Slow Death, countered with Force Field — and the battle modal popped
right back up as if nothing had happened, goading a second counter
out of a hand that had already won the exchange. The engine was
bouncing every attacker's pass back to the defender so counters could
stack; correct for partial stops (Blunt, Absorb, Reflection numbers),
senseless past a total one. Under rules rev 10, when a Full Shield,
Force Field, Teleport escape, Full Reflection, or Reverse stands
unnullified, the attacker's declined answer resolves the stack on the
spot. Older ledgers keep the bounce and replay unchanged.
And when the exchange legitimately returns — a partial counter
standing, or a shield broken by Anti-Anti — the modal now says so:
"Your Blunt stands — only what slips past it will land," or "Your
Full Shield was nullified — the attack comes on unchecked," instead
of replaying the fanfare of a fresh, unanswered attack.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three cards sat wrongly in the creation bucket of eligibleCellsFor,
so the targeting dim demanded sighted empty squares the engine never
asks for. Boobytrap tokens go anywhere on the board but solid stone —
no sight required; a trap you can see coming is a poor trap. Glue and
the safe were worse than restricted: inverted. Both seize a square
that HOLDS a loose object or treasure, exactly the squares the empty-
square rule dimmed out. Each now has its own branch mirroring the
engine's actual checks, pinned by tests.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Tiers degrade resources and repertoire, never judgment — the design
constraint was that no tier may ever look dumb. The APPRENTICE draws
one card a turn instead of two (a poorer wizard, not a worse one),
spends counters only on heavy hits (thrift, not blindness), and
carries a modest spellbook: damage, summons, stones, keys, and
treasure play, with no afflictions, amplifies, ambushes, guarding
tricks, or deja-vu. The ADEPT draws fully and knows everything except
ambushes and amplify. The ARCHMAGE is the full curriculum. Every card
any tier plays, it plays correctly.
The lobby workshop gains a tier picker beside the temperaments
(default adept); the tier persists with the seat, shows in roster and
scoresheet ("⚙ apprentice mystery"), and rides the drive loop.
Measured where it should matter: in berserker combat mirrors the
archmage beats the apprentice two to one, while pure treasure races
stay honest — the handicap lives in the card exchanges a human
actually feels, pinned deterministically in the tournament suite.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Every playable card now has a place in the automaton's mind. The
damage table completes: lightning blast, wizardblade, and power drain
scale with numbers (and are skipped without one), disease bites in
the shared square, the dagger's true three points corrected. A new
affliction book casts the miseries — blind, slow, medusa, no-spell,
lock-in-place, walking dead, slow death, idiot, thought steal,
go-away — with a number for the duration, and WEAKNESS is saved for
whoever carries stolen gold. AMPLIFY doubles the heavy spells.
The counteraction ladder runs the full rack: REVERSE eats the big
blasts, ABSORB SPELL steals the good ones, FULL SHIELD, FULL
REFLECTION, REMOVE CURSE refuses afflictions at the door, REFLECTION
halves, ABSORB soaks the mid-range, BLUNT, EMPATHY out of berserker
spite, teleport escapes, shieldstone numbers.
Housekeeping: every stone hits the table the turn it is drawn, GIFT
FROM ABOVE is cashed instantly, curses get scrubbed with REMOVE
CURSE, LIFESAVER goes up at three players, a SAFE or GLUE guards
floor gold with enemies near, and DEJA-VU pulls the best attack back
from the discard when the hand runs dry of violence.
Table talk verified live ("ACQUISITION COMPLETE." mid-probe) — the
silence was timing, not plumbing — and the remark odds rise to half.
Three-way tournaments tell true stories now: the hunter wins on
gold, the worrier survives to win by attrition, and the berserker
learns that aggression in a three-way gets you buried first.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Every play-strength item, in one education. DOORS: the pathfinder
walks through doors it can open — already-opened ones freely, locked
ones when holding Master Key or Pick Lock, casting the key at the
door on the path before stepping through (and a loop where the
clockwork re-keyed an already-open door forever is fixed: opened
doors read as open). TREASURE DEFENSE: a wizard carrying the
automaton's gold becomes the priority — chased over all objectives,
shaken down with DROP OBJECT when held, and attacked first. WIDER
SPELLCRAFT: blaster wands charged by number and fired; teleport as
escape when wounded and hunted, and as a counteraction clear of big
incoming spells; SPEED cast on sight; WARD armed to guard the gold;
shieldstone displayed so spare numbers soak small hits; ANTI-ANTI
pressed against counters (never against escapes); the berserker grows
BIG with an enemy near, the worrier fades invisible or slams a
CREATE WALL in its pursuer's face; ambushes armed from held
interrupts — the worrier trapping its doorstep, the others trapping
the treasure. Tournament suite green across all temperaments.
