The Solwaris rules

A Solwaris duel fits in one sentence: each in turn, you spend action points to cast spells and movement points to move, until one of the two falls. Everything else — ranges, lines of sight, pushes, traps — is there to decide who falls first.

The board and placement

The arena is a grid seen from above. Four maps rotate: Oak Clearing, Low Ruins, the Colosseum and the Bastion, between 375 and 463 playable tiles depending on the map. Only three kinds of tile: free, obstacle, and void (outside the arena).

Before the match, each player picks their starting tile inside their zone, in 25 seconds. It is not a formality: starting behind a wall, or out in the open in the middle of a lane, often decides the first exchange. Once the time is up, the game places you automatically on a free tile in the zone.

The initiative bid

The draw decides who plays first, then the other has 5 seconds to buy the initiative back. Each raise goes up by a step of 100 coins and restarts the clock for the opponent. When nobody follows any more, the last bidder plays first and alone pays the price reached. If nobody bids, the first turn is free.

Playing first is not always desirable. A class that places things (traps, charges, Automatons) often prefers to let the other come forward; a class that strikes in contact wants the opening instead. The bid is the first real tactical choice of the match.

The turn: AP and MP

A fighter starts their turn with 12 action points and 6 movement points — the base values, which some classes change: the Arcanist has 14 AP, the Shade 7 MP, the Clockmaker 5 MP.

• AP pays for spells. Each spell has its cost, and many have a cast limit per turn or a cooldown.
• MP pays for movement: one free adjacent tile costs 1 MP. You cross neither walls, nor fighters, nor summons, nor placed charges.

You have 40 seconds a turn. Once the clock runs out, the turn passes to your opponent in whatever state it is in.

Mobile summons play their own turn, right after their summoner’s: the Arcanist’s Flame elemental and the Clockmaker’s Automaton have AP and MP of their own. Inert entities — the Warrior’s Banner, the Artificer’s charges — do not take a turn: they occupy a tile and do their job.

Range and line of sight

Distance is counted in tiles, along a broken line: two tiles to the right and three upwards make a distance of five. Diagonals shorten nothing.

Every spell has a minimum and a maximum range. A minimum range of 2 or 3 forbids casting the spell on an adjacent target: the Arcanist’s Comet, for instance, does not cast at less than 3 tiles. Some spells also require being in a straight line — same row or same column as you.

The line of sight is a segment drawn from the centre of your tile to the centre of the target tile: if that segment crosses a wall or the void, the spell does not fire. Only the scenery blocks sight — a fighter, a summon or a placed charge never cuts a line of sight, but does block passage.

A few spells do without line of sight and go through walls: it says so on their card, and it is always a strength of the class, not a detail.

Damage, resistance and shield

A spell that hurts rolls its damage between a minimum and a maximum. Three things then apply:

• Critical hit: 10% chance, and the damage is multiplied by 1.5.
• Resistance: a percentage taken off the damage you receive, whether it comes from a passive (the Warrior’s Cuirass) or from a spell (Stoneskin). It is capped at 75% — you never become invulnerable.
• Shield: a pool of points that takes hits in place of HP and disappears when it is used up or when its duration ends. It is not reduced by resistance: it is a buffer, not a percentage.

Boosting your own damage (War cry, Mage’s eye, the Brute’s Rage) and weakening the target’s resistance (Mace smash) stack. It is the most reliable way to blow through a health bar in one turn.

Pushes, pulls and collisions

Many spells move instead of hurting — or as well as hurting. A push drives away in a straight line, a pull brings closer, a swap exchanges two tiles.

When a forced move is blocked by a wall or by another entity, it stops dead and the victim takes 12 damage per tile it could not travel; the entity struck takes half. Pushing someone against a wall is therefore a damage spell in disguise — and pushing someone onto a trap, better still.

The Warrior’s Anchor is the only straight answer: as long as it holds, nothing moves them any more, no push, no pull, no position swap.

AP and MP steal

Stripping points from your opponent is a form of attack in its own right. A steal is attempted point by point, and each point can be refused by the target’s resistance — every class has its own, different for AP and for MP. The Clockmaker resists AP steal well (45%), the Brute MP steal (45%), the Arcanist almost nothing (25% and 20%).

An opponent stripped of 3 MP can no longer flee; stripped of 2 AP, they will not cast their big spell. Against the classes that depend on a precise chain, it is often worth more than raw damage.

Traps

Three classes place traps — the Shade has three, the Brute a Pit. A trap is invisible to your opponent: only the side that placed it sees it on the board.

• It goes off on anyone who enters its area, including whoever placed it.
• It stays in place for 8 turns, then disappears.
• Its area depends on the trap: a cross of one tile for the Shade’s traps, a circle of 2 tiles for the Brute’s Pit.

An isolated trap is avoided by chance. Two traps placed side by side, or a trap placed on the one tile that restores a line of sight, go off almost for certain. And a spell that moves by force — the Shade’s Fear, a Shove, a pull — turns a trap placed at random into a sure thing.

Map pickups

On every hero turn, the ones from the previous turn disappear and two pickups appear on random free tiles. Both players can see them, and they go to whoever walks onto them — or whoever is pushed, pulled or teleported onto them.

These pickups change the arithmetic of a turn: 2 more AP is one more spell. They are also bait — your opponent knows where you want to go.

How a match ends

Three outcomes, and three only:

1. A fighter’s health drops to zero. The side with no hero standing loses — summons do not count.
2. A player forfeits.
3. The 40-turn limit is reached. The match is declared a draw. In a stake match the win then goes to whoever kept the larger share of their health: fleeing for forty turns is not worth a refund.

Leagues and progress

The rating is calculated per class, in Elo: everyone starts at 1000 with each class, and a match moves both ratings according to the gap between them. Beating someone stronger pays a lot, beating someone weaker almost nothing. Eight leagues mark the climb, from Novice to Legend.

Training against the artificial intelligence pays experience and coins, but the AI’s rating is fixed and the gain halved: you do not climb the leagues by stringing together matches against robots.

What next

The rules only tell half the game. The other half is in the classes: each has a passive that bends one of those rules in its favour, and eight spells that follow from it. Start with the one whose description speaks to you — Warrior, Brute, Arcanist, Shade, Clockmaker, Artificer.

Frequently asked questions