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BattleCon - Basic Rule Explanations
1. Goal of the game
The goal of Battlecon is to defeat your opponent over a number of rounds (or Beats as the game calls them) by reducing their Life Points to 0.
Every player starts with 20 Life Points and the game continues until one player reaches 0 or 15 Beats have passed, after which case the player with the higher life count wins.
2. About Attack Pairs
Attack Pairs are what makes up your character's attack in Battlecon. To form an Attack Pair, you choose a Style and a Base from your hand. The attacks total Range, Power and Priority is determined by the values of the base modified by the character's Style card.
A legal Attack Pair, showing the Retribution Strike attack
Before a Beat begins, both players submit their Attack Pairs face-down (i.e you send it to me via mail so that your opponent doesn't see your strategy).
3. The Reference Sheet
To make this forum game a bit more accesible, I've provided Reference Sheets for all characters, which give an overview of that characters abilities. The Reference Sheet contains the following information:
A - The Unique Ability, or UA, of the character. This effect is active at all times during the game and a big part of their strategy.
B - The character's Attack Styles. These provide modifiers to your base attacks, as well as a variety of effects. Styles are identified by the [RED], [Orange], [Yellow], [Green], [Blue] symbols on the card, as well as the Range, Power and Priority values on the right side of the card. Styles make up half of an attack pair.
C - The characters Bases. These cards form the basis of your attack. They are identified by a colourful background, as well as the Range, Power and Priority values being on the left side of the card. Bases make up the other half of an attack pair. Aside from the unique grey-coloured Base, all characters have the same Attack Bases.
D - The characters Finishing Moves. This attack is not modified by your Styles or Bases and replaces your Attack Pair when played. When the game begine, every player picks one of the two Finishers to use.
Please refer to the section about the Special Action for information on how to activate your Finisher.
4. The Game Board
In a standard 2 player game, the game board is made up of 7 spaces which characters stand on during the fight. The edges of the board are solid, so if someone stands on the far left or right edge, they're trapped in the corner, so watch out!
Players start the game on Positions 2 and 6, respectively
The game board with starting character positions
In addition, each player also has a token pool, for gathering various status effects and two Discard Piles, where used up attacks are placed and recycled. These mechanics will be explained in detail in the Turn Order section.
Before the game begins, every player picks 2 Attack Pairs and puts them in his two discard piles. In addition, players also pick their Finisher to use during the game.
5. Special Effects and other Terms
Before I get to describing how a Beat plays out, I'll first go over a few additional base terms you need to be familiar with:
Advancing - This means moving toward your opponent.
Life Loss - Some card effects make characters lose life points. However, Life Loss is different from Damage in that it does not trigger other card effects (Like On Damage effects). In addition, a character cannot go below 1 Life Point from Life Loss.
Pull - This means moving the opponent towards you.
Push - This means moving the opponent away from you.
Retreat - This means moving away from your opponent.
Soak - Soak is a defensive ability. Whenever you take damage, you reduce the total damage of the attack by your Soak value. So a 3 damage attack would only do a single point of damage if you have Soak 2.
Stunned - A special effect that occurs when your opponent breaks your Stun Guard. Stunned characters cannot attack during this beat, essentially skipping your attack for a turn if you go second !
Stun Guard - Stun Guard is the other defensive ability that characters can have. It indicates how much damage your opponent has to do in order to stun your character during this beat. For instance, if your character has Stun Guard 2, your opponent must do 3 or more damage with his attack to stun you. Without additional card effects, players have no Stun Guard on their own!
Stun Immunity - Essentially the most powerful way to prevent Stun. Even card effects that specifically stun characters do not work if that character has Stun Immunity.
