How to play DANKGAME

DANKGAME has three ways to play: Conquest and the quick battle against the computer, and the Duel against a friend, or against the computer for practice (The Duel below). Conquest, the PLAY button on the title, is a whole match: your hero walks a painted map from your town to the boss lair, gathers gold, hires troops, and fights monster lairs on the way. Quick battle (also at /battle/) is a single battle: you pick one of two peoples, the Vale Host or the Peatholm, draft your blue army from its eight units with 1000 gold, at most five stacks, and the computer drafts its red one from the other people by the same rules without seeing yours. The Vale Host wins the first blow with a wall, shooters and fast heavy hitters; the Peatholm fields more, cheaper bodies whose Poison and Regenerate favour a long fight. Conquest and the Duel ask the same question before they start, and the Peatholm come with their own town, the Peat Holm, and their own hero, the Sedge Mother (The Peatholm in Conquest below). Every fight in either mode is played by the battle rules further down this page.

Conquest

A new match takes two taps: PLAY, then the people you want to lead, the Vale Host or the Peatholm. There is nothing else to set. It is played on the random map (one of the two Conquest maps below, picked by the match’s seed), with the Classic town, at the highest Warpath level you have opened: the plain match until your first win, then one level higher each time you win at the highest open level (Warpath below). The Large map, its rival, the Forks town and the Warpath picker (to replay a lower level) are experiments, kept in the title menu under Experiments, which opens the full setup panel. With a match saved, PLAY reads CONTINUE and a new match is the menu’s New match, which asks only the same question.

Tap a tile to see the hero’s path and what it costs, and tap it again to walk; a walk stops on anything it reaches. Stepping onto a pile picks it up and onto a mine flags it; a chest, a dwelling, one of the six places or your town opens its card. Your town is a tile like any other: tap it and the path shows, tap again and the hero walks there and goes in. The Town button (T on a keyboard), shown whenever you own a town, opens it from wherever the hero stands; with two towns it opens a short list with a row for each. Away from the town you can still build there, one building a day as always, and it goes up at once; hiring waits until the hero stands in it (war bands on the Large map, below, are the exception). A dwelling, where you hire troops, wears a round badge with crossed spears; a mine wears a square badge with the wood, ore, crystal or gold it pays each day. A mine you hold flies your blue flag and its badge’s frame turns blue; in a Duel the other side’s fly red; an unclaimed one flies none, and the top bar counts the mines you hold. Stepping onto a lair opens its card: who guards it, how many, and what a win pays. It offers two buttons, Fight and Not now: every lair fight is played on the board by you, with your commander behind your army casting his powers (Your commander below). An easy fight goes quicker with the battle bar’s speed button (1x, 2x, 3x) and, near its end, Finish for me. End Day passes the turn. The match is saved after every action, so the title offers Continue after a reload. To carry on from another phone or computer, Settings’ Move my save to another device gives an 8-character code, good once and for 24 hours, that I have a code on the other device turns back into your Conquest, Daily streak and best scores (what is sent).

The Experiments panel offers a map choice: Random map (the default, one of the two maps below) or Large map (experiment), Broadwater: 36 by 36 tiles, about seven times the ground of the others, a river crossed by a bridge in the east or a ford in the west, and Haskett and his three wardens a long walk away. It is the map to roam: it has no day limit (the day counter keeps counting, and 18 days is only the par: a win scores 100 for each day under it and nothing is taken for the days past it), Haskett’s lair is never sealed, so you can fight him with no warden broken, and each warden you break takes 15% from his might (his hit points and his escort; all three broken leave him at 55%). Its wardens never grow, so a warden on day 30 holds its day-1 guard less the creatures you killed there. Because nothing locks him away, Haskett starts this map at 70% of his full might (10-14% on the small maps) and grows 2% a day, so a start army that walks straight to him loses, and waiting is never free. Otherwise it plays by the same rules and is saved the same way; as an experiment it may still change or be taken out, and the Warpath levels are not offered on it. Being bigger, it has its own camera: pinch with two fingers (or turn the mouse wheel) to zoom out as far as the whole map and back in to the usual tile size, and a minimap in the map’s top-right corner shows the ground you have explored (the rest stays dark), your hero, the towns you have seen and the mines flying your flag. Tap or click it to look at that spot; the hero stays where he is.

The rival. On the Large map a computer rival hero plays against you unless you switch him off: the Rival: on / off button under the map choice (on until you turn it off; the game remembers your choice). He starts in the north-west town, whose gate guard is gone because he lives there, with the same army, gold and movement you start with, and he plays his whole day each time you press End Day, before the new day begins. He walks to what is worth most for the distance: mines first (a mine counts as a week of its income), then piles, chests, dwellings and his own town’s hires, and he fights a lair only when the exact Auto result wins and keeps at least 70% of his army. He flags mines the way you do, yours included; his flags are red, his mines pay him, and you take one back by walking onto it. You see him, in red with a Rival tag, only on ground you have explored, and the minimap shows his dot there and his mines and town in red. After a day in which he took something of yours, one card says what: “The Rival took your Gold mine.” Stand next to him and tap him to see his army and the exact result of an attack; Attack is an Auto battle on the board of the region you stand in (no commander casts, and there is no Fight-it-yourself option), and beating him wins the match. Losing, a draw, or reaching the round limit with your side behind loses it. He comes for you only when his army is at least one and a half times as strong as yours, and if he clears Haskett’s lair before you do, you lose. If his army falls in a lair he is out of the match and his flags stay where they are. In 160 simulated matches he beat the boss first in 20 (12.5%). He never picks skills when he levels up, so his army, not his hero, is the threat. If your hero stands 6 or more tiles from your town when the rival walks into it, he raids it, at most once a day: he takes that day's gold from the town (its own 400, 650 with the Council Hall, 1150 with the High Hall too), every recruit waiting there scatters until the week turns, and the buildings stay yours; the day's card reads “The rival raided your town: -650 gold, the recruits scattered.” You see it coming: while the raid would pay him (recruits waiting, or the town's gold) and your town's guard is weaker than his army, the top of the map reads “The rival marches on your town: 2 days” (his road there divided by his 12 movement a day, rounded up; “today” once he stands in it), your town's flag pulses red and an alarm sounds the first time it shows each day. Walk back within 5 tiles and the warning goes.

