The Dojo
A training field outside the matches: set two armies against each other and watch the game’s own combat decide.
The Dojo is a training field outside the matches: two armies on an open field, ▶, and the fight plays out. It runs the game’s own combat, the rules every match plays by, on the very scenes the units were balanced with. Nothing there counts: no gold is spent and nothing is recorded.
Open the Dojo. It needs a computer, or a tablet held sideways: a phone’s screen is too small for it.
Setting up a fight
- Pick a challenge from the menu (a match-up to watch, with a line on what to look for), or the Empty field.
- The ribbon over the field: Blue, Red or Wilds, then a unit. Click, tap or drag on the field to place it, one at a time or a 3 × 3 block. The right button, or Erase, takes units away; Clear empties a side.
- Each side’s Behaviour: Still fights only what comes into reach, Hold chases what it sees on a leash and walks back, Charge goes at the rival.
- + Group adds a block of one unit in a formation. Drag its ring on the field to move it; its arrow button turns it.
- The Wilds: a troll, torch goblins or harpoon sharks, who fight whoever comes near, either side.
- Fog of war: each side chases only what it sees. Over the field, See all, Blue’s sight or Red’s sight shows the fight as each side sees it.
The fight
▶ plays and pauses, Step moves one step, − and + change the speed, Restart puts the field back as it was set, and New seed fights it again with other dice. The fight counts each side’s units alive, the damage dealt and taken, and the kills; tap or click a unit to see its numbers. A catapult: pick it, press Fire, then tap or click where its stone should land.
Saving and sharing
Save keeps a fight in this browser, under its title. Share copies a link that holds the whole fight: whoever opens it gets the same armies on the same field. The fight travels inside the link itself (after its #), so it is never sent to the game’s server or kept anywhere else.
What it is not
The Dojo is the battle alone: no economy, no buildings to raise or train from, no belts and no hand of yours on the units: each side follows its behaviour. Use it to see who beats whom, not to rehearse a whole match. Every rule of combat is the match’s, so a change to the balance changes the Dojo too.