FIELD MANUAL // 02

Your Turn

Deploy, attack, occupy, and reinforce — the four phases of a turn

Turn Structure

Each turn follows a fixed sequence of phases: deploy, attack, occupy, and reinforce. A start phase happens automatically before you take control — this is when cards are earned, penalties applied, and agreements activated. You don’t interact with the start phase directly; by the time you see the board, it has already resolved.

After reinforce, your turn ends and the next player’s begins. Between turns, every player gets one between-turn action (covered in Chapter 4: Negotiation).

Deploy Phase

You receive troops at the start of your turn based on the number of territories you hold. The more ground you control, the more reinforcements arrive.

Base deploy floor: You always receive at least 3 troops per turn, even if you hold fewer than 3 territories. This floor is configurable in custom games (range: 2-10).
Bonus zones: Some maps define bonus zones — groups of territories that award extra troops when you control every territory in the zone. These bonuses stack with your base deploy.
Negative bonus zones: A map author can set a zone’s reward to a negative value. Holding every territory in a negative zone imposes a penalty instead of a reward — fewer deploys on your turn, or a negative pull on your card tick. Negative rewards render in bold red on the scoreboard, node inspector, and map so you can read the risk before you commit. Use them deliberately: a negative zone is a trap a map author has laid for anyone who over-extends.

Place your troops on any territory you own. You can split them across multiple territories in any combination.

The deploy phase interface — The deploy phase. Select a territory and place available troops.

Attack Phase

Select an enemy territory adjacent to one of yours. Combat is dice-based — both attacker and defender roll, and casualties are resolved per roll.

You can attack multiple times per turn. Strike from different territories, hit the same target repeatedly, or spread your aggression across the map. There is no limit on the number of attacks per turn.

Three Attack Modes

The attack widget has three modes, selectable via the ATTACK / BLITZ / STOP LOSS toggle below the source/target header:

ATTACK (default) — resolves a single round of dice per click. You lose at most one troop per attack, no slider needed, and the engagement ends after one exchange. Precise and low-risk — useful for probing defences, chipping away at a border, or kicking off a game before you’ve decided how aggressive you want to be. Every new game opens in this mode.
BLITZ — the server rolls repeatedly until the defender is wiped or your commit slider runs out. The slider sits in the panel footer with a range of 1 up to (source troops − 1) and seeds at (source − 2). Drag it down to commit fewer forces; drag it up — past the seed — to enter the all-but-one classic-Risk regime where a 4-troop source can throw 3 attackers for a full 3-dice roll. The default seed of 2 keeps you off the last-troop edge unless you drag there deliberately. Fast but commits resources — a bad streak can cost you the source.
STOP LOSS — the server rolls repeatedly with a built-in risk-tolerance threshold. The footer slider lets you set a percent (in 5% steps, max 95%) below which the engine auto-aborts the chain mid-blitz. Above the slider sits a hatched “do not enter” zone — the cap reflects what’s actually achievable for the current matchup, not just the slider’s max. When the threshold trips, the odds pill in the header flashes red briefly so you know the abort wasn’t a manual click. Use STOP LOSS when you want the speed of blitz without surrendering control if the dice turn against you.

Mode choice sticks within a game. Whichever chip you last tapped is remembered for the rest of the game across target changes, attacks, turns, and even page refresh — so once you’ve picked the mode you like for an opponent, you don’t have to keep re-selecting it. Closing the game and starting a new one resets to ATTACK.

BLITZ + STOP LOSS are gated below 4 troops. If your selected source has 3 or fewer troops, both blitz-shaped chips render muted and tap-inert; the widget falls back to ATTACK rendering even if your sticky preference is BLITZ or STOP LOSS. Below the floor blitz would open with 1 die per round against a defender rolling up to 2 — bad math, so the widget steers you to single-shot ATTACK. Add troops or pick a stronger source to re-enable the other two modes; the next time you reach a 4+ source your previously-sticky choice comes back automatically.

The attack phase in ATTACK mode — ATTACK mode — one dice roll per click. No slider needed; the toggle's leftmost chip is the new default.

The attack phase in BLITZ mode — BLITZ mode — drag the commit slider to set how many troops to throw; the server rolls until the defender wipes or your reserve floor (1) is reached.

The attack phase in STOP LOSS mode — STOP LOSS mode — set a risk threshold; the server halts the blitz chain if your per-round odds dip below it.

Occupy Phase

After conquering an enemy territory, you must move troops into it. Choose how many to transfer from the attacking territory — but both the source and the new territory must retain at least 1 troop each.

Occupying a territory is immediate. The captured node adds to your territory count right away, which means it contributes to your card tick progress for this turn.

The occupy phase interface — After conquering a territory, choose how many troops to move in.

Reinforce Phase

The final phase lets you reposition troops between territories you already own. Select a source and a destination — troops will path through connected friendly territories automatically using shortest-path routing.

As always, the source territory must retain at least 1 troop after the transfer. Use this phase to consolidate defences, stack a border, or prepare for next turn’s offensive.