THE OBJECT OF THE SIEGE

Your opponent hides behind five face-down Walls, each holding a secret value from 1.0 to 5.0 — one of each. Behind the walls waits their Chosen One. Destroy all five walls, then defeat the Chosen One, and the match is yours. There is no HP bar to whittle down. Every attack is siege pressure.

YOUR DECK — 56 CARDS

• 5 Walls — values 1–5 are dealt to them randomly and secretly at the start of every match.
• 1 Chosen One — a character that BRINGS FORTH free or for one offering (no stat above 2.5).
• 10 Abilities — character-locked powers. They wait at your ABILITY station, private to you.
• 40 Main Deck — your draw pile: 25 characters and 15 tactics cards (Pitfalls, Spells, Attachments).

Every deck is full singleton — one copy of any card. The Deck Builder teaches each limit as you build.

THE BATTLEFIELD

• Your Walls stand in a row of five, face-down, between you and the enemy.
• The Play Row (5 slots) is where your characters fight — face-up or face-down, upright for ATK or sideways for DEF.
• The Tactics Row (5 slots) holds your set Pitfalls, Spells and Attachments.
• The back stations: your Deck, your private Ability pile, your hidden Chosen One, the Abyss (where fallen cards go), and the Fusion station (arrives in a future update).

A TURN, STEP BY STEP

A coin call decides who goes first — Heads, Tails, or the legendary 1-in-100 Middle. Both players start with five cards; that opening hand is your first draw, so neither player draws on their very first turn, and the first player's first turn has no Battle Phase.

• Draw — take one card: the top of your deck or any ability from your pile. Hold at most 5 — at 5, you choose a card for the Abyss before drawing.
• Main — bring forth or set one character, and use one tactics card. One of each per turn, no more.
• Battle — every face-up ATK character may attack once.
• Main 2 — reposition, set cards. No second character.
• End — lingering effects tick, and the turn passes.

BRINGING FORTH — THE OFFERING LADDER

A character's price is its highest stat. You pay by sending your own on-field characters to the Abyss.

• A face-down set costs exactly the same as bringing the card forth openly — it just stays hidden.
• A paid bring-forth may be declared with a full row: the offerings leave first and make room.
• UPDATED · BETA.01The Desperation Bring-Forth: locked out with no character on your row? You have exactly one escape — once per match, and never on your first turn. While all 5 of your walls still stand and you hold a full hand of 5, sacrifice 2 of your own walls — pick the two yourself or let fate pick, both blind (walls hide their values even from you) — and toss your 4 other hand cards into the Abyss to field any character from your hand, face-up. It burns 40% of your fortress and your entire hand: the single riskiest play in the game, for when desperation is all that's left. The character may attack that very turn, and its two-wall sacrifice outranks every ladder summon for leading group attacks.

THE WALLS

• Attack a wall and it flips: if your ATK is higher than its value, it shatters and is gone for the rest of the match — walls are never rebuilt or replaced.
• If the wall is stronger, your attacker is destroyed by the recoil. Equal — both stand.
• After any reveal, the surviving face-down walls shuffle positions. Nobody gets to memorize the fortress.
• The Garrison Rule: while any character stands on the defender's Play Row, their walls cannot be attacked. A face-up garrison blocks the declaration outright; if only face-down cards stand there, you may declare — and a hidden character will intercept your strike. Only explicit card effects pierce past a standing garrison.
• Attacking any face-down card is always legal. If it turns out not to be a character, your strike passes through to the fortress — an interceptor or a random wall takes it.

WALL SELECTION — PRICED LUCK

Many effects are paid by blind-picking a wall and hoping for the value the card demands. Meet the requirement and the effect lands, often scaling with the number revealed. Miss, and the effect fizzles — with the stated penalty.

BATTLE

• ATK vs ATK: the lower attack falls.
• ATK vs DEF: beat the defense and the defender falls; fail and you are repelled — nobody dies.
• Equal stats spark the Wall-Draw Tiebreaker: each player blind-picks an enemy wall, both reveal, the higher value wins the fight. No wall is harmed.
• Attacking a face-down character flips it first; anything that triggers on the flip resolves before the clash.

RESPONSES — AND WHAT A TRAP REALLY STOPS

• When you declare an attack, the defender may spring a set Pitfall or quick Spell in response.
• If the response destroys your attacker, the attack fizzles — a dead attacker fights no battle. The defender is safe.
• If the response misses (a failed wall pick), your attacker survives and the battle resolves as declared.
• In a group attack, a trap that fells one member does not stop the rest: the survivors press on with their combined strength. The battle announces it when a thinned assault continues.

FIGHTING AS ONE

GROUP ATTACKS

• Two or more face-up ATK characters may strike one target as a single attack with summed ATK.
• A group must be your first attack of the turn, and it marches only under your highest-priced bring-forth — your biggest investment leads every charge.
• All or nothing: if the target is stronger than the whole group, the entire group falls. Equal totals spare everyone.
• Group attacks can reach the Chosen One once its guards are gone — fell it and win, or lose the whole force and reveal its might.

ALL DEFEND

• You may end your turn by forming your whole row into one formation: every character flips face-up into DEF, and any attack against a member faces their combined DEF.
• It must be your turn's whole defensive statement — no attacks or lone defensive moves first — and it needs a paid bring-forth to anchor it.
• Break the formation and every member falls. Fail to break it and the attackers are repelled — or, if it was a group that came up short, the beaten group falls instead.

THE CHOSEN ONE

• It hides face-down at its station behind your walls. Its identity is secret until it must act.
• Sortie: at any time — even mid-enemy-turn — pay one character offering to send it to your Play Row. Sortied Chosen Ones of both sides return behind the walls at the end of the turn.
• With nothing to offer, a sortie can be paid with a blind wall sacrifice — but a wall-paid Chosen One is revealed for the rest of the match and stands stranded on the row until you buy its retreat with a character offering.
• A Chosen One that wins a battle also stands revealed forever — it showed the world its strength.
• While any wall stands, the Chosen One cannot be targeted (barring pierce effects). Even with the walls down, standing characters guard it — they are struck instead.

TACTICS CARDS & ABILITIES

• Pitfalls set face-down and spring on their trigger. Spells cast from hand on your turn (quick spells respond like pitfalls). Attachments equip a character and persist.
• One tactics card per turn — a set, a cast, an equip, a manual flip or a manual ability all spend the same single use. Responses to the enemy are free.
• Abilities are your deck's ten signature moves, each locked to its character or archetype. They sit unshuffled and private at your ABILITY station — your turn draw may take one instead of the deck top. They work through their character on the field; continuous abilities attach to it and fall with it.
• UPDATED · BETA.01Stacking: a character carries up to 5 attached cards — equipped Attachments and continuous Abilities share those five slots. Stacks build one per turn (the one-tactics-card rule paces them — never five in one shot), a second copy of the same continuous card is refused as a contradiction, and every ability still obeys its own requirements — a power that needs its character face-down can't fire face-up. At five the character is full: no further attachments of either kind until one falls. The whole stack falls with its character.

WINNING & LOSING

• Win by destroying all five enemy walls and then defeating the Chosen One — or through a card that says it wins the game.
• Lose instantly if your Chosen One is destroyed, anywhere.
• Run both your deck and your ability pile dry with a draw due, and the siege has outlasted you — you lose.
• Forfeiting concedes the match. It is always allowed, at any moment.

PLAYING ONLINE

• RANKED — climb the ladder: everyone starts at Bronze; every 10 ranked wins raises your class, losses push you back. Classes run Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and at the summit, Honor — home of the Global Top 100.
• SPARRING — a real opponent, zero rank impact. Practice, experiment, feud — your standing never moves.
• Turn time is your choice: pick the clock you want (5 to 60 seconds a turn) and you'll only meet players who chose the same. Your pick is saved as your default.
• Forfeiting a ranked match costs 5 rating on top of the loss — leaving mid-match is a forfeit. Disconnected? You have 60 seconds to reconnect and resume.

CONTROLS

ON PC

• Everything answers to the mouse and the keyboard: arrows move the gold focus ring, Enter confirms, Esc backs out. Letter hotkeys fire menu rows directly. Gamepads work everywhere.
• Hover any card for a readable close-up. Esc opens the pause menu in a match; Alt+Enter or F11 toggles fullscreen.

ON MOBILE

• The game fills your whole screen — portrait or landscape, your call. Your first tap takes it truly fullscreen.
• Tap a card to read it: a big close-up pins to the screen. Tap the big card to use it, or tap outside to put it away. No accidental moves from a reading tap.
• In-match menus and the turn timer render extra large on phones.

HONOR OF HEARTS Beta.01 is an early, free prototype — rules are refined between versions, and this page moves with them. The characters and cards shown are placeholders owned by their original creators, included solely to demonstrate the mechanics; official characters and cards arrive as development continues.

CHANGELOG — July 21 2026 (Beta.01): the old turn-one emergency wall payment is gone, replaced by the once-per-match Desperation Bring-Forth; characters now stack up to 5 attached abilities/attachments. Announced in NEWS.