War bands. On the Large map you can hire troops without walking back for them. Open your own town with the Town button, or tap a dwelling you have found, while the hero is somewhere else (the dwelling opens at once; tap it again to walk there instead); each recruit row then offers Send to hero and says how many days the trip takes. A dwelling sends only after your hero has visited it once: until he has stopped on it, its row reads “Visit this dwelling once to recruit from it” and offers nothing to tap, and after that one visit it sends from anywhere for the rest of the match. Your town needs no visit. The gold and the stock go at once, and the troops set out as a war band: a small figure of the unit under your blue flag, with its count, that walks 6 tiles a day along the cheapest route to wherever your hero stands when the day ends, so the days quoted hold only if he stays put. You see a band only on ground you have explored (it has no minimap mark); tap its tile to read what it carries and how many days it still needs. When it reaches him the troops join his army and the day’s line says so; walking onto it joins it at once. If his army already has six stacks and none of that unit, the band waits beside him until a stack has room. A band is not safe on the road: when its day’s march steps onto or next to a monster lair you have not cleared, that lair’s guards ambush it in a short two-round fight (a band of 6 Spearmen loses about four in five, one of 14 about a third), the survivors stop there for the day, and the day’s line says who struck and how many fell; a red crossed-blades mark stays on that tile for two days. Each lair strikes a band only once, and the Send to hero line warns you first: it names the lairs on the road, or says the road is clear, so clearing a lair or hiring nearer your hero is the way round it. When the line adds that a safer road exists, a second button, Send by the safe road (N days), sends the band round the reach of every uncleared lair, re-planned each day (on a day no way round is left it takes the cheapest road and its tile line says so); from a dwelling to the hero in his home town it usually needs as many days as the cheapest road, sometimes one more and now and then fewer. With the hero a day’s walk from his town, a band from the town or a nearby dwelling needs 1 or 2 days, and one from a dwelling on the far side of the map 7 to 10, so sending one is a plan, not a shortcut.

