Funds 0
Income 0
Turn 1
Blue to move
Commander Wren
Commander Wren takes the table. Meet her, then begin the battle for Terra. Tap any hex to inspect its terrain and whatever stands on it.
No battle in progress yet. Start a battle to see live objective progress.
Original procedural synth score: one minimal motif, with a variation for each board — the Terra Table theme on the start screen, and Twin Bays, Pinewall, Mare Dust and the Belt each revoicing it as their battle begins. Menu, battle and tense moods throughout. Sound mixes with other apps; volume choices are kept on this device.
The battle saves itself on this device as you play.
Start a fresh battle on another board; the current battle is replaced. A saved battle always resumes on its own board.
One commander leads on the Terra table: Wren, enhanced infantry on foot in powered armor, a scout drone hovering at her shoulder. She is the only commander on this battlefield — the red force opposing her is a commander-less mechanized column, richer and fielding an extra recon, whose only eyes are steel. Wren's gift is seeing the table before the enemy does. Her aura reaches 2 hexes: foot units inside it capture faster and hold cover like veterans.
Start a fresh battle on any board; the current battle is replaced. A saved battle always resumes on its own board.
Six boards against the CPU, on the miniature table.
Turn: tap one of your blue miniatures, tap a softly lit hex to move, then tap a red enemy in range: the segmented health bar above it previews the hit — the segments the shot would remove glow as a red ghost on the tail of its bar, and a second bar beneath shows the counterattack it would deal back the same way. Tap it again, or tap the crosshair beside it, to strike. Indirect units (Artillery, Rockets, deployed Siege) may move and fire in the same turn. The Siege must deploy in place before it can fire its long-range splash shot, and cannot move while deployed. Or skip the walking: with one of your units selected, tap a red enemy it could reach and shoot this turn and it closes to the best firing hex on its own — cheapest move first, then the best cover — and the forecast waits there for your confirming tap; if no legal move puts the shot on, the tap just inspects the enemy, as always. When every unit has acted, End Turn lights up. A unit whose only remaining choice is the checkmark is finished on its own: once it has moved and nothing but Wait (and maybe Undo) is left to it, it settles as acted without being asked — and a tower or held Monolith Array with no enemy inside its firing band no longer holds the turn open either.
Capture: park Infantry, Mech or Wren herself on a property and choose Capture. Capturing takes two turns, faster inside Wren's aura. The clock is always visible: the Capture button says how many turns are left, the status bar repeats it for whoever is capturing (yours or the enemy's), and a small pennant on the property fills as the capture advances. Towns, factories and the relay pay income each turn; factories build new units. Capturing the enemy HQ wins at once. Units standing on their own towns, factories and HQ recover 2 HP at the start of their turn — repairs are free.
Win three ways: capture the enemy HQ, rout every enemy unit (artifacts are captured structures, not units — an army whose last unit falls loses even while it holds one), or capture the central relay and hold it for 3 of your turns — that third way belongs to the Terra table; the other boards are won by HQ capture or rout.
Boards: six tables, chosen from the board picker on the start screen or the Boards list in the menu's Game section. Board 1 is the introductory Terra table, weighted a little toward Blue. Twin Bays adds water — impassable to vehicles and waded slowly by infantry — with bridges for everything else. Pinewall is the forest-and-mountain fog table, a town holding its central pass. Mare Dust is Luna: crater fields give forest cover and hiding, highlands stand in for hills, and neither army fields a copter in the thin air. The Belt is deep space: every unit is a ship, asteroid fields hide and cover like forest, dense clusters block movement and sight entirely, and stations — a Command Station, Docks and Habitats — replace towns, with a Monolith Array and a Levitating Gyre waiting in screened pockets at the top edge. First Contact is an alien world: spore groves hide and cover like forest, crystal highlands stand in for hills, acid pools bar every vehicle — and the red army there is a living alien brood (Skitters, Burrowers, Stalkers, a Behemoth, Spitters and Shriekers) hatched from a Broodmother Hive under a Hive Heart, with a Biolume Spire and a Monolith Array waiting in screened pockets at the top edge. It is a first-contact preview: alien stats mirror the human classes they match, so the engine and balance stay stable; unique alien abilities — burrowing, swarming and the like — are future campaign design and are not in this pass.