And the clockwork speaks: sparing, temperament-voiced table talk on
its own deeds — "ACQUISITION COMPLETE.", "SCHEDULED DEMISE:
DELIVERED.", "good wall. safe wall." — through the same chat ledger
as everyone else. The tally gains "games fought against the
clockwork", and automatons no longer pollute the count of wizards
seated.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Playtesting read the card right and the engine had it wrong. "Placing
the A tokens on one set of exits & the B tokens on the other" means
the two exits you mark BECOME a pair — and their former partners pair
with each other — not that the two exits trade destinations. Under
rev 9, click the exit and then the exit you want it to connect TO
(the hint now says so); already-connected exits are refused. Earlier
games keep the swap their logs were validated against. Test pins the
full four-way rewiring.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The automaton now plays number cards where they matter: attached to
value-scaled attacks (waterbolt, powerthrust) choosing the biggest
for damage, and played for movement when the goal is just out of
stride. It raises its monsters when no wizard is in spell range and
commands them every turn — creatures march at enemies by the same
hazard-shy BFS and maul whoever shares their square. Targets are
picked by lowest life.
And it has moods. The HUNTER plays the classic game: gold first,
violence when convenient. The BERSERKER hunts wizards over treasure
and finishes games by last-wizard-standing. The WORRIER paths around
enemies, counters at a lower threshold, shields against chaos, and
never brawls. Hosts pick the temperament when seating one (or the
workshop assigns at random); it persists with the seat, shows in the
roster, and the tournament harness proves every pairing finishes.
Across ten seeds of berserker versus hunter: six treasure wins to
four kills — the moods play genuinely different games.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Phase 4 begins. The automaton is a pure function in the engine —
automatonCommand(view) — playing from its own redacted GameView, the
same information a human seat receives: hidden hands stay hidden from
the clockwork. It ranks simple damage spells, counters what hurts
(full shield at 3+, reflection at 4+, blunt at 2+), discards its
worst cards by a value order, BFS-pathfinds to enemy treasures and
home again, refuses to path through hazards, brawls when there is
nothing to steal, and always has a safe fallback; the server's drive
loop steps any bot-held seat through the same runCommand path as
humans, so bot commands log, persist, replay, and broadcast like
anyone's.
Hosts seat them pre-start with "⚙ seat an automaton" (Automaton,
Automaton II, ... V); bot seats persist as tokenless join lines and
restore on boot. Proven three ways: bot-vs-bot engine games conclude
across seeds in 8-14 rounds (~100 commands — human-scale), a full
four-automaton table finishes, and a live websocket game of human
vs. automaton ended with the clockwork carrying two treasures home
through a do-nothing opponent.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Live chat interleaved correctly, but a reload sank every past message
to the bottom: the rejoin sent the whole game history first and the
chat history after. Talk is now a tableTalk event in the room's event
stream at the moment it was said — the room file already preserved
the interleaving, since chat lines append between command lines — so
rejoining players read the banter between the battle lines where it
happened. The separate chatHistory message retires; unread counting
rides the event stream instead.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Every player-facing D4 roll now lands in the chronicle as pips with
its purpose: "🎲 alice rolls a 3 — aiming at the unseen — only a 1
finds them." A shared rollD4 helper threads the generic dieRolled
event through blind staggers and swings, pit leaps, ooze and pit
struggles, and the invisible/shrink miss rolls — the table sees the
die land, exactly as it would in person. Rolls whose numbers already
showed (the troll's swing, the misdirection direction, the opening
roll-off) keep their lines.
And the physical die's other job — "any 50-50 call" — gets its
button: 🎲 beside the say-box in online games (server-rolled,
published through the chat ledger so it persists, replays, and counts
toward unread badges) and under the chronicle in hotseat, rolled on
the device. Chronicle only; no game state touched.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Rules rev 8 closes the last two fidelity threads. A SPEED bonus turn
burns a turn of duration spells on the hastened wizard — recipient-
counted, per the FAQ's most obscure ruling — with self-cast durations
already burning through the normal turn-start sweep (expiry extracted
into expireEffect so both paths share the cleanup). And nothing can
be created on a DIMENSIONAL WARP token, as the card face always said.
The general-topic FAQ sections (Combat, Line of Sight, Monsters,
Treasures, and five more) join the rules tab verbatim under a double-
ruled divider, completing the FAQ's absorption: card rulings on the
cards, general rulings in the rules.
The four promoted UX items: cell-target spells now dim ineligible
squares (creations mirror emptySquareTarget from the viewer's
knowledge, summons want clear sighted squares, teleport BFSes its
four spaces exactly as the engine does, stone-to-water lights only
stone, dispel lights only creations); hotseat games get the full
replay reel, each step seen from its actor's own seat; a "stop
announcing attacks on this device" link in the fanfare modal (undo
lives beside the notification toggle in the lobby); the corner
inspector now serves only the selected casting card, with every
examine-a-card peek unified on the centered treatment; and the dev
socket URL keys on vite's port instead of hijacking every localhost.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
An hour of rules archaeology, summarized: DIMENSIONAL WARP denies
LOS explicitly (its tokens stay sightless); the AUTO WARP describes
how to trace sight across a join; and on the lettered wraparounds
the texts are silent — no grant, no denial. The FAQ's Permawarp
rulings even have area effects counting distance through warps. Where
the texts are silent, the edition's own table breaks the tie, and the
table says the open sides see. Board openings carry sight in every
revision (a permissive change: every stored game's log replays
clean); the brief rev-7 restriction and its legacy flag are gone,
along with the sophistry that justified them. The adjacency geometry
stands. The friend's sticky-wand shot through the C opening was legal
after all.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The cards settle what the morning's feature got wrong. DIMENSIONAL
WARP: "There is no L.O.S. through the warp." The AUTO WARP: "for all
purposes, treat the connected board edges as though they are
adjacent" — an explicit grant, for edges that physically meet at a
corner. The lettered wraparounds get no grant at all: their rule is
about walking. So the pattern is that warps carry movement, not
sight, unless the text says otherwise — and only the aisle corners
say otherwise.
