Towers

You are a general. Your cards are armies. Armies fight the armies they touch (share an edge; diagonals never count), and an army with friends beside it beats one standing alone. Hold the high ground, keep reserves in your barrack, and know when to give up.

What you need

• A 7×7 board with 5 high ground tiles and 2 mountains (nothing may enter a mountain). This app lays the terrain for you, mirrored across the centre.
• Each player: a pool of 20 cards (each shows its troops) and a 12-card fortune deck: 3 Advantage (+1), 3 Disadvantage (−1) and 6 Steady (blank, worth 0).
• A Dominance marker on a track from 10 on your side, through 0, to 10 on your opponent's side.

Setup

• Muster. Secretly choose cards from your 20 worth at most 100 troops in total. The King is free and always comes. These cards are your barrack: your hand, hidden from your opponent. Set the rest aside.
• The first player is chosen at random. The row nearest you (the bottom row) is your home row. The marker starts on 0.

Your turn: do exactly one thing

• Deploy a card from your barrack face-down onto your home row or onto any empty space touching one of your cards. It may then attack once.
• Maneuver one ready card one space (Lancers and Scouts as on their cards). It may then attack once, with +1 Might in that fight: the marching strike.
• Attack with a ready card that is already touching an enemy.
• Turn one card, or every card in one straight unbroken line of your cards, to defensive posture or back to ready. A defensive card gets +1 when attacked but cannot attack or maneuver. It still supports, holds high ground, gives bonuses and may retreat. Kings have no defensive posture.
• Retreat one card to your barrack, unless two or more enemy cards touch it. It cannot deploy on your next turn. It comes back face-down.
• Pass, or give up the skirmish.

Before or after your action you may reveal any of your own cards. (This app never asks: your cards stay face-down until the rules turn them up.)

In this app: tap a barrack card or one of your board cards, then tap where it goes or whom it attacks. Every attack shows its Might and odds before you confirm.

Face-down cards

A card is turned face-up for good when it attacks, is attacked, Soulcasts, gives a bonus (an Attending Squire, an Archer supporting from range, a Captainlord), is scouted, or you choose to show it. A 2-space move does not reveal the mover. Face-down cards touch, support and hold high ground like any other card. You may attack a face-down card: you find out what it is when both cards flip.

Fighting

1. Declare the attack. Flip the attacker and the target face-up.
2. Count every bonus; turn face-up any card that gives one.
3. The pull. Each of the two fighting cards that was face-down when the attack was declared pulls the top card of its owner's fortune deck: +1, 0 or −1 for this fight only. A face-up card never pulls (a card that returns to the barrack comes back face-down, so it will pull again). When your fortune deck runs out, shuffle all 12 together.
4. Compare Might.

Attacker = rank + 1 for each other card of yours touching the target (your supporters, including Archers in range) + 1 on high ground + bonuses ± pull.
Defender = rank + 1 if a friend stands directly behind it (the space opposite the attacker) + 1 if defensive + 1 on high ground + bonuses ± pull.

• Attacker ahead by 2 or more, or ahead at all with at least one supporter: the defender is captured (out of the match for good).
• Ahead by exactly 1 with no supporter: the defender is routed back to its owner's barrack, face-down. It cannot deploy on its owner's next turn.
• Tie: both hold, except against a defensive Spearman: then the attacker counts as behind by 1.
• Behind by 1: the attacker is routed, or captured if two or more enemy cards touch it. Behind by 2 or more: the attacker is captured.
• If the defender's space is emptied, the attacker must advance into it.
• You may not attack a face-up card if you would be behind by 2 or more before the pull. Attacking a face-down card is always allowed.

The cards

"Knight or better" means Knight, Lancer, Captainlord, Shardbearer or King.

The King

• He wins every attack he makes, always capturing, and he cannot attack another King. He attacks revealed cards only.
• Might is ignored when he is attacked. He is captured only when three revealed enemy cards of Knight rank or better touch him and one of them attacks (an enemy King counts as one of the three). Attacking a face-down King any other way simply reveals him. The Soulcaster cannot touch him.
• Spent: after he captures, he lies on his side. Standing him up is your whole turn.
• Pinned: while two revealed enemy Knight-or-better cards touch him he cannot act or be stood up.
• He never retreats, never pulls, and never counts as holding high ground (he may not be deployed or maneuvered onto it, though he advances onto it if he captures a card standing there).
• Lose your King and you lose the skirmish. You may leave him in your barrack all game.

Winning a skirmish

• Capture the enemy King; or your opponent ends a turn (after their first) with no cards on the board; or they give up; or by Dominance.
• Dominance: at the end of each of your turns the marker moves one step toward you if you hold more high ground than your opponent. If high ground is level, it moves if you have captured more cards this skirmish (Soulcast victims count; routs never do). Reach your 10 and you win at once.
• Reset: the moment a player captures a card while the marker is on their opponent's side, the marker returns to 0.
• Both pass in a row: the skirmish ends. More high ground wins; if level, more captured value (2 for each card of rank 2 or more, 1 for any other; a Soulcaster used up by Soulcasting counts as captured by the other player); otherwise a draw.
• Giving up: any of your cards touched by two or more enemy cards is captured; everything else goes home.

This app follows the printed Towers v1.3 playtest rules (core game, one skirmish; the match, Warcamp and variants are not included).

An unofficial fan-made playtest of the in-world game from The Stormlight Archive. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Brandon Sanderson or Dragonsteel.