Otherwise, creature targets are free — you may attack enemy creatures in any lane.
- Tower: you may only combat-attack the enemy tower in the attacker's lane (if it still stands).
- Hero: legal only if the attacker's lane tower is at 0 HP.
Creatures do not move between lanes after they are played.
Damage resolution between creatures:
- If either side has Quick (and the other doesn't), the Quick creature deals its damage first; if the defender dies, no counter-damage comes back. Otherwise damage is simultaneous.
- Damage dealt = attacker's Attack − defender's Armor, minimum 1 ("chip rule": any attack always deals at least 1). Piercing ignores Armor entirely. Bastion grants +1 Armor while that creature's lane tower still stands.
- Attacking a tower or hero: no counter-damage. Siege deals +3 damage when striking a tower. Heroes absorb damage with armor first (if any).
Specials that deal damage to creatures use the same Armor chip rule as combat (Poison / Bleed / Burn still ignore Armor). Specials that target the "enemy hero" actually hit the enemy frontline: a living tower first (preferring a damaged one, any lane), then the hero once all towers fall. Explicit tower targets (randomEnemyTower, chosenEnemyTower, etc.) always hit towers only and ignore lane combat locks (including Guard).
Creatures at 0 HP die immediately; on-death triggers resolve in play order. Destroyed towers stay at 0 HP and cannot be healed back into play (healing only works on standing towers) — except Spirewright, which can restore a destroyed tower (see §4).
6. Status effects and Resistance (unique mechanic)
Specials and traits can apply four statuses. When a status is applied with potency V, the target actually receives max(0, V − Resistance) stacks — Resistance is a flat shield against all statuses (there is deliberately no elemental type chart).
| Status | Effect per stack | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Poison | 1 damage at end of its owner's turn (ignores Armor) | Until dead; stacks decay by 1 after each tick |
| Bleed | 1 extra damage taken whenever it attacks or is attacked (ignores Armor) | Permanent, stacks |
| Burn | 2 damage at start of its owner's turn (ignores Armor) | One tick, then expires |
| Stun | Creature skips its next possible attack; can't use activated specials that turn | One turn per stack |
Statuses never affect heroes or towers (they only take direct damage / healing).
7. Traits (keywords)
Fixed list; a card may have up to 2. A card may have at most one Guard. Budget cost in parentheses feeds the power-budget algorithm.
| Trait | Rules text | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Guard | In this creature's lane, enemies must attack it before other combat targets. Blocks combat attacks on that lane's tower. Armor capped at 2 (printed and effective); Sturdy does not save Guard creatures | 4 |
| Eager | Can attack the turn it's played | 5 |
| Quick | Deals combat damage first; takes none back if the defender dies | 3 |
| Piercing | Its attacks ignore Armor | 3 |
| Venomous | Its attacks apply Poison 2 | 4 |
| Leech | Damage it deals also heals your hero for half that amount (rounded down) | 4 |
| Sturdy | The first time it would die each game, it survives at 1 HP (does not work on Guard creatures) | 6 |
| Sneaky | Can't be attacked or targeted by enemy specials the turn it's played | 2 |
| Frenzy | +2 Attack while damaged | 5 |
| Regenerate | Restores 2 HP at the start of your turn | 3 |
| Siege | Deals +3 damage when attacking a tower | 2 |
| Bastion | While this creature's lane tower stands, it has +1 Armor (does not apply if it also has Guard) | 2 |
| Flank | +2 Attack when attacking a creature in a different lane | 3 |
| Breach | After this creature destroys a tower, it may attack again this turn (once) | 3 |
| Rally | While this lives, the other creature in its lane has +1 Attack | 2 |
| Vanguard | +1 Attack while this creature's lane tower is destroyed | 2 |
| Bulwark | While this lives, its lane tower takes 1 less damage from combat (minimum 1) | 3 |
| Warden | Enemy creatures in this lane deal 1 less combat damage (minimum 1 chip still applies) | 2 |
| Sunder | Deals +2 damage when attacking a Guard | 3 |
| Smother | If this kills a creature in combat, that creature's onDeath does not trigger | 4 |
A card may not have both Leech and Piercing.
Matchup spice: Sunder (and Piercing) answer fat Guard walls; Smother (and silence / Null Spark exile) answer death-trigger bombs. Walls still beat face-rush that can't crack them; bombs still punish cluttered boards that trade without Smother.
Guard creatures cannot be forged with more than 2 Armor (extra Armor was wasted under the combat cap). High-HP Guards also pay a power-budget surcharge for each HP above 4, so fat walls cost more energy.
(Trait list is intentionally small at launch; new traits are a content lever for later seasons.)
8. Specials and Charge
A card's special is one of:
- Triggered (
onPlay,onDeath,onAttack,onDamaged): resolves automatically when the trigger fires. - Activated: costs Charge points. Creatures enter play with 0 Charge and gain 1 at the start of each of your turns (visible as a glowing pip on the board). Activating costs 1–3 Charge per the card's configuration and doesn't consume the creature's attack. Charge is the tempo engine — it lives on the creatures themselves.
Targets include creatures, heroes, and towers (random / chosen / all for each side).
Example cards the system can express:
- "Mudback Tortoise" — 2/9, Armor 2, Guard. When this dies, grant 2 Armor to all allies.
- "Ratfink Arsonist" — 4/3, Eager. Activated (2 Charge): apply Burn 2 to a chosen enemy.
- "Saint Lupa" — 3/6, Leech, Regenerate. When played, heal all allies 2.
- "Tower Warden" — 1/4, Guard. When played, restore 2 health to a chosen friendly tower.
9. Winning, records, and rewards
- Win by reducing the enemy hero to 0, or when the opponent concedes or stays disconnected for over 60 seconds (brief reconnects are allowed before that timeout).
- Results update each player's win/loss tallies (shown on profiles). Practice bot matches do not update W/L.
- PvP rewards: winner +3 Sparks, loser +1 Spark, only when both players have completed at least one full turn (engine turn ≥ 3). Early concede/disconnect still counts as a W/L but pays no Sparks. Caps: 15 rewarded games/day per player, and at most 2 rewarded games/day vs the same opponent (pair-level).
- Bot rewards: human win +1 Spark, loss 0 (same min-turn rule + daily 15 cap; no pair cap).
10. Balance during beta
Power budgets, trait costs, pack odds, status rules, and other balance numbers may change while we are in closed beta. Cards rejected by moderation cannot be used in games.