Warps now carry an aisle flag (the 3-player AUTO WARP and the
5-player corner arcs); hasWarpLineOfSight honors only those, with
the adjacency geometry — diagonals through the corner mouth —
unchanged from this morning where it rightfully applies. Games begun
before rev 7 keep the wider sight their logged commands were
validated against, via a legacy flag boardView stamps from the
game's rules revision. Tests pin all three states: lettered mouths
see nothing, aisle mouths see the corner fan, legacy games see
everything they used to.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Playtesting caught the gap with a sticky wand: a target visible
through the opening but one square off the corridor axis was refused.
The colinear-only model was stricter than the rulebook, whose actual
instruction is to treat the connected edges as adjacent boards with a
straight center-to-center line — and a straight line through a
one-cell opening may run diagonally, exactly as through a doorway.
hasWarpLineOfSight now abuts the far side virtually at the mouth
(rotating when the pairing turns a corner, as aisle warps do), finds
where the center-to-center line crosses the rim, requires that
crossing to fall strictly within the open mouth (corner-grazing stays
blocked — the strict reading), and checks the two legs against real
walls on each side of the seam. hasLineOfSight's core became a shared
segmentClear to serve both legs. The colinear corridor cases remain
as the special case they always were; a new test pins that off-axis
squares are visible through mouths.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Tom Jolly's 2002 Rules FAQ settled three table disputes this week
from a text file only I could read. Now it lives in the game: 95
cards gained their FAQ sections (extracted verbatim from the official
document, alias-matched — Slime, Mistbody, Buck and friends resolved
to their proper cards), joining the handful already present for 102
cards with rulings in all. The card faces stay pure card text; an
"Official FAQ" button appears under any enlarged card that has
rulings — the hand inspector, the peek overlay, and as an FAQ chip in
the card library — opening a booklet modal with the rulings and their
provenance: "the cards overrule the rules, and the designer overrules
the table."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
"It's not letting me cast Absorb Spell on your Full Shield" — and
Jolly's FAQ says exactly why: "ABSORB SPELL will work on FULL
REFLECTION or REFLECTION, but not FULL SHIELD, as that is not used
against you, but cast upon the player using it." The refusal stands,
now with that reason in the error — and the neighboring case the
engine wrongly refused is fixed: an attacker may answer a reflection
with ABSORB SPELL, nullifying it and taking the reflection card into
their hand, with the original spell then landing unturned.
And the card face corrects my own hours-old work: ANTI-ANTI "does not
work against escape, such as SHRINK, TELEPORT, or INVISIBLE" — so
under rules rev 6 it can no longer pin a teleport escape. Earlier
games keep their stored chains.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
moves like a giant, and the boards are diagram-verified
TELEPORT as a counteraction (official FAQ: "the attack has no chance
of hitting you"): the defender names an escape square within four
spaces, the escape resolves before anything lands, and an ANTI-ANTI
pins their boots to the floor. Additive — no revision gate needed.
FILL SQUARE WITH SLIME holds spells now: an attack cast at the slime
sticks in the gel (leaving the discard pile), springs once at whoever
is inside or next enters, and counteractions against the trapped
blast cannot touch its caster — reflections vanish into the ooze. A
five-point waterbolt washes the slime and its cargo away, and the
waterwall waves clear slime from their path.
BIG MAN, under rules rev 5, finally moves like the card says: he
pushes players and monsters down the corridor ahead of him (stuck or
unpushable occupants block his advance), steps over a pit, tacks, or
killer ooze for two movement points without ever entering the square
(click two cells beyond the hazard), and monsters may not enter his
square. All gated so stored games replay under their own rules.
The boards were never wrong — the rulebook's Set-Up Diagram photo
confirms every pairing the code already had: 2p crossed, 3p stair
with the Aisle Warp arc, 4p/6p straight-across, 5p plus with all four
corner arcs. The stale TODOs are gone, replaced by tests pinning each
letter pair, and relocation's "only opposite board edges connect"
(which discards the aisle warp) is pinned too. Wall of Fire vs
Waterbolt turned out to be implemented and tested all along — its
TODO comment was the only thing wrong.