• The maps. Two hand-made maps, The Causeway Meres (one road north over the causeway between the meres) and Reedford (a river to cross, by the bridge or the western ford), each 10 tiles wide and 18 deep, your town at the near edge and the boss lair at the far one. A new match picks its map from its number, and your first match is always The Causeway Meres. Continue reopens the map you were on. You have 15 days. Each day the hero has 12 movement: a road tile costs 1, grass 2, forest and hills 3, swamp 4; water, mountains and rock cannot be crossed. The fog lifts 3 tiles around every tile he walks. A week is 7 days.
• Your army starts as 30 spearmen, 12 archers, 10 dire wolves and 5 shieldmen, with 300 gold, 5 wood and 5 ore. It holds 6 stacks at most. The dead stay dead: only recruits fill a stack again.
• Lairs. 9 monster lairs. Every lair but the wardens is held by wild monsters of no people, Thornback Shrew, Gorse Hog, Ridge Lynx, Carrion Kite and Barrow Bear (the Wild Beasts), who hunt as a pack: each other living beast stack in the fight adds 10% to a stack’s damage, so the smallest stack is the one to kill first. A Daily before 2026-10-24 keeps the peoples’ guards. The 3 wardens and the 2 other lairs in front of a mine or the boss lair stay on their tiles; the other 4 are dealt (below) onto the roads, the river crossings or beside a pile. Each shows its size before you step on it, by the gold its guards would cost: a few (80–249), a pack (250–649) and a horde (650–1400). A won fight gives the hero that much experience. Clearing a monster lair also pays 100, 200 or 300 gold by its size, 50% more experience, and 30% of its strongest guard stack (at least one) join your army: a Wild Beast as itself, which no town or dwelling hires, a people’s creature as your own people’s creature of that kind (the one a dwelling of that kind hires for you); and it sets the boss back (below).
• Piles and chests. Each map holds 5 piles and 4 chests. A pile is gold 500–1100, wood 5–11, ore 5–11 and crystal 2–5. A chest holds one of these pairs, and you take either half: 500 gold or 400 experience; 750 gold or 600 experience; 1000 gold or 800 experience. Flag a mine for income at every End Day: the wood mine pays 2 wood and the ore mine pays 2 ore.
• Dwellings hire one kind of creature: the Wolf Lodge (dire wolves, 10 a week, 15 gold each) and the Drake Roost (drakes, 1 a week, 260 gold each). Their stock, and the town's, refills at the start of every week.
• The deal. A new Conquest on either map deals 4 of its lairs, its 5 piles, 3 of its 4 chests and its 2 dwellings onto tiles drawn from the match’s number, out of a pool of 28 tiles on The Causeway Meres and 27 on Reedford, so the same number always deals the same map and two numbers almost never do. Only where things stand changes: what a lair holds, how much a pile holds and what a chest offers are drawn as before. The roads, rivers, your town, the boss lair, the mines, the watchtower, the places, the wardens, the lairs in front of a mine or the boss lair, and the chest a warden guards never move. Three rules keep a deal fair: no pile or chest lands within 2 tiles of your town (diagonals count); a dwelling is never as far a walk from the town as the boss lair; and a big pile (gold 800 or more, wood 8 or more, ore 8 or more or crystal 4 or more) always has a monster lair on a tile beside it, on the side nearer the road. A lair keeps its size wherever it goes, and each size has its own tiles: those for a few are all on your side of the water, those for a horde all beyond it. The Daily is dealt the same way from its day’s number, the same for every player, from the Daily of 2026-10-23; an earlier Daily, and a match saved before the deal came, keeps every object on the tile it always had.
• Places. Each map holds six one-time places, one of each kind, always on the same tiles. Walking onto one opens its card, which states exactly what each of its two choices gives; you keep one, or leave and come back, and once used it stays spent. Ember Cairn: +1 attack or +1 defence for every stack in every battle for the rest of the match. Hermit's Hollow: teaches one of 2 skills he names, kept like a level-up pick (a skill you have ranks up). Wax-Sealed Coffer: take the 300, 400 or 500 gold on its lid, or break the seal for 2 times the gold and as much experience, while its trap kills 20% (at least 1) of your costliest stack. Drifters' Fire: 12 spearmen, 10 dire wolves, 8 archers or 6 shieldmen by the fire; hire them all for 50% of their price, or a third of them (at least 1) join for nothing. Lookout Crag: the fog lifts 7 tiles round the crag, or 1 tile round every lair still guarded and the boss lair. Knucklebone Table: stake 100 gold on one die; a 4, 5 or 6 (3 in 6) pays 250 back, or bet on a 6 alone (1 in 6) for 700 back. On average the first returns 125 gold for the 100 and the second 117, so both are worth a try when 100 gold will not be missed, and the die is cast once. A choice you cannot afford, or one with no room in your army, is shown greyed out.
• Watchtowers. Each of the two Conquest maps has one watchtower and the Large map has four, one in each quarter. Walk onto one and its beacon is lit: the fog lifts on every tile within 9 of it and stays lifted for the rest of the match. A visit is free and gives nothing else, no gold, troops or experience; it shows you what is out there before you march.
• Levels and skills. The hero reaches level 2 at 500, level 3 at 1200, level 4 at 2200, level 5 at 3500, level 6 at 5000, level 7 at 7000, level 8 at 9500, level 9 at 12500 and level 10 at 16000 experience. Each level offers three skills, one of each kind, and you keep one for the rest of the match: for the army, Sharpened Steel (+1 attack for every stack), Shield Drill (+1 defence for every stack), Volley Drill (+2 attack for every shooting stack) and Hold the Line (+2 defence for every melee stack); for the commander, Steady Nerves (Fear lowers your stacks' attack by 2, not 3), Grave Call (After a won lair, 20% of the guards' costliest fallen stack (at least 1) rise to fight your next lair battle), Honed Lance (Brass Lance hits for 40, not 30) and Field Surgeon (Mend the Ranks heals up to 36, not 24); for the march, Long Stride (+2 map movement every day), Watchfire Eyes (Sight reaches 4 tiles round the hero, not 3) and Beast Tongue (40% more beaten guards join after a won lair (at least 1 more)). Keeping a skill again ranks it up, to rank 3 at most, and the numbers add up: Sharpened Steel at rank 3 is +3 attack for every stack. The two power skills make his powers stronger wherever he casts them: by hand, and under Finish for me, which casts them by the computer’s rule.
• The wardens. His lair is sealed until you break his wardens: three monster lairs on each map, far apart and marked with his red seal, each a stack of mages and a stack of drakes worth 860–1060 gold on day 1. Fight cannot be played at a sealed lair; it opens once you have cleared 2 of the 3 on The Causeway Meres (one of them guards a mine) and 2 of the 3 on Reedford (one of them guards a mine), and his card counts the broken ones. A warden holds its numbers through day 3, then grows by 13% of them every day, so the longer you build up, the more each one costs to break. The walk from the town through any two of them to his lair is longer than two days’ movement, so he cannot be beaten before day 3. A warden pays what any horde pays, and sets the boss back like any lair.
• The boss is Haskett, the Millstone Reeve: at his full might 480 hit points, with 2 drakes, 5 knights and 3 mages round him. He grows into it: on day 1 he stands at 14% of his full might on The Causeway Meres and 10% on Reedford, gains 3% every day and loses 3% for every monster lair you have cleared, never below his day-1 might and with no ceiling. His hit points (rounded) and each escort stack (rounded down) scale with it, except that he never takes the field with fewer than 960 hit points, 2 times his full might’s; his attack and damage do not scale. Example: on The Causeway Meres on day 5 with 2 lairs cleared he is at 20%: 960 hit points, with 1 knight. His lair card shows today’s might and tomorrow’s. Escort creatures killed in a fight his lair survives stay dead. When he ends a turn with your stacks in reach, he marks a 3 by 3 area where his stone falls on his next turn, at 1.5 times his normal blow; a stack that steps out of it is not hit. Below half his hit points every area he marks is a 5 by 5 square without its corners.

Every new Conquest and Large-map match has this town, and so does the Daily from 2026-10-17. The town itself pays you 400 gold at every End Day, built up or bare, so the 300 you start with becomes 700 on day 2, enough for the 400-gold Muster Yard; the halls' gold adds on top (250 with the Council Hall, 750 with the High Hall too). A Duel, a Daily dated before 2026-10-27 and a match saved before the town paid its own gold earn only the halls' gold. The town screen groups the cards in four rows, Dwellings, Hall, Market & Shrine and Top, and on a phone the list scrolls. Each card says what it needs first. You can build once a day, and you need not walk home for it: the Town button opens your town wherever your hero is, and a building you pick there goes up at once, at the same cost and, for a dwelling, with its first week of troops, exactly as if he stood in it. The one-a-day rule counts builds made in the town and from afar together. Hiring still needs the hero in the town (or, on the Large map, a band sent to him). A Duel, a Daily dated before 2026-10-25 and a match saved before this came in build only with the hero in the town. A 15-day match leaves room for at most 14 builds, fewer than 12. The purse usually runs out sooner, so each day the question is what to leave unbuilt. The halls pay every day they stand, so the Council Hall built on day 3 has paid 1000 gold back by day 7. The Drake Roost hires drakes, which otherwise come only from a dwelling out on the map. It needs the Council Hall and 3 dwellings, and it costs 2500 gold, 10 ore, 5 crystal, so a good economy reaches it around day 8 to 10. Once the Weigh House stands, its card trades at fixed rates that never move: 5 wood for 1 crystal, 5 ore for 1 crystal, 500 gold for 5 wood and 500 gold for 5 ore. A trade does not use up the day’s build. Once the Oath Stone stands, you pick one blessing for the rest of the match: +1 Command at the start of every battle, or your commander’s first power each battle at half cost. A Duel, a Daily dated before 2026-10-17, and any match saved before the big town came keep the old four-building town: the Muster Yard (400 gold, 5 wood: Spearmen and Shieldmen), the Archery Butts (600 gold, 3 wood, 3 ore: Archers and Crossbowmen), the Tiltyard (1200 gold, 5 wood, 8 ore: Knights) and the Lantern Spire (1500 gold, 5 ore, 2 crystal: Mages).

