How to play Quad Arena

The goal

Two players, a 4×4 board, 5 cards each. You take turns placing one card on an empty cell. When all 10 cards are down, whoever owns more cards on the board wins. Equal counts are a draw.

Each match locks 1 to 5 cells at random, and a coin toss decides who goes first.

Your cards

A card has up to 8 arrows, on its sides and corners, and four stats at the bottom. 4M22 means Power 4, attack type M, physical defence 2 and magical defence 2.

Stats go from 0 to 15 and are written as one character each: A is 10, B is 11, and so on up to F for 15. Your cards are blue, the opponent's are magenta.

Capturing

Arrows point at neighbouring cells. When you place a card, look at the opponent's cards it points at. If none of them points back at your card, they all flip to your side.

If any of them points back, it defends itself, and your card battles instead. A turn either battles or captures, never both: the cards that don't point back are then left alone.

Battles

If one card points back, your card battles it. If several do, you choose which one to fight. After a win your card keeps going and battles the next one that points back. A loss ends your turn.

The attack type decides which stats fight. P: Power against physical defence. M: Power against magical defence. X: Power against the lower of the two defences. A: the attacker's best stat against the defender's weakest.

Both stats get a random roll, so the higher stat usually wins, but not always. A tie goes to the defender. The losing card flips to the winner's side, and that includes your own card when it loses.

Combos

After a battle, the losing card drags its neighbours along: every card it points at flips to the winner as well, unless that card points back at it and holds its ground. Combos don't chain.

Careful: when your attacking card loses, its combo can flip your own cards that it points at.

Upgrades

A card that wins a battle may upgrade. Rarely its type: P or M becomes X (1 chance in 64), and X becomes A (1 in 128). More often the stat it battled with grows by 1 (1 chance in 16), up to 2 above what that card normally has. Each upgrade raises the card's level and its price, and the card keeps it. CPU cards upgrade too, and a card you win with stakes keeps its upgrades.

Points and stakes

A win against the CPU pays 100 points at level 0, and more at each level up to 325 at level 5. Draws and losses pay nothing.

Stakes are off unless you turn them on before a match. With stakes, the winner takes one card they captured (you pick when you win), or all 5 of the loser's cards after a perfect win, where the winner owns every card on the board.

Giving up counts as a loss. With stakes on, the CPU then takes one card it has captured, if any.

Opponents

There are 6 CPU levels, all open from the start, each with stronger cards than the one below. Now and then a CPU brings a card from the next level up, so a stakes win can get you a stronger card early.

Against people, Find opponent pays 200 points for a win and 50 each for a draw. Play a friend gives you a code to share, and those matches are for fun: no points, and your cards keep no upgrades. No cards change hands against people, and each move has a 30-second timer.

The shop

Buy cards with your points. A card sells back for 50% of its price, but one you won from an opponent for only 5%. A card's price grows with its level and with every match it has played.

Don't like a card in the shop? New card swaps it for another of the same kind, for 10% of its price.