Also: hotseat saves now request durable storage (iOS evicts
unprotected origins under pressure).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
"The creature-1 takes 2 damage" — the creature events carried only
internal ids, so the log printed them. creatureAttacked, Touched, and
Damaged now carry the creature's kind, and the lines read like a
table: "The Wraith strikes!", "The Troll swings (rolled 3)!", "The
Skeleton takes 2 damage."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
At the table the discards sit face-up for anyone to leaf through. The
view now carries the pile (deck order stays secret), the "discards N"
count in the rail became a link, and it opens a booklet-styled reader:
every cast-away card newest first, tap any to enlarge. And the
chronicle stops mumbling "discards 1 card(s)" — it names names, so a
wraith's theft reads "bob discards Fireball," exactly what a table
would see as the card hits the pile.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The WRAITH card assumes the window exists — "REFLECTIONs used on the
wraith's touch will damage the wraith" — but creature damage applied
instantly, so BLUNT had nothing to catch, as playtesting found. Under
revision 4 every creature blow against a wizard opens the same
counteraction stack a spell does: the wraith's entry touch, the
democratic monster's claw, and commanded troll/skeleton/shadow
attacks. The blow's damage rides the stack; BLUNT halves it (round
up); reflections work by name against creatures — half back for
REFLECTION, the whole blow for FULL REFLECTION — landing on the
creature, not its controller; FULL SHIELD correctly does nothing
("does not stop any physical attack"); the wraith's card theft is a
secondary effect that lands only if damage does. No aim-miss rolls
against invisible or shrunk defenders — the creature is already in
the square. The attack fanfare shows the creature's own card.
Earlier revisions keep the instant touch so every stored game — and
the live one that found this — replays unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
DROP OBJECT resolved correctly — the treasure fell — but the
chronicle announced "The attack is completely stopped," because the
attackResolved event branded any attack that dealt zero damage as
stopped. Utility attacks deal zero by design; only an attack that was
TRYING to wound counts as stopped when nothing lands. Tests pin both
sides: uncountered DROP OBJECT reports unstopped and drops the
treasure; FULL SHIELD reports stopped and the treasure stays carried.
Not deployed — a live game is in progress.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
WARD's text says "you may play at that time" — under rules revision 3
the choice is made by setting the trap: an armWard command toggles it
on your own turn (your secret; a private wardSet event and a rail
note), and the spring fires only while set, consuming the card and
the arming together. Async games keep their agency without an
interrupt window, exactly as the ambush system solved this before.
CHAOS gains its printed interactions: "FULL SHIELD removes a player
from participation" — a defender's shield sits them out instead of
stopping the spell, and after the counter chain every bystander gets
a shield window in seat order (chaosPending; queue head owes a
response in lobby summaries, the rail says whose hand hangs in the
balance) before the pile forms among the unshielded. "REFLECTIONS
have no effect" — both reflections are refused as counters. ABSORB
SPELL still eats the whole thing through the existing absorb path.
Both changes are frozen behind deckRev 3 so every stored game — and
the live one — replays byte-for-byte under its own rules. Five new
tests cover armed/unarmed wards, shielded defenders and bystanders,
the reflection refusal, and the legacy auto-ward.
Not deployed — a live game is in progress.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
"It is possible, though time-consuming, to punch a wall down. A wall
takes 20 points of damage to destroy; a door takes 15. Any attack
against an inanimate object counts as your one attack for the turn."
Damage accumulates per edge in wallDamage (remapped through sector
rotations, public in the view), fed two ways: a punchWall command for
the bare-fisted (1 point, from a square touching the edge) and attack
spells cast at an edge target — LOS to the wall for L.O.S. cards,
touching it for same-square cards, amplify and power-attack honored,
wand charges spent, no counteractions since stonework plays none.
Thrown daggers and rocks clatter to the floor at the foot of the
wall. At the threshold the edge opens through the same override path
destroy-wall uses.
On the table: damaged walls wear spreading cracks, an attack card's
hint offers "or a wall line to batter it" with the edge layer live,
and a "Punch a wall…" stamp arms a click-the-wall mode. The chronicle
counts the blows: "alice batters the wall with bare fists — 3/20."
Not deployed — a live game is in progress.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
"If casting a spell, or checking line of sight through the AUTO WARP,
treat it as a straight line, and the two connected boards as though
they were adjacent" — and the lettered openings reconnect edges the
same way. hasWarpLineOfSight models it: the line must run straight
down the corridor, out one mouth, and in through the paired mouth,
with both corridor legs clear and neither mouth filled solid. The new
sightBetween (direct or through-a-warp) is now the game's LOS check
everywhere — spells, ambush triggers, Around The Corner, the
visionstone sweep, and the targeting dim on the client.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
"Not applicable in a 2-player game." — the card face. New games deal
from deck revision 2, which removes it when exactly two wizards sit
down; three or more keep it. The revision travels in GameConfig and
the persisted start line, and stored games without one replay against
the original build — changing an existing game's deck composition
would scramble its deterministic replay. Test pins all three cases:
removed at two, present at three, present in legacy two-player games.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A three-reviewer sweep for tells of piecemeal machine generation,
every finding verified against the code before touching it. No
behavior changes; the full suite passes unchanged (plus two
strengthened pins).
Engine: removed four void-silenced fossils (a parseEdgeKey call
voided where it stood, stoneEffect's ignored cardId parameter, the
actualTarget remnant in doCast, a voided loop variable in shadow
upkeep); fixed the initialize-then-overwrite narration in
spawnCreature; replaced a filter(() => false) no-op; waterwall now
rides waveFromEdge instead of carrying its own verbatim copy (and the
single-caller washBack wrapper went with it); blind wall-bumps and
LOS blockers each collapsed to one implementation; the wand-id list
and the "permanent" duration sentinel became named constants; the
ambush number local no longer shadows the imported numberValue
function; assorted reviewer-aimed phrasings rewritten as the
constraints they guard.