Upgrades. In a new Conquest (and the Daily from 2026-10-26) a building that stands can be upgraded once, to level 2. Tap it on the town picture: the card says what level 2 gives, what it costs and, if you cannot press Upgrade yet, why. An upgrade takes the town’s build for the day (one build or one upgrade a day, not both), works from anywhere as a build does, and is paid in full at once. The picture changes with it: the level-1 building is replaced by its level-2 painting, raised in place with the same puff of dust as a new building. As a worked example, the Muster Yard hires 14 Spearmen a week; upgraded to the Walled Muster Yard for 600 gold, 8 wood it hires 21, and this week’s stock is topped up the moment it is paid. A dwelling’s +50% is added to the Drill House’s +50%, not multiplied by it: with both, the yard hires 28. The Council Hall has no Upgrade of its own: its level 2 is the High Hall, built from its own card. A match saved before upgrades came in, a Duel and an earlier Daily keep one level per building.

Town forks is an experiment, a setting on the Experiments panel in the title menu, off by default: tap Town: Classic and it reads Town: Forks (new), and every match started from that panel, on either map, is played with it until you switch it back (a match already started keeps what it began with; PLAY always starts with the Classic town). With forks on, four of the dwellings come in two tiers of two, and building one of a tier locks the other for the rest of the match (the four-building town is exactly those two tiers). Tier 1 is the Muster Yard or the Archery Butts: cheap bodies to hold the line (400 gold, 5 wood) or shooters who hit harder but need something in front of them (600 gold, 3 wood, 3 ore). Tier 2 is the Tiltyard or the Lantern Spire: knights for 8 ore or the mage for 2 crystal, so the mines you take early decide which is in reach. Each unbuilt card says what it would lock; a locked card and its troops’ recruit rows are greyed and name the building that stands in its place. A building put up from afar locks its twin at once, like one built in the town. A forks match saved before building from anywhere came in keeps its older rule: a building chosen from afar is an order, paid at once and put up the next morning, so a Tiltyard ordered on day 4 from a far mine is for hire on day 5. The Peat Holm forks the same way. A Duel never has forks.

How a match ends, and the score

• Victory: clear the boss lair. Defeat: your last stack falls in a fight, or day 15 ends with the boss still in his lair. The result screen says which.
• A won match scores 1000, plus 100 for each day left of the 15, plus 100 for each other lair cleared, minus 2 for each creature of yours that died; never below zero. A lost match scores nothing. The best score is kept on your device.
• Warpath. Win a match and the next one PLAY starts is Warpath 1; a win at the highest level you have opened opens the next, up to 5, and PLAY always starts the highest level open (Warpath 5 again once it is open). Each level adds one twist and keeps every twist below it, so Warpath 5 plays all 5: Swift Throne (Warpath 1). The boss grows faster: 2% more of his full might every day than the map's own growth. Swollen Lairs (Warpath 2). Every monster lair is one size larger, so a few become a pack, a pack a horde and a horde a greater horde; the boss's wardens stay as they are. Thin Ranks (Warpath 3). Your army marches out smaller, every starting stack with 5% fewer creatures (rounded down). Bristling Guards (Warpath 4). Every guard stack but the boss fights with First Strike, so struck in melee it swings back before the blow lands. Long Grudge (Warpath 5). Each lair you clear takes back only 2% of the boss's might, less than any map's own share. To replay a lower level, open the title menu’s Experiments and press START with the Random map chosen: the Warpath picker lists every level you have opened and shows the chosen level’s twists before the match starts. The best score is kept for each level apart. Nothing carries over between matches: every player meets the same twists. Those wins and best scores also earn your rank, shown with its badge in the Stronghold: 15 in all, three per level, one for a win there, one for a best of at least 2,000 / 1,900 / 1,800 / 1,750 / 1,700 (Warpath 1 to 5) and one for at least 2,400 / 2,300 / 2,200 / 2,100 / 2,000.
• Worked score. A plain scripted player (take everything nearby, hire whatever the gold buys, fight only the lairs the computer’s own play of the battle wins, and march on the wardens once nothing else is left or the days run short) beat the boss of match 3 on The Causeway Meres on day 11, with 7 of the 9 lairs cleared and 101 creatures lost: 1000 + 400 + 700 − 202 = 1898.

Today’s map (the Daily)

The Today’s map row under Conquest on the title (or the address dankgame.com/?daily=1) opens the Daily: one Conquest match a day, dealt from that UTC date, so everyone who plays it that day gets the same map (The Causeway Meres or Reedford), with the same lairs, guards, piles, chests and places in the same spots. A new one is dealt at 00:00 UTC; the row counts down to it.

