Scoped to everything since the last pass (695307d). The residue of
fast iteration, removed: a reduced-motion media query that had
swallowed a full copy of the .faq-seal rules; doc comments orphaned
from their functions by inserted methods; the FAQ scrape's seams
(section headings run into ruling bodies under the wrong topics, a
next-page heading shipped as a ruling, an amputated "h", and rulings
filed under alphabetically-nearest strangers — Large Rock/Dagger now
lives on those cards; Book of Spells and Torquemada describe no card
in this set and are gone); the write-only aisle flag left behind by
the reverted rev 7; a linter-silenced dead destructure; a duplicated
median lookup; dead casts; and the fallback path that ignored the
apprentice's one-card draw.
Tests now typecheck (tsconfig includes test/), which surfaced the
missing type imports and a drifted creature literal hiding under an
as-cast. Also: a no-op self-assignment, mid-file imports hoisted, a
dynamic-import habit made static, a hedge comment replaced with a
loud setup failure, the fallback-retries-itself dead rung removed
from both bot drivers, and the twin peek scrims merged.
Deliberately kept: the TIERS lookup guard (ledger JSON is untrusted),
the wand-cost stanzas (they differ on the power-attack trade — a
rules question, not a dedup), and rollDie's coexistence with rollD4
(migrating changes visible logs; future work).
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>
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>
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5