Server/deploy: the protocol header now documents all eleven message
types; dropped an eslint pragma with no eslint, a test script with no
tests, and an rsync exclude anchored at a path that never existed
(the real data/ dir now excluded); the Caddy vhost has one source of
truth; stale "pending DNS" note removed — the record resolves.
Web: ~90 lines of CSS swallowed verbatim into a mobile media query
deduplicated; the reduced-motion guard on the board now actually
stops the marked-cell pulse; one shared color module replaces two
drifted palettes; an orphaned doc comment rejoined its function.
Tests: the ten-times-pasted helper block became test/helpers.ts;
wave-numbered files renamed for the behaviors they pin; deliberation
comments and void-ed corpses of unwritten assertions deleted; silent
seed-dependent early-returns now fail loudly; one assertion that
compared a value to itself now pins the home-translation it meant to;
the stored-log single-number command form gained the explicit
compatibility test it deserved.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Elimination destroys the evidence: a killed wizard's cards pass to
the killer, a treasure-lost wizard's go to the discard — so the
post-game reveal showed "empty-handed" for exactly the player whose
hand everyone wants to see. Both elimination paths now snapshot the
hand at the moment of death (finalHand), the finished view serves it,
and the gallery marks those rows "as they fell" in script. Because
rooms replay from the command log, already-finished games show their
fallen hands too. Test kills a wizard holding a Fireball and a 6 and
finds them in the reveal.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Once the game is won, the view stops keeping secrets: revealedHands
carries every player's cards, and the table replaces your hand row
with a face-up gallery — each wizard's name (trophy on the winner)
beside their final hand, tap any card to enlarge, "empty-handed"
written in script for those who died with nothing. In hotseat this is
the thing the winner passes around after dismissing the fanfare; in
async games it greets each player when they open the finished game.
Redaction still guards every phase before "finished."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Winning showed only as a small slip in the rail — anticlimactic, as
playtesting put it. The engine now records HOW the game was won
(winReason: treasures carried home, or last wizard standing) alongside
the winner, the view carries it, and the finish opens a gold-ringed
modal: trophy, the winner's name in tall caps, and the manner of
victory in a handwritten line. "Behold the final board" dismisses it
to the finished table. In hotseat the one screen proclaims to the
whole table at once; in async games each player is greeted by it when
they next open the game.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Selecting an L.O.S. card now drops every square you cannot see into
shadow, leaving eligible targets lit — computed by the engine's own
hasLineOfSight over the player's VIEW, so illusion walls you still
believe in block your aim, stone and bushes and the Big Man block
everyone's, and Around The Corner widens the light one bend when
attached. ADJACENT cards light just your square and its four
neighbors. The shade paints over tokens and wizards alike, and
switches off while arming an ambush, since ambushes aim at the
future. A new sightedCellsFor lives in the engine view module so the
client can never disagree with the rules.
Speedstone, meanwhile, only took effect at next turn's allowance
recompute — displaying it mid-turn granted nothing, as playtesting
found. It now bumps the current allowance by one on display (a delta,
so number-card movement already played survives), unless SLOW or a
zeroed allowance says otherwise. Test covers the immediate grant and
the persistence into later turns.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The rulebook's movable-object list is wider than the stones: "magic
stones, treasure chests, the dagger, the large rock, and the
wizardblade" — and the expansion expects wands to change hands, since
"its remaining charges go with it." A new isMovableObject helper in
the engine names that full set, doDropObject honors it, and the hint
bar's "Drop it here" button follows suit. Charges are keyed by card
instance, so a dropped wand carries them to whoever picks it up —
covered by new tests, along with the refusal to drop spell cards.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Eric's diagnosis: "in the moment" interruption cards are worthless in
correspondence play — there is no moment. The answer was already in
the game: WARD is a contingency card, and ambushes generalize it. On
your turn, playing Interrupt or Opportunity Fire now arms an ambush:
commit it with an attack from your hand (plus an optional number
card) and a trigger — an opponent entering your line of sight, coming
beside you, or grabbing a treasure — and it springs automatically
when the condition occurs, whether you are watching or asleep. The
sprung attack opens the normal counteraction stack, so the victim
gets their defense (asynchronously, like any attack). Committed cards
leave your hand until the trap springs or you disarm it; ambushes are
invisible to everyone but their owner (view-level redaction), die
with their owner, stay armed if the shot is momentarily illegal, and
honor the no-combat first round. Live play in the moment still works
too — and the client now actually offers it (the old UI never let
you click those cards out of turn). The rail shows your armed traps
with a disarm control; the chronicle announces AMBUSH! when one
springs. 124 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The naming round now shows the six real wizard standees; each player
taps theirs before typing their name, claimed standees gray out, and
the next player defaults to the first free one. The choice travels as
an optional colors array in the engine config, the view exposes each
player's colorIndex, and the board, score sheet, treasure chests, and
wizard art all follow the chosen color instead of seat order —
persisting through hotseat saves. Verified: Alice claimed the yellow
standee and marched onto the board as the yellow wizard with yellow
treasure chests. (Online rooms still assign by seat order; a lobby
color picker can reuse the same config field later.)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three player counts join the square and the column: 3 players get the
stair/L with the AUTO WARP joining the two openings that face the
concave notch (convex openings pair geometrically — flagged as
interpretation of the diagram's letters); 5 players get the plus/cross
with tip-to-tip wraps and aisle-warp corners; 6 players get the 3x2
rectangle with straight-across wraps. All six verified layouts are
drawn on, so no count repeats a sector. Rooms accept up to six seats;
the lobby copy follows. 122 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
"You may add two NUMBER cards together for any single action" —
movement included. The engine accepts a second movement number when an
ADD accompanies it (once per turn); the client spends your Add
automatically and says so on the button. 120 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Eric chose the "divine meteor" redesign for the one card that cannot
be digitized faithfully (the physical version has you flick the die at
the board from six inches). Digital form: aim at a square in sight;
the die drifts 0-2 squares in a random direction, then every token in
and around the landing square — ground objects, treasures, creatures,
and wizards alike — is flung to a random nearby square. Walls mean
nothing to falling cardboard; tokens knocked off the board settle at
the nearest edge, per the original card; there is no counteraction.
With this, all 128 unique cards of the 6th edition game (69 basic +
59 Expansion Set #1) are implemented, tested, and playable online.
The "unimplemented card" guard test now points at an Expansion #2
shelf card, which is the only kind left. 119 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Neutral, LOS to the other player, legal only when both home bases hold
an equal number of treasures. With this, every card in the 6th edition
game is implemented except Thumb Of God, which awaits its digital
redesign. 118 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Fortune: GIFT FROM ABOVE (+3, no ceiling), GIFT FROM BELOW (a trap in
the deck — 3 damage on the draw, harmless in the opening deal).
Modifiers: POWER ATTACK burns life into any damage spell. Curses:
WEAKNESS (drop your treasure, take double, carry nothing), STRENGTH
(double physical dealt; the two cancel), WALKING DEAD (half a point
per space walked, forever), DISEASE (the victim becomes a carrier who
infects everyone in squares they enter), IDIOT (the victim shambles
toward their nearest own treasure, able only to counteract, until
they stand on it and ask "What am I doing here?"). Defense: EMPATHY
(attacks bite their caster too), FORCE FIELD (spell-stopping
counteraction). Mischief: MENTAL SWAP (trade whole hands), MENTAL
FORCE (march someone three spaces), BUTT-HEAD (become a goat, ram for
the distance charged), HEAVE-HO (throw your carried treasure as a
weapon), THIEF and SWAP-MEET (item larceny), CHAOS (all hands in a
pile, shuffled, redealt), ILLUSIONARY ATTACK (a fake spell that hurts
if believed), WARD (a trapped treasure bites its thief), REMOVE CURSE
(strip any duration spell, rolling to hit the shrunken or invisible),
SWARTHMORE'S ENCHANTMENT (+1 on an enchanted object). Space-time:
DIMENSIONAL WARP (paired step-through tokens), REDIRECTION (swap two
outer exits' wraparounds), BIG MAN (fills the corridor: no entry, no
punches, no casting past him), FEAR (nobody approaches within 3),
and the out-of-turn pair — INTERRUPT and OPPORTUNITY FIRE — which
open a one-action window in another player's turn. Only THUMB OF GOD
remains, awaiting its digital redesign. 117 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
KILLER OOZE (1 damage on entry, slip on 1-2: drop treasure, 2 more,
flat on your face until you roll to stand), CREATE PIT (jumps roll a
D4 — clear it on 2-4, fall in on a 1 and climb out on later rolls),
ROSEBUSH (3-point passage, blocks sight), DUST CLOUD (a permanent
zone of blindness: direction rolls inside, no LOS through, defeats
Visionstone), FILL SQUARE WITH SLIME (entering ends your actions,
blocks sight), HANDFUL OF TACKS (adjacent-only scatter, 3 points to
cross), CREATE DOOR (a new locked door in any wall or corridor),
BOOBYTRAP (four face-down tokens, one secretly real — 4 points under
anyone but the caster; the caster's view alone marks the true token),
GLUE (objects pinned for twice the number card), SAFE (items locked
away from everyone but the creator), TRADER (swap two floor items in
sight; glue and safes hold fast), and STONE TO WATER (walls melt into
range-2 waves, stone blocks into range-4 bursts). LOS blocking is now
per-terrain-kind. The board renders all of it, boobytrap placement is
a four-click ritual, and Trader is two. 108 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Wands charge on first use from the number card(s) played (Amplify and
Add both work when setting charges), spend one charge per use with a
hard once-per-turn limit, stay displayed while charged, and crumble
to the discard when the last charge goes. They are isolated from
their wielder — usable under NO SPELL — and Absorb Spell cannot eat
them. BLASTER WAND fires 3-point bolts through the normal
counteraction stack; STICKY WAND webs its victim (movement -3 for a
turn, +2 to any fire damage, including hotter firewall crossings);
SHIFT WAND shoves a wizard one space in any direction straight
through stone walls; WARP WAND opens a wall section that snaps back
at the end of the turn. DEJA-VU retrieves any discard except a wand.
