Rules
BATL Instructions
Intro
BATL is a hybrid card and board game with certain cards acting as the board. Players move on a field, playing cards from their decks to attack and debilitate their opponent(s) or heal and support themselves or their team. The goal of BATL is to reduce your opponent’s HP to zero, find and hold the three pieces of the Triune, or outlast your opponent when they run out of cards to draw.
Deck
A player’s deck consists of 60 cards. A deck can be made up of four types of cards, Basic, Combo, Equipment, and Resource. Typically, a deck will have 12 Resource, 12 Combo, 6 Equipment, and 30 Basic. A deck can be customized to include up to 4 copies of any Basic or Combo card, and is allowed to have as many Resource cards as needed, but must have 6 unique Equipment cards, no more, or less. A deck can be composed of cards from any class, and each class has a different class ability, resource pool, and set of cards associated with it.
Deck Card Types
Basic - No cost to play, unless specified by a resource cost.
Combo - Requires a card of the same class to be played first. May also require resource cost.
Equipment - Each character has a WEAPON and an ARMOR slot that can be taken up by their respective equipment. Some equipment takes both slots. A player can only equip one card per turn on their turn. A player may unequip freely on their turn, returning the equipment to the player's hand.
Resource - Gives a player resource of the designated class. Resource is required to use a character’s class ability, or to play cards that have a resource cost. The resource gained from the class and the resource gained from the effect of the card happen at once.
Tags - Basic and Combo cards may also have the tags ‘NOW’ , ‘PERMANENT’, or 'HIDDEN'.
NOW cards can be played at any time, including when it is not the player’s turn, as long as the player has enough resources to spend. NOW cards may interrupt an action, such as the card DODGE, but when this is the case it is specifically stated. Otherwise, NOW cards generally do not interrupt actions and would occur before any announced action that the player is intending to interrupt. In the occurrence of this, the interruption would happen, and then the interrupted action would be refunded.
PERMANENT cards stay in play, and do not resolve until otherwise removed. PERMANENT cards are distinct from other persisting cards like BEAR, because cards like BEAR would otherwise persist due to HP.
HIDDEN cards are placed facedown, while all opposing players close their eyes, and take the position of a previous land board card, which is not revealed and placed to the side. If a HIDDEN card is searched, or enters a searched square, the card becomes revealed, and HIDDEN ends. If a player makes a check against a HIDDEN target that does not have HP, the HIDDEN card would revert to it's original facedown state after being revealed. Alternatively a player may use graph paper to determine where the HIDDEN card was played. A player instead places the facedown card to the side of the board until triggered or revealed. The graph paper can be used to prove to the opponent the truth of the placement.
Setup
The playing field is made up of land and treasure cards, face down. A standard 1v1 match has a field of 36 cards, 6x6 in a grid shape. These cards can be Treasure (spring, apple, triune, etc) or empty (dirt, etc) land. The standard land deck contains 11 Treasure cards: 3 Triune cards, 2 Spring cards, 2 Apple cards, 2 Shrine cards, 2 Jewel cards, and the remaining 25 are dirt cards. Shuffle the land deck and deal out the map face down. Use a tracker (dice, paper, calculator) to track player Hit Points (HP), starting at 20. Players can have no more than 20 HP, excluding temporary HP. After choosing their decks, each player should shuffle, players place their character cards in opposite corners of the map on top of the land card. Players should leave room for playing Equipment, a discard pile, cards that will remain in play, a health tracker and their resource tracker. After deciding who will go first (higher dice roll, roshambo, etc), the starting player determines whether they will play first or draw first. The player who plays first will draw one card but gets to take their turn first. The other player will go second, but draws two cards. Players then draw a hand of six cards, if a player doesn’t like the initial hand drawn, they may sacrifice one draw from their initial turn to draw a new hand of six cards. This can continue until the player has no draws left on their initial turn and play can begin.
Playing the Game
On their turn, a player draws two cards before beginning play(unless it is the first turn and the player has chosen to play first), then in any order, they can take two actions, use their class ability once, equip an equipment from their hand, unequip an equipment from the field, and play any cards available. A player can hold up to 8 cards in their hand. At the end of a player's turn, if they hold more than 8 cards in hand, they must discard down to 8 cards. Treasure cards contribute to the hand limit and can be played and discarded the same as basic cards with no cost and no Class resource gained unless specified by the card. If a treasure card is discarded from a player’s hand, it returns to the field in an adjacent space chosen by the discarding player. Treasure is only removed from the battlefield once its effect resolves or unless otherwise discarded. A player may freely discard treasure cards from their hand on their turn.
Turn order: Resolution -> Draw -> Play/Actions -> Resolution -> Discard -> End
Each turn, a player has 2 Actions that they may use.
Actions are designated as follows:
Move - Move your character up to their movement speed (MS) in any direction.
Attack - Make an attack utilizing your current attack (ATK) stat on an enemy within your range. A player can check an in range board card by attacking it; this deals damage (DMG) and causes it to reveal, before returning the attacked card to a face-down state. A check reveals only the most recent HIDDEN entrant.
Search - Turn any adjacent battlefield card face up. Cannot search an occupied square. Reveals only the most recent entrant.
