Take them to zero
Both players start at 20 Uptime. Bring your opponent to 0 and you win — or run their Stack dry, because a player who must draw from an empty Stack loses too.
Your Uptime is the chip square next to your name at the table. It is public — both seats always see both numbers.
Everything you spend comes from five Resources. A Stack usually leans on one or two of them.
Power
Bitcoin
Keys
Signal
Timelock
Eight steps, twice a turn you build
Every turn runs the same eight steps in the same order. Six of them the table just does. The two marked in ember are where you actually make things.
- Unlockauto
- Maintenanceauto
- Drawauto
- Build Iyou act
- Clashyou attack
- Build IIyou act
- Endauto
- Cleanupauto
Lay one Resource per turn
Once per turn, during Build I or Build II, you may put a Resource from your Wallet onto your Network. It costs nothing and cannot be answered. This is your whole economy — miss it and you fall a turn behind.
Commit it to pay for things
A Resource sitting on your Network does nothing until you commit it — click it and it turns sideways, putting one Resource into your Buffer. The Buffer is what pays printed costs.
A junction like this one asks which Resource you want. A plain Power Plant just makes Power.
Toni China, Rough Miner costs 1P — one Power plus one of anything. So: commit two Resources, then play her.
Spend it before the phase ends
The one rule that bites beginners: your Buffer empties at the end of every phase — and again when Clash begins and when Clash ends — and each unspent Resource costs you 1 Uptime. Generate what you are about to spend, not more. That is resource burn (§12.1), it is not damage, and nothing prevents it.
An Avatar's two numbers are Action (damage it deals) and Resilience (damage it survives).
A fresh Avatar has Boot Delay until you begin a turn with it: it cannot attack and cannot pay a cost that commits it. It can block the turn it lands — a new Avatar is a wall immediately, a weapon next turn.
Clash
Clash is four beats, and the table stops at each one that is yours.
Attackers. Every Avatar that may legally attack pulses ember. Click the ones you want to send, then press Continue.
Blockers. The defender clicks an attacker, then their own Avatar, then Continue. A committed Avatar cannot block.
Damage. Ember arrows show attacks going at the player, violet arrows show blocks. Unblocked attackers take their Action straight off the defender's Uptime.
Cleanup. An Avatar with marked damage equal to its Resilience is decommissioned into the Archive. Damage on survivors is wiped at end of turn.
The table does the rest
You never have to memorise the eight steps. Continue walks the turn forward and stops whenever you actually have a decision; End turn hands over. The line at the top always says where you are and what you can do.
A handful of cards are too open-ended for the engine to script. They wear a ! on the table and are resolved by a proposal your opponent accepts or rejects. Rare, and always visible to both seats.
Eleven preconstructed Stacks are waiting — five Starters, one per Resource, and six Classics built around the old tournament archetypes. Pick one, tick “NPC opponent”, and play.