The wands' 5e-era "stick" subtype is renamed "wand" per Eric (the 6e
faces say Wand; Exp2 shelf cards keep their period names). Client:
charge badges, shove targeting, retrieve-by-name. 101 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Creatures are first-class citizens: TROLL (D4 punches, 6 damage to
kill, regenerates at its creator's turn end), SKELETON (2-point
punches), WRAITH (walks through one wall a turn; its touch deals 2
and steals a random card), FIRE IMP (a stationary turret scorching
anyone in sight once per turn — including its creator — killed only
by Waterbolt or a Waterwall wave), DEMOCRATIC MONSTER (moved three
spaces by EVERY player on their turn, one claw per round), SHADOW (a
second body costing a life point per turn, destroyed by any damage),
and ALTER EGO (a stationary double). Monsters obey their creators,
move on the controller's turn, attack once per turn but never on
their creation turn (summoning IS your attack), refuse to strike
their creators, and vanish when their creator dies. Attacks can
target creatures directly (no counteraction window — monsters don't
counter); Dispel Creation un-creates them. Plus MEGA-MONSTER (double
a monster's toughness or speed), ADRENALINE (two attacks a turn),
MAD DASH, and LIFESAVER. Expansion Set #2 confirmed by Eric as a
5e-era product — marked historical-only in the data; the 6e game is
exactly base + Expansion #1 (200 cards, all verified). Lobby gains an
"include Expansion Set #1" toggle; the client renders creatures as
diamond tokens with select-move-attack interaction. 95 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
IMG_4693-4696: Killer Ooze, Mental Swap, Opportunity Fire, Idiot,
Illusionary Attack, Interrupt, Shadow (ATTACK/LOS, not a neutral
summon), Safe, Stone To Water, Remove Curse (COUNTERACTION), Rosebush,
Power Attack (NEUTRAL booster), Thumb Of God (physical-dexterity card
flagged for digital redesign), Trader, Walking Dead, Thief
(ATTACK/ADJACENT, "not a spell"), Swap Home Bases, Strength, Ward,
Boobytrap, and Weakness — all verbatim from Eric's cards with printed
corner types and targeting markings; two printed typos on the faces
noted and corrected. All data-only (none implemented yet); these
become the authority for the expansion wave. 84 tests still passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
IMG_4691-4692: Create Pit, Deja-Vu, Disease (ATTACK/ADJACENT),
Adrenaline, Big Man, Blaster Wand, Glue, Handful Of Tacks
(NEUTRAL/ADJACENT, "Not a spell"), Heave-Ho, Dust Cloud, Fill Square
With Slime, and Fire Imp — all texts now verbatim from Eric's 6e-era
Expansion Set #1 faces with printed corner types and targeting
markings. These are data-only fixes (none of the twelve is implemented
in the engine yet); the corrected texts and metadata become the
authority when the expansion wave is built. Notable for that future
work: Disease is adjacency-triggered contagion, Heave-Ho throws
carried treasures as weapons, Dust Cloud is a permanent blind-zone,
and Fire Imp is an auto-attacking turret with waterbolt/waterwall as
its counters.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Eric spotted mismatches between the 5e-database-derived card data and
his physical 6e cards (photos IMG_4688-4690). All 15 texts are now
verbatim from the faces. Four were mechanical, now fixed in the
engine: BLIND's 6e text adds "engage in combat" — blinded punches
flail on a die roll; PICK LOCK's face states "This is not a spell" —
the lock cards and thrown weapons are physical actions NO SPELL cannot
silence; MIST-BODY passes doors and drifts through thornbushes but
does NOT pass the maze's stone walls (was backwards); WALL OF FIRE's
counteraction mode stops a Waterbolt (previously deferred). Metadata:
UGLY is L.O.S.-marked, MASTER KEY is NEUTRAL/ADJACENT, WIZARDBLADE
and PICK LOCK carry ADJACENT markings (new `adjacent` field), LARGE
ROCK is rethrowable by any player (already engine behavior),
BRAINSTONE's face has no corner type. 84 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The hard six: AROUND THE CORNER attaches to any LOS attack and bends
the sight line through one intermediate cell. BLIND victims lurch in
die-rolled directions (bumping a wall costs the movement point, per
the card) and their attacks fly wherever the die says — hitting
whoever stands that way, or dissipating. UGLY drives every opponent
in sight fleeing along shortest paths (breadth-first, die-broken ties)
until they cannot see the caster. ILLUSION WALL is per-player reality:
each opponent rolls 50/50 the first time it matters and the wall is
real for believers forever — believers' views render it as a wall,
the caster and those who saw through it get a ghostly dashed line,
and Dispel Creation banishes it. ROTATE SECTOR turns a sector 90
degrees with every wall, door, wizard, treasure, object, firewall and
alteration turning in place (the home star, being the exact center,
never moves); RELOCATE SECTOR slides a sector anywhere that keeps all
sectors adjacent, reassembling the map and recomputing wraparounds.
Client: modifier attachment (Amplify/Add/Extend/Around The Corner),
two-stage relocate, rotation direction toggle, dashed known-illusions.
Every card in the 6th edition basic deck is now implemented.