• Always the plain match. No Warpath twists, no town forks, no rival, whatever you have picked or switched on elsewhere. Your people is still your choice (the one you last picked), and it changes your army and your town, so a Vale Host try and a Peatholm try are not quite the same contest.
• The days are a par. From the Daily of 14 October 2026 on, its 15 days are a par, not a limit: running past them costs score but never ends the Daily. You play on until you beat the boss or lose your army; the day points are 100 for each day under 15 (the boss down on day 11 earns 400 for them) and simply 0 from day 15 on, never a minus. The boss keeps growing each day, so waiting still costs you in the fight. The same Dailies are a little softer at the start: every ordinary lair within five days’ walk of your town (on The Causeway Meres and Reedford, every one) loses a quarter of each guard stack, rounded down, and keeps its full reward; the wardens and the boss are unchanged. A Daily dealt before 14 October is still played as it was dealt, with day 15 its last day.
• One counted try. The first Daily you finish that day, won or lost, is the counted one. Every later try of the same map is practice: the map’s opening line and the result screen both say so, and the row reads Today’s map · practice. Leaving a try unfinished counts nothing; Today’s map picks it up again. Before a new counted try begins, Today’s map says so and waits for Start; Back returns to the title without spending anything.
• The streak. Finish the counted try on consecutive UTC days and the streak grows by one each day. Example: finish on Monday and on Tuesday and the title shows streak 2 all of Wednesday; skip Wednesday and on Thursday it shows 0, and finishing Thursday starts it again at 1.
• The score is the normal Conquest score above (1000 for a win, 100 per day left, 100 per other lair cleared, minus 2 per creature lost). The counted try’s score and your best counted score are kept with the streak.
• Sharing. After the counted try, the result screen has Share today’s result: a picture card drawn in your browser with the date, your people, how it ended (for example boss down on day 10), the score and the streak. Where the phone’s share sheet takes pictures it opens that; otherwise Copy result copies one line of text and Save image downloads the card as a PNG. Practice tries have no card, and sharing sends nothing to a server. The address on the card, dankgame.com/daily/, explains the Daily and opens today’s map.
• Today’s board. After the counted try, Post to today’s board asks for a name (2–16 letters, digits, spaces, _ or -) and sends your list of moves, not a score: the server replays them on the day’s map, ranks you by the score it works out and shows You are #N of M today with the top 10. A run finished just after midnight UTC can still be posted for its day until 01:00 UTC.
• Limits. Your streak is kept in this browser only, and a posted run on the board is all the server keeps (see About): there is nothing to sign up for, another browser or device has its own streak, and clearing the site’s data resets it. When sign-in is switched on, your first post also makes this device a quiet guest of the game’s account service, so the board can list signed-in players’ runs as official first and show a guest’s run as unofficial — sign in to make it count, with the place it would take (would be 4th of 31). If that service is off or out of reach, the post goes exactly as before. A try started before midnight UTC and finished after counts for the day its map was dealt.

The Stronghold

Every finished match brings materials home to your Stronghold, a keep you build between matches from the Stronghold row on the title. It is cosmetic only: nothing in it changes a stat, an army, a reward or a roll inside a match, and the Daily and its board never see it. A Conquest or Daily win brings 8 iron, 6 timber and 1 arcane shard; a loss 3 iron and 4 timber. Each monster lair you cleared adds 1 iron and 1 timber (up to 12 lairs), the day’s counted Daily adds 1 shard, and a win at Warpath 1 or higher adds 1 more. A practice duel brings 6 iron, 6 timber and 1 shard for a win, 3 iron and 3 timber for a loss; a duel against a friend brings nothing. Example: a win with 4 lairs cleared shows Brought home: 12 iron, 10 timber, 1 shard on the result. The keep grows in four stages: the camp (10 iron, 14 timber), the walled keep (30 iron, 30 timber, 1 shard; it opens the trophy hall), the towered keep (45 iron, 40 timber, 3 shards) and banners and the great hall (60 iron, 50 timber, 5 shards): about 2 matches for the camp and 15 to 20 for the whole keep. Trophies hang in the hall as plaques, one each: beating Haskett, breaking a warden, beating the rival hero, a first win, a win with every lair cleared, a win without losing a troop, a counted Daily and a practice duel won. The Bestiary tab lists all 17 kinds of foe (the Vale Host’s 8 units, the Peatholm’s 8 and Haskett) with how many of each you have beaten: a won lair fight counts its guards, a won practice duel the computer’s fallen, and a kind you have not beaten yet stays a dark silhouette. Nothing is for sale and nothing runs on a timer; the Stronghold is kept in this browser (see About) and moves with Move my save to another device.

The armies

A stack is a group of identical creatures that moves and fights as one piece. Damage wears down the top creature first and then removes whole creatures, so a stack shrinks as it is hit. A quick battle’s draft opens on these five stacks (882 of the 1000 gold), and you can change any of them; in Conquest you fight with the army you have gathered, against the lair’s guards:

Turns and initiative

• Every living stack acts once per round, fastest first. Equally fast stacks of the two sides take turns, one each, and the side that goes first among them switches every round: you lead the ties in the first round, the other side in the second, and so on.
• The strip at the top of the battle shows who acts now and in what order, and the order the next round will start in.
• When it is one of your stacks’ turn, it moves, attacks, shoots or braces, and that ends its turn; or it waits, which puts its turn off until later in the round.

Moving

• The lit tiles are where the stack can go this turn. It walks up to its speed in steps, and a step can be diagonal.
• It cannot walk onto or through a rock, and no stack can stop on a square another stack is standing on, or pass through it.
• Every stack starts a lair fight or a Duel’s final battle with at least one free square beside it, but later in a fight a stack can be boxed in, with no tile lit and no enemy marked: then Wait lets your other stacks move first and perhaps open a gap, and Brace gives it +3 defence until the next round begins.

