Gameplay

Heralds of Chaos is a strategy card game made playable through Gaia Online. The open beta was released on September 21, 2012. The game features turn-based gameplay ranging from a top-down view of the map to a battle scene similiar to a turn-based RPG.

Battle campaigns are a mission style of gameplay with clear goals and objectives such as: defeat this boss in under x turns; get to location y without dying; escort target unit to target portal alive, etc. Campaigns are challenging, and offer great rewards for completion.

Object of the Game

The object of the game is to win; there are three modes by which a player may win the game:

• Enemy player has no units remaining
• Player has attuned six victory portals
• Player has won the final battle.

In order for a player to win, they must go turn by turn to complete one, or all, of these objectives. In Battle campaigns, the objective(s) often vary from these three alone.

Turn by Turn

There are two phases of each turn; The Strategy phase, and Combat phase. Enemy and Allied phases of each turn happen simultaneously. At the conclusion of each turn, until the game has ended, a new turn begins.

Strategy Phase

The first portion of the turn; units which are capable of movement [Units that were summoned on a previous turn, and units without the property "movement 0"] move from one swatch of land to another.

The player may choose to summon units to friendly victory portals during this phase as well, if they have sufficient mana to do so. Another way in which the player may spend their mana is on some out-of-combat spells. These spells may take effect on the current turn, or on the next one. They may allow the player to cause damage to their opponent's units, summon units to region without a portal, or even gain extra mana for their next turn.

The second portion of this phase happens once the player (or both players if playing PvP) has/have hit done.

Panels which are being moved from are randomly sorted in the order in which they move; the number and speed of units involved in the motion plays no role in this sort order. All units which have been dispatched to move will move, unless pinned by an opponent's unit(s).

At the same time, land cataclysms will occur and units that are on, or move onto portions of land experiencing a cataclysm may be moved along with the land; unless they are on or move onto the portion which is being converged upon. Either one or two cataclysms will occur each turn. The number of cataclysms which happen on the turn will determine how many more cards will appear in your hand at the beginning of the next turn.

If opposing unit(s) are on the same region at the conclusion of this phase, the combat phase will be entered.

If more than one region comes to be in combat, a battle will be automatically selected for you as your focused battle, and the others will play out automatically; though you can choose whether your units attack or retreat.

Combat Phase

Each battle consists of two phases: and many rounds. Each battle may consist of many rounds, lasting until either all units on one side of the battle have been defeated (reduced to 0HP), or until one side retreats. Each round each player gets ten times as many action points as the round number; 10AP in round 1, 20AP in round 2, 30 in round 3; etc. Action points may be used for specials or in-combat spells.

Strategic Phase:

This is the portion controllable by the player. Each unit can be directed to target an enemy unit. Unless the unit is a ranged attacker, they may only target units in row 1 until all of the first row is done, then they may target units in row 2. 

Spells may be played from the player's hand at the cost of the number of action points denoted on the card. Spells may be used to help the player, hinder the opponent, or do both at once.

Specials may be selected for use during this phase as well, so long as the cooldown time has been met, there are sufficient action points, and legal targets available.

The Strategic Phase is complete when the player selects either Done, confirming that they want their units to attack, or Retreat, which has a 50% chance of success (It is not possible to retreat from the final battle).

Execution Phase:

This phase consists of three sub-phases, and is how the strategic phase of combat plays out each round.

1: Spells. All spells cast by players take effect first and foremost. If both players cast spells, it is currently unclear how their order is denoted (It seems to be random).  Already-existing spells and specials happen at the same time (eg: enemy loses 10% of it's HP each turn, etc).

2: Specials. These happen in the order of the units' speed. The fastest unit's special will take effect first. If two units have the same speed, their specials will take effect in a seemingly random order. Some unit's specials will not be executed, until the combat phase, however.

3: Combat. This is where units perform basic attacks on their targets. The order that attacks are performed are denoted by the speed of each unit. As usual, the fastest unit will go first.