81 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Stones are displayed permanents whose powers weave into the core
systems: BLOODSTONE (-1 to every hit taken, cancels Slow Death's
drip), SOULSTONE (last three points immune to spell damage — punches
and daggers still finish the job), BRAINSTONE (+2 cards now, hand
limit 9 — limits are now per-player and dynamic), POWERSTONE (+1 per
number card played, movement included), SPEEDSTONE (+1 movement,
overridden by SLOW), SHADOWSTONE (physical damage you deal feeds your
life), SHIELDSTONE (number cards become counteractions that shave
their value off damage AND duration), VISIONSTONE (LOS through any
single wall or door, at the holder's option). Damage now carries a
spell/physical kind everywhere. SLOW DEATH is a permanent curse: one
magical point per card drawn, forever — Fireball still burns stones
off their display. Re-displaying a stone is refused (no Brainstone
double-draws). 49 basic-set cards implemented, 15 remain (the hard
five: bent LOS, Blind, Illusion Wall, Ugly, sector manipulation).
72 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Terrain layer: FILL SQUARE WITH STONE (impassable, blocks LOS via new
cell-blocking sight checks), THORNBUSH (enter = 1 damage + turn ends +
next turn lost; no attacking in or into a bush), WALL OF FIRE (new
firewall edge state — passable for 4 magical damage, blocks LOS,
expires with its duration), WATERWALL (instant wave: players within
two spaces washed back two, 1 damage per blocked space), and DISPEL
CREATION with provenance tracking (only conjured walls/fire/stone/
bushes dispel — printed maze is safe). Objects: DAGGER (3) and LARGE
ROCK (2) are physical throws Full Shield cannot stop; they land on the
floor and anyone may pick them up (ending their turn's actions, hand
limit enforced); DROP OBJECT forces a named object or carried treasure
to the ground; DRAG pulls floor objects, treasures, or players
straight toward the caster. Control: LOCK IN PLACE (no moving or
being moved — teleports, swaps, knockbacks and drags all respect it),
BUDDY (a pact the caster breaks by attacking), MIST-BODY (through
walls and doors, cannot attack or be attacked, still burns in
firewalls), REUSE SPELL (retrieve your last spell). Client renders
terrain, firewalls, and ground objects, with cell/edge/two-stage
targeting and card-name inputs. 40 cards implemented; 63 tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Duration system: sustained effects expire at the start of the caster's
turns; SLOW (movement 1, no number cards, attack every other turn),
NO SPELL, MEDUSA (paralysis + damage immunity), INVISIBLE (1-in-4 hit
roll), SHRINK (50% miss, movement 2). Doors: PICK LOCK and MASTER KEY
(displayed, reusable) unlock adjacent doors until end of turn, REMOVE
LOCK is permanent, JAM LOCK seals a door for everyone. Movement:
TELEPORT (4 spaces through walls, ends movement), PASS THROUGH WALL
charges, POWER RUN (life for spaces), SWAP (consumes movement),
GO AWAY (knockback + lost turn), TELEPORT OPPONENT. Card warfare:
CARD ERASURE (named), THOUGHT-STEAL (2 random via seeded RNG),
TELEPATH (private hand reveal), POWER DRAIN (damage feeds the caster),
SUDDEN DEATH, STONE DEAD, WIZARDBLADE (same-square, number-powered,
stays displayed). Cast modifiers: AMPLIFY doubles power/duration
(stackable x2), ADD permits two number cards, EXTEND doubles duration;
REVERSE heals instead of harms but keeps secondary effects. Counters
now also halve durations (BLUNT) and split them (REFLECTION).
Security (from review findings): room codes and game seeds now come
from node:crypto, and every seat gets a secret token — reclaiming a
name in a room requires its token, closing the impersonation hole.
29 cards implemented; 51 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Server: room registry with 4-letter codes, host/join/start flow, the
authoritative command loop (seed + append-only command log per room —
the replay/async foundation), and per-player redacted views and events
broadcast after every change. Client: lobby, SVG board (floors, walls,
doors, homes, color-keyed treasures and wizard tokens matching the
physical set's six colors, warp arrows), click-to-move, click-to-punch,
card hand with tooltips from verified card text, cast flow with number
card attachment and waterbolt split, edge-click targeting for wall
spells, counteract-or-pass prompt, discard flow, end-turn draw
selector, and a humanized event log. Verified end-to-end over real
websockets with two clients: join, start, private deals, moves, turn
sync.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The attack/counteraction stack: casting an attack (or punching) opens a
stack; the defender counteracts or passes, the attacker may respond
(ANTI-ANTI nullifies a counter), and resolution runs the damage
pipeline in play order. First effect wave, encoded from verified card
text: Fireball (flat 5 + destroys carried magic stones if damage gets
through), Lightning Blast (number damage + stun unless fully stopped),
Powerthrust (2 + optional number), Waterbolt (caster-chosen
damage/knockback split with push-away movement), Blunt (halve, round
result up), Absorb (-3), Full Shield (spell-only stop), Reflection
(half to both), Full Reflection (redirect), Absorb Spell (nullify and
steal the attack card), Create/Destroy Wall (dynamic edge overrides
layered over the board; collapse deals 4 to adjacent squares), Speed
(extra turn), and TRAP! on draw (lose next turn, redraw). Lost turns
skip on advance; unimplemented cards refuse to cast with a clear
error. 35 tests passing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