Attack and retaliation

• To attack in melee, a stack moves next to an enemy (any of the eight squares around it) and strikes in the same turn. A stack with Reach may strike from two squares away instead (see Keywords).
• Only the front rank strikes: the number of creatures that hit is the stack’s count or its front-rank limit, whichever is smaller, so piling more spearmen into a stack stops adding damage at 12.
• One roll in the attacker’s damage range is multiplied by the number striking. If its attack is higher than the target’s defence, that is raised by 5% per point of difference; if lower, cut by 2.5% per point, never below 0.3 times or above 3 times. The result is rounded and is always at least 1.
• A stack struck in melee that still has creatures left strikes straight back at its attacker, once per round, unless a keyword says otherwise. That swing back is worked out the same way, with what is left of its front rank.
• Before you commit, the game shows the damage range, how many creatures it kills at each end, and the retaliation you would take. With a touch screen, tap the enemy to see this and tap it again, or press Attack, to strike. With a mouse, hovering shows it and a click strikes. Every enemy you can attack wears a red outline and a red tag with that damage range, and a tap goes to the figure you can see under your finger, so an enemy half hidden behind another is picked by tapping the part of it that shows.

Worked example. Your 24 spearmen attack 12 dire wolves. Twelve spearmen strike, with one roll of 1 to 3, so 12 to 36; attack 4 against defence 3 adds 5%, giving 13 to 38 damage. A wolf has 9 hit points, so that kills 1 to 4 wolves. The 8 to 11 wolves left strike back with up to 10 of them, a roll of 2 to 4 and no adjustment (attack 5 against defence 5): 16 to 40 damage, or 1 to 4 spearmen at 10 hit points each.

Shooting

• Archers and crossbowmen can shoot any enemy within their range, counting a diagonal square as one, as long as no rock sits on the straight line between them.
• A shot draws no retaliation.
• A shooter with an enemy standing next to it shoots at half damage.

Keywords

Every unit carries one or two keywords: a small rule of its own that bends the rules above. Press and hold (or right-click) a stack to see its keywords, each with its icon, on its card. When you pick a target, the strike preview names every keyword that changes that blow, and its numbers already include them.

The codex has a page for every fighter of both peoples, with its stats, its keywords and its damage against every other fighter, a page for each hero’s powers and skills, and every keyword with a worked example.

• Reach (Spearman). Strikes from 2 tiles away; a foe without Reach strikes back from there at 50% damage.
• Charge (Dire Wolf, Knight). +5% melee damage for each tile it covers before the blow, up to +25%.
• Volley (Archer). Its shot also hits every enemy stack next to the target for 25% of the damage.
• Taunt (Shieldman). An enemy standing next to it can only attack or shoot a stack with Taunt.
• Pierce (Crossbowman). Ignores 50% of the target's defence, bracing included.
• Fear (Mage). Enemies next to it fight at 3 less attack.
• Flying (Drake). Flies over rocks and other stacks, but always lands on an open tile.
• No Retaliation (Drake). Nothing it strikes in melee can strike back.
• Pack (the Wild Beasts of the lairs: Thornback Shrew, Gorse Hog, Ridge Lynx, Carrion Kite, Barrow Bear). Each other living Wild Beast stack on its side adds 10% to its damage. The Wild Beasts

Worked example: Charge. 12 dire wolves that cover 5 tiles before biting 24 spearmen deal 25–50 damage, 25% more than the 20–40 they deal from the tile next to them, and kill 2–5 spearmen instead of 2–4. The bonus counts the straight-line distance, so walking in a circle first adds nothing.

Worked example: Reach. The same 24 spearmen striking those 12 wolves from 2 tiles away take 8–20 damage back; from the next tile they would take 16–40. Their own blow is the same 13–38 either way.

Brace

Brace ends the stack’s turn without moving and adds 3 to its defence until the next round begins, against every attack and every shot it takes in that time.

Wait

Wait sends the stack to the back of this round’s order, so it acts again after every stack still to go. A stack can wait once per round, and only while some other stack has yet to act; if nobody else is left, the Wait button is greyed out.

Threats

• Tap, or hover over, an enemy you cannot attack this turn to see its danger zone: the squares it could move to and the squares it could strike on its next turn, shots included.
• The Threats button marks every living enemy’s strike squares at once. It stays on or off as you left it, even after a reload.

Battle speed and Finish for me

• The speed button on the battle bar cycles 1x, 2x and 3x (Settings has the same choice) and is remembered with your other settings. It shortens the computer’s pauses before it moves (at 1x a 1.4-second look at the table before its first move, then 0.4 to 0.7 seconds before every move) and every blow’s animation by that factor. It changes no roll and no rule: a battle plays out the same at every speed. Reduced motion keeps its cuts (no shake, no hit-stop) at every speed.
• Once the enemy is down to two stacks or fewer, and the game, playing the rest of the fight out on a copy with its own move-picker for both sides, sees you winning, the bar offers Finish for me. Pressed, it plays your side with that same move-picker (your commander’s powers included) at 3x, one move at a time, as ordinary moves, so a save and a replay stay exact. Tap the bar (Stop, or any button on it) and the next turn is yours again. It is not offered in a duel’s final battle, against a person or the computer.