6. Special Action
In addition to his Styles and Bases, every player also has a Special Action in their hand to play. To play the Special Action, you pair the Special Action with a Base card of your choice, similar to forming an Attack Pair. Depending on the Base you chose, one of three effects is activated. You only get a single Special Action though, so make sure you time it right!
a) Finisher
To use your Finisher, use the Special Action together with Strike, Drive, or your character's unique Base (that is, the one with the grey background), while having 7 or fewer Life Points. The Finisher counts as a full Attack Pair and is not modified by Style cards.
When you have more than 7 life when starting a Finisher, you perform a Cancel instead.
b) Cancel
To perform a Cancel, use your Special Action with Shot or Grasp. When you reveal your Cancel, your opponent immediatly discards his Attack Pair. Then, both players choose new Attack Pairs. Cancel is a great option to use if you fear you opponent is about to play a powerful attack, disrupting your play and giving you more time before his discarded cards can be used again.
c) Pulse
Pulses are activated with Burst or Dash. When a Pulse is triggered, your opponents Attack Pair is ignored. In addition, you get to rearrange both player characters, putting both on whatever board positions you want. Also, End of Beat effects that would normally be triggered (like a characters Unique Ability) are ignored instead.
7. Turn Order
And now for the big one, the explanation on how to actually play Battlecon. ;P
In addition to describing the 5 phases of a Beat, I'll also go over how this'll work in terms of the thread.
A Beat is made up out of these 5 phases:
a. Setting Attack Pairs
At the very beginning of every Beat, every player sets their Attack Pair in secret (send me mail so your opponent doesn't see!). After both players have set Attack Pairs, we move on to the Ante Phase.
b. Ante Phase
During the Ante Phase, both players take turns anteing Tokens in their Token Pool. The ways in which the individual Tokens work is described in your character's Unique Ability so check the Reference Sheet for clarification.
In the first Beat, the first player to Ante is chosen at random. For every other Beat, the player that had priority during the previous turn is the first to Ante. We move on to the Reveal Phase once both players decline to Ante in succession.
c. Reveal Phase
After the Ante Phase, both players reveal their chosen Attack Pairs. The player with the higher priority value is the Active player and gets to act first during this Beat. In case both players have the same priority, a Clash occurs. Whenever both players clash, they each have to pick a new base, essentially forming a new Attack Pair for this Beat.
After Revealing the Attack Pairs, activate "Reveal: " card effects if there are any. Before moving on to the Attack Phase, both players activate "Start of Beat: " effects, with the Active Player doing so first.
d. Attack Phase
The Attack Phase starts with the Active Player activating his "Before Activating: " card effects printed on his Attack Pair (note that I'll handle most of these card activation effects myself as the moderator, assuming the effect doesn't require the player making a choice, so don't worry too much about it ;P).
After card effects are resolved, the Range of the Attack Pair determines whether or not the attack succesfully hits the opponent. If the enemy is in range, "On Hit:" card effects are activated.
When you've hit your enemy, the damage done to the opponent is calculated and applied to their life points. In addition, "On Damage:" card effects are activated at this time.
If the damage you've dealt to the other player is greater than their Stun Guard, the Reactive Player is considered stunned, meaning he cannot attack OR activate any card effects which would normally be resolved during the Attack Phase. If the opponent is not stunned, his Attack plays out the same way.
e. Recycle Phase
The final phase before the start of a new Beat is the Recycle Phase. This is when all "End of Beat:" effects are activated, starting with the active player.
In addition, both players manage their Discard Piles in the following way:
1. The cards in Pile 2 get returned to the players hand.
2. The cards in Pile 1 are moved to Pile 2.
3. The Attack Pair that was used during this Beat gets moved into Pile 1.
Note that this means you need to wait a number of turns before you're able to reuse certain attacks, so keep this in mind when thinking up a strategy.
8. Conclusion
And that's basically everything as a Crash Course summary. A bit complicated at first, I know, but it's a lot easier to follow after playing out a Beat or two.
If you're still struggling with the rules, I've linked Youtube videos in the OP, which probably explain everything much better than I did. :P