Surround and support: each of your units standing beside the target beyond the first adds about +10% damage and blunts the counterattack. When a strike is armed, each supporting unit shows a gold marker, the target's outline deepens, and the damage ghost on the target's bar turns gold while the surround bonus is boosting the shot; a target whose whole bar pulses is about to be destroyed. The mirror rule defends: every friendly unit standing beside a unit that is attacked — drones, towers and held artifacts count, and towers and artifacts can themselves be supported — cuts the damage it takes by 10%, up to 50% for five allies, though a hit that deals damage at all still deals at least 1. Support blunts counterattacks too: when a defender strikes back, the original attacker's own neighbours support it the same way. In the forecast, the segments a defender is spared by support show as pale steel segments, distinct from the red damage ghost and the gold surround portion.
Movement and terrain: roads, bridges and property hexes are fast for everyone (1). Open ground costs wheels 2, so vehicles range farthest along roads; forest costs foot 1, tracked 2, wheels 3; hills cost foot and tracked 2, wheels 3. Vehicles can never enter water — bridges are their only crossing — while infantry types wade through at cost 3 and may end a move there. Battle Copters fly at cost 1 over everything except hills and mountains, which they cannot cross or land on at all; drones fly high and cross anything at cost 1. Tap any hex to inspect it: the readout lists that hex's terrain values — its defense stars and percentage, the movement cost for foot, wheeled, tracked, low-air and high-air units (or Impassable), and its special rules — alongside whatever stands on it; a hex the fog has never scouted shows nothing until it is explored.
Range preview: selecting one of your units — or inspecting a visible enemy, a manned tower or a held artifact — previews its reach on the table: the brighter band is what it can hit from the hex it stands on, and the lighter envelope around it is every hex it could hit after moving as far as it legally can this turn, dead zones and high-ground bonuses included. A unit that has already spent its turn keeps the same picture in a dimmer, dashed grey — a measuring tool for next turn, never a live threat — and an enemy's is drawn red, as the full move-and-fire it could make on its next turn. Unarmed units show their movement only, and a packed Siege shows no fire envelope until it deploys. Buildings carry no hex outline: their owner's color tints the rim of the pad they stand on — blue, red, or plain stone while neutral — and every pad sits grounded in the terrain.
Fog: unexplored table lies in shadow, and sight on this table is short: most units see only 2 hexes, medium tanks and battle copters 3, and the recon — the army's dedicated eyes — 4. Explored ground stays dim and shows no units. Forest hides a unit unless an enemy stands next to it; hills and forests block sight lines. Finding the enemy before it finds you is the game: push recons and drones forward, and expect the red column to be doing the same with its recons. Wren's drones are the exception: whatever a drone can reach with its sensors is fully revealed, forest or no forest. One mercy for flyers: a shot at a copter or drone from ordinary ground fire has a 25% chance to miss entirely — anti-air guns, other aircraft, and the Monolith Array's heavy shot never miss that way, and the forecast says so when the chance applies.
Commander Wren: only the blue army fields a commander. Wren is enhanced infantry on foot: she crosses forest, hills and rough ground at foot cost, takes infantry cover and forest hiding, is targeted as infantry rather than as a vehicle, can capture, and carries commander-grade firepower — she out-guns infantry and mechs outright and edges a tank against soft targets, though heavy armor still out-shoots her. Her aura reaches 2 hexes: foot units inside it capture faster, and infantry holding forest or a property inside it gains extra cover. If she is downed, she returns at her HQ after 3 turns at full strength, and while she is down no new drones can launch. She is built to grow with the campaign to come: each completed level will raise her maximum health by 2, up to 20 — in this battle she fights at 10, like everyone else. The red column has no commander, no aura and no drones — it compensates with extra funds and an extra recon.
Drones: tap Wren and choose Launch Drone; launching spends her attack for the turn, but never her move — she may launch and then move, or move and then launch, in either order, though she cannot also strike in a turn where she launches. She may keep at most two drones aloft, and she carries four launches per battle in total — a lost drone does not refund one, and the button shows how many are left. A drone flies 6 hexes over any ground and cannot end its move on an occupied hex. Its sensors fully reveal everything within 3 hexes, including units hidden in forest, which makes it the best way to learn a new table. And it stings now: a light shot at range 1 (25 against infantry, less against armour), earning kill credit and veterancy like any unit. It is still fragile: a single solid hit from anything that can target air brings it down, and anti-air guns are its natural counter. As Wren gains levels in later battles, her drones will branch by your preference into offensive, defensive, repair and capture models.
Towers: Infantry, Mech and Wren can raise a tower for 1500 funds on plains, forest, hills or road. The builder becomes the tower's garrison and leaves the board as a separate piece: the army trades a unit for reach. A manned tower sees 3 hexes and can fire once a turn at range 2 with a mech-class shot, and enemies that strike it may be answered in kind. The garrison is safe while the tower stands; if the tower is destroyed, the garrison reappears on the hex at half strength, exhausted. Tap your tower and choose Unman Tower: the garrison steps out whole and rested next turn, but an unmanned tower goes dormant, seeing only its own hex and unable to fire, until a friendly foot unit steps in and mans it again. An enemy foot unit standing on your tower captures it over two turns, just like a property; when the capture completes, the tower changes hands and any garrison inside is thrown out at half strength. Towers cannot be automated yet; that upgrade arrives with later battles.
Artifacts: offworld tables — never Earth — hide Precursor artifacts in screened pockets away from the main battle lanes: a real detour to reach, never impossible, and able to swing a battle. All three kinds are captured like properties over two turns. All three sit dark and dormant while neutral, and all three light up with teal energy the moment they are captured and held — and like every building they carry no hex outline: the rim of the pad beneath each one is tinted in its owner's color (blue, red, or plain stone while neutral), and that rim says whose it is. None of them is a unit: holding an artifact never keeps an army alive, and an army whose last real unit falls loses even while it holds one.
Monolith Array (the weapon): a defense system built by a civilization that vanished long ago — three sleek obsidian fins around a teal lens, still humming with power. Until it is captured it attacks both teams: its weapon fires on its own at anyone from either army who lingers in range 2–3. Whoever holds it gains +250 income a turn and harnesses the weapon: a held Array is aimed by its holder, exactly like a manned tower — tap it and its targets in range 2–3 light up; tap one to see the forecast, tap again (or tap the crosshair) to fire. It gets one shot per round — and if you end your turn without firing it, it stays silent: manual means manual. The enemy aims it the same way on its turn. It can be re-captured, and the weapon flips with it, but a flip grants no extra shot that round.
Levitating Gyre (reach): segmented alien-alloy rings turning around a captive core. It carries no weapon and pays no income, and while neutral it is simply inert. While held, it sees 5 hexes for its owner — fog lifts around it as from a watch post — and friendly units that begin their activation within 3 hexes of it move +1 for that activation. The gift is judged where the unit starts: beginning outside the reach and crossing it mid-move grants nothing.
Biolume Spire (sustain): a grown, biomechanical crown of a machine, part organism and part engine. It carries no weapon and is inert while neutral. While held it pays +150 a turn, and at the start of its holder's turn every friendly unit within 1 hex of the Spire recovers +2 HP up to its maximum — the usual healing exclusions apply (no drones, tower garrisons, APC passengers or structures, and the Spire never heals itself).
Veterans: units earn experience and rank chevrons (about +10% damage per rank) and keep a personal kill count, shown with a skull badge. Drone kills credit the shooter; tower kills credit the tower.
Forgiveness: a unit that has only moved can undo its move with the Undo Move button in the action panel. A move that reveals new ground or a hidden enemy cannot be taken back. The battle saves itself as you play; resume it from the menu's Game section.
Inspecting the table: tap any hex and the status bar fixed at the bottom of the screen shows that hex's terrain on the left and, when a unit or tower you can see stands there, its full details on the right. The bar is permanent and the map fills exactly the space above it, so no hex or unit is ever hidden behind it. The table is larger than the map area and drags to pan in every direction; the menu (top-right) holds the objectives with live progress, sound settings, these rules, kill counts, the battle log and game controls, so the table itself stays clear. If several things share one hex — a unit standing on an artifact, a tower or a factory — tapping the hex opens a small chooser listing what is there, so you can pick exactly what to select.