Your commander

• Where he stands. In a Conquest lair fight your commander stands on a square of your back row, behind the army (in a duel’s final battle both commanders do). He never moves and never strikes. Enemy stacks can strike or shoot him like a stack; he has 70 hit points and defence 10, and never strikes back. The quick battle has no commander.
• Command. He starts a battle with 3 Command, and a Conquest lair fight with 1 more for every level your hero has gained (4 at level 2, 5 at level 3, 6 from level 4), and gains 2 at the start of each round after the first, up to 6. Once a round, on the turn of any of your stacks, tap one of his powers and then the stack it lands on (keys 1, 2 and 3 on a keyboard). Casting does not use up that stack’s turn.
• Brass Lance (2 Command): 30 damage to one enemy stack anywhere on the board, with no roll and no swing back. The boss has at least 58 hit points (480 at his full might), so one lance is never more than 52% of him.
• Mend the Ranks (3 Command): up to 24 hit points back to one of your stacks, the wounded front creature first, then the fallen stand up again, never more than the stack began the battle with. Example: 20 Spearmen down to 15, the front one at 4 of 10 hit points (144 in all), get 24 back: 168 hit points, so 17 stand, 2 of them up again.
• Standard Ward (2 Command): until the round ends, every blow that lands on one of your stacks (a strike, a shot, a swing back, a volley’s splash, the boss’s stone) does 50% of its damage.
• Knocked out. At 0 hit points he leaves the board and casts nothing more that battle. He is never killed and never lost from the match: in the next battle he stands again at full hit points.
• Every lair fight is on the board. A lair’s card offers Fight or Not now, never a result without the battle. To get through an easy one faster, the battle bar’s speed button plays the computer’s turns and every animation at 1x, 2x or 3x, and the setting is kept for the next battle.
• Finish for me casts like the computer. Once the enemy is down to 2 stacks or fewer and the rest of the fight, played out on a copy, ends in your win, the bar offers Finish for me: it plays your side to the end at 3x, your commander casting by one plain rule, once a round at the first turn of one of your stacks where a cast is open: mend whenever somebody can stand up again, else lance, else ward a stack an enemy stands beside (the Sedge Mother: dew first). Measured over 200 scripted matches (tools/sim-hand.cjs), casting by this rule lost 59% less, in recruit gold, than a commander who never cast, in the ordinary lairs. Stop, or any press on the bar, hands the turn back, and a player who moves the troops better can save more. It is never offered against a person or in a Duel’s final battle.

The Peatholm in Conquest: the Peat Holm and the Sedge Mother

• Picking. Conquest (the screen after PLAY, where a tap on a card starts the match) and the Duel panel show the same two cards as the Battle draft, and all three remember the last one you tapped. A match keeps its people to the end; Continue reopens it with them.
• Their army starts as 45 peat cutters, 24 reed slingers, 10 eelcatchers and 5 bulltoads: 1074 gold of troops against the Vale Host’s 866.
• The Peat Holm, their town, has the same buildings at the same prices under its own names, hiring fen units instead: the Cutters' Bank (Peat Cutters, 20 a week at 8 gold), the Sling Hummock (Reed Slingers, 14 a week at 11 gold), the Toad Wallow (Bulltoads, 4 a week at 50 gold), the Stilt Walk (Stilt Lancers, 5 a week at 34 gold), the Heronry (Heron Riders, 2 a week at 120 gold), the Lamp House (Fen Lamplighters, 3 a week at 85 gold) and the Shrineback Mound (Shrinebacks, 1 a week at 230 gold). A dwelling on the map hires the Peatholm creature of its kind (spearmen → peat cutters, dire wolves → eelcatchers, archers → reed slingers, shieldmen → bulltoads, crossbowmen → stilt lancers, knights → heron riders, mages → fen lamplighters and drakes → shrinebacks). Lair monsters belong to no people and join whoever beats them, so a fen army can end up mixed.
• The Sedge Mother stands where the commander would, behind the army, with 60 hit points and defence 8, the same Command and the same once-a-round cast (keys 1, 2 and 3). Her passive, Slow Water: while she stands, the poison your Poison units put on an enemy lasts 1 more turn.
• Sinking Ground (2 Command): one enemy stack anywhere moves 2 tiles fewer and gains nothing from Charge until the round ends. Cast it on a knight or a wolf pack before it reaches your line.
• Bitter Dew (3 Command): the target and every enemy stack beside it (the 3 by 3 around it) take 16 damage at the start of each of their next 2 turns, 32 in all per stack; a stronger dose already on a stack is kept. Three stacks standing together lose 96 hit points to one cast.
• Moss Bed (2 Command): one of your stacks gets up to 12 hit points back on its front creature at the start of each of its next 2 turns. The fallen do not stand up: it saves the wounded, not the dead.
• Her skills. On a level-up her two power skills are Steeped Dew (+4 poison a turn on Bitter Dew per rank) and Deep Moss (+4 healing a turn on Moss Bed per rank), where the Commander would get Honed Lance and Field Surgeon.
• What it is worth. Her powers pay off over turns, his at once. Over 869 ordinary lair fights cast by a plain scripted rule, fighting by hand saved 40% of the troops the computer’s play lost with her when it did not cast, against 55% with the Commander in the same run, because many lairs die in two or three rounds. In long fights, and against a charge, she is at her best.

The Duel: two heroes, one map, the same days

A Duel is a match for two. Each player has a hero, a town and an army on one shared map, and both play every day at the same time. Walking, piles, chests, mines, towns, dwellings, lair fights and levels work as in Conquest; there is no boss. The match ends in one final battle between the two armies. Press Duel on the title for three buttons. How invites, speeds and the final battle work, with no download and nothing to sign up for: the Duel page.