Take - Pick up an adjacent Treasure card on the battlefield and add it to your hand. If a Treasure card is picked up in this way, replace the empty space on the battlefield with a face up dirt card. Empty (dirt) Land cards cannot be taken. Cannot take from an occupied square.
Give - Place a Treasure card from the user's hand into an adjacent target's hand. Only applies to Treasure cards.
Two actions can be used in a turn, unless specified by a card or class ability (ex. Haste card and Burst ability) which allow for extra actions to be taken. Any extra action follows the same rules as a normal action.
On a player’s turn, they may use a total of one Class Ability.
Class Abilities are as follows:
A class card is any card of a class, which means every card in a player's deck, except equipment cards, are class cards . When playing class cards, players receive one resource of the designated class on the card, unless the card has a resource cost. Whenever a Basic or Combo card has a resource requirement, no resource is gained from playing these cards. Resource cards also count as class cards, granting +1 resource of the class and also have the card effect of giving +1 resource of the class, for a combined total gain of +2 resource of the class. Because Resource cards are class cards, they also can be used to trigger Combo cards of the same class. It is important to note that the class resource and the effect resource gained from a Resource card, are gained at once. This is in juxtaposition to other class cards, such as Basic and Combo cards, which grant the resource gain before initiating the effect of the card.
All cards must resolve naturally, and cannot be ended by the player’s choice. When a card is played, it resolves once the effect has finished or as designated by the card. A card with the same name CANNOT be played until the initial card has resolved. Cards that have the same effect and different names can be stacked together. This is loosely referred to as the "Same Name Rule".
Combat
When initiating an attack, subtract the target’s current defense (DEF) stat from the attacker's attack (ATK) stat. The leftover attack then becomes damage (DMG) which is subtracted from the target’s HP.
Example of play:
The Monk player plays the card Hit giving them +1 to their ATK until the end of their turn; it is also a Monk basic card with no cost, so they gain +1 Monk resource, in this case Ki. They then play the card Meditate, which is a Combo card that costs 1 Ki. The Monk has already played Hit, so the Combo prerequisite is met, and they also have one Ki from playing Hit on this turn so the resource prerequisite is met. Meditate will then stay in play until it is resolved on the Monk’s following turn. The player continues, playing a Ki card to gain +2 Ki, filling their Ki pool, and then spends the 2 Ki to use their Monk class ability Flow, preparing for the opponent's next attack. Flow will make the next attack against the Monk miss; then resolving. The Monk then uses one action to move their Movement Speed (MS) of 1, putting them in range of the other player. They then use their next action to attack their opponent. The Monk has a base ATK of 1, plus the +1 ATK from Hit for a total of 2 ATK. The DEF of the targeted player is 0. The attack then resolves as such; 2 ATK - 0 DEF = 2 DMG. 2 Damage (DMG) is dealt to the targeted player.
Stats
Hit Points (HP) - Starts at 20. Reduced from DMG. When it hits 0, the player or card is destroyed.
Resource - Specific to each class (MAD, KI, etc) and is used to play cards and use Class abilities. A player's resource pool cannot be reduced below 0. When a card denotes "RESOURCE" distinct from the specific type of resource such as KI, the resource gained is general and can be gained in any of the player's resource pools.
Attack (ATK) - Default = 1 - The damage dealt using the attack action. Attack cannot be reduced below 0.
Defense (DEF) - Default = 0 - Subtracts from ATK when being attacked. Defense cannot be reduced below 0.
Damage (DMG) - The result of ATK-DEF, or when cards specify dealing DMG, deal directly to HP without subtracting DEF. Often referred to as direct damage.
Movement Speed (MS) - Default = 1 - The amount of field squares a character can move in one movement action. Movement speed cannot be reduced below 0.
Range (RANGE) - Default = 1 - The range at which a character can make an attack action. Range cannot be reduced below 0. Default RANGE is adjacent.
Special Rules
Multiclassing - A deck can be made up of multiple classes. A player must have at least one Resource card of a class in their deck to gain access to that class ability and resource pool. If a player does not have at least one Resource card of a class that they have other cards of, when those class cards are played, no resource would be gained, as the player would not have the resource pool to store it.
Class Resource Gain - Normally when a no cost Basic card is played, the user gains +1 resource of the card's class type, and then the card's effect happens. This timing allows for situations like a priest playing a HEAL card, and then using the SPIRIT gained from the playing of the HEAL card, to BLESS the very same HEAL card. However Resource cards operate slightly different. When a Resource card is played, the resource gained from the class and the effect of the card, happen at once, disallowing the same timing as a Basic card.
More than 2 players - When playing with more players, increase the size of the field by 1 card in each direction. A 3 player game would be 49 cards as a 7x7, a 4 player game would be played with 64 cards as an 8x8. All additional filler land cards are Dirt. Players can play in teams, with each team starting on an opposing side of the board. Teams roll to decide which team goes first. The teams then decide in which order they will act, and play proceeds back and forth between the two teams after each player’s turn. When a player is defeated, play continues ignoring their turn. It is important to note that even in a multiplayer game, the player who goes on the very first turn, still only draws once on the first turn.
Maps - The field map can be however the players wish, given they agree on the setup, though this may not be tournament legal.