• Invite a friend makes a private six-character code and shows it large with its link, dankgame.com/?duel= followed by the code, and a Share link button (on a phone that has a share sheet) or Copy link. Send either one; the duel starts the moment your friend joins. Online duels are played only on dankgame.com itself.
• Join a code is a text box for the code your friend’s screen shows. Opening their link joins in one step.
• Play the computer is a practice duel that runs entirely in your browser, with the same map and the same clocks (dankgame.com/?duel=practice opens it too). Under it, Computer: Vale Host · Peatholm · Either picks the people the computer brings. Either, the default, is drawn from the duel’s seed, so a practice duel you come back to brings the same rival.
• Speed: Blitz · Standard · Slow sits above Invite a friend and Play the computer and sets the clocks of the duel you start, like a chess time control. Blitz: 30-second days, 10-second battle turns, a 45-second lair bank. Standard, the default: 60, 20 and 90 seconds. Slow: 3-minute days, 45-second turns, a 4½-minute bank. A friend duel is played at the speed picked when the code was made: the code screen, the shared message and link, and your friend’s first line in the duel all name it (“Blitz duel · 30 s days”), and the server runs both players’ clocks at it, whatever the friend has picked. The numbers in the items below are Standard’s; the other speeds’ are the ones in this item and under When a player drops. Between these three only the clocks change: the map, the armies and every rule are the same. Correspondence, the fourth button (24 h), shown only on the panel’s first screen and used only by Invite a friend (Play the computer plays it at Standard), is a friend duel by correspondence: each day lasts up to 24 hours of real time and turns as soon as you have both ended it, a battle turn has 12 hours and a lair fight’s bank 24, and its one extra rule is that a side that misses 3 days in a row (no move and no End Day in any of them) forfeits. It is open: the match server keeps every running duel on disk, so a correspondence duel carries on across a server restart.
• Your people. Before it starts the Duel asks the same question as Conquest: the Vale Host or the Peatholm, each with its own town, hero and starting army (above). Each player picks for themselves, and both may bring the same people.
• The map. The northern half is the southern half turned half a circle round the centre. Every lair, pile, chest, mine and dwelling on your half has a twin on the other, holding the same thing at the same distance from the other town, so neither start is the better one. The map also holds the six places described under Conquest, in mirrored pairs: one of each kind on your half and its twin on your rival’s. Which place stands on which of the six spots is drawn from the duel’s seed, and a twin offers exactly the same choices and numbers (the same gold on a coffer, the same drifters, the same die at the table). Each copy is spent by the hero who uses it, so a hero who walks to the other half’s copy first takes it away from his rival. The first player into the match starts in the south, the second in the north. Each town belongs to its own side: you cannot build or hire in your rival’s.
• The day clock. Both heroes move during the same day. Each day gives every player a 60-second ring; press End Day when you are done. The day turns when both have ended it, and a ring that runs out ends that player’s day exactly as End Day would, so a slow or absent player never holds the match up. If you finish early you wait for the other player, at most until their ring runs out. When the day turns both heroes get their full movement back and each side’s mines pay their owner.
• A lair fight has its own clock. Press Fight on a lair card and your day ring stops, keeping the seconds it had left; it runs on from there when the fight is over. In the fight each of your army’s turns has 20 seconds (when they run out the stack Waits, or Braces if it already waited), and the whole fight has a bank of 90 seconds, counted from the moment it opens. Once the bank is spent, the rest of the fight is played on Auto from where it stands, as it is if you leave the battle. While your fight is open your hero does nothing else, and your rival’s ring is not touched.
• When both heroes take the same object on the same day. The server sees two players’ moves one after the other, but who arrives first is not decided by whose message arrived first. Movement is the day’s clock instead: the hero with more movement left when he took the pile, chest or mine got there earlier in the day and keeps it. The other is refused, and if he had taken it first he hands it back in full, even if that leaves his gold below zero for a while (income pays the debt back); a chest’s experience goes back too, with any level it gave. A mine simply changes flag. Equal movement left goes to the southern hero on even days and the northern hero on odd days. Example: on day 4 the southern hero takes a pile of 500 gold with 5 movement left. Later that day the northern hero reaches the same pile with 7 left and takes it as well: 7 beats 5, so the north keeps the 500 gold and the south’s purse drops by 500. Had both had 5 left, day 4 is even and the pile would have stayed in the south. From the next day the usual rules apply: a taken pile is gone, and a mine is flagged by whoever stands on it. Towns are never contested, and a dwelling’s weekly stock is shared, first come first served.
• The final battle: when and where. The heroes meet when a walk ends on the other hero’s tile or on one of the eight around it; walking past on the way somewhere else is not a meeting. The final battle starts at once (if the other hero was in a lair fight, that fight is finished on Auto first). If nobody has met by then, it starts when day 12, the last day, turns. It is fought on an 8 by 10 board painted from the map where it happens: the tile of the hero who walked in, or after the day limit the tile halfway between the two heroes. Every rock on that board has a twin turned half a circle, so neither army forms up behind better cover. Each side brings its whole army and its commander, and each hero’s skills count for his own stacks.
• The final battle: turns. It is played by the battle rules on this page, keywords included. Each stack’s turn has 20 seconds; when they run out the stack Waits, or Braces if it already waited. Equally fast stacks of the two armies take turns, and which army leads them in round 1 is drawn from the battle’s own seed (made from the duel’s seed and the day the battle starts), so the south is no likelier to strike first than the north. The lead changes hands every round after that. After 40 rounds the army with more hit points left wins.
• How a duel ends. The army left standing in the final battle wins the duel. A drawn final battle (both armies gone in the same exchange, or equal hit points after the last round) goes, after a meeting, to the hero who was walked into, so attacking has to be worth it; after the day limit it goes to a side the duel’s seed fixed when the match was made. A player whose whole army falls in a lair fight loses the duel at once. The result screen names the winner and why.
• When a player drops. If a player’s connection is lost, their hero holds still and the clocks keep running for them, ending their days and turns. After 90 seconds the computer takes that seat (at Standard; after 45 seconds at Blitz, 5 minutes at Slow) and plays it carefully: it never walks up to the other hero, so it never starts the final battle, and each day it keeps at least half the gold it began the day with. A player who closes the page is not replaced by the computer; their hero just holds still under the clocks. After 3 minutes away at Standard (90 seconds at Blitz, 15 minutes at Slow), either way, the other player may claim the win: their screen shows a gold Claim the win button over the map, with a line saying how long their opponent has been away. One tap ends the duel as their win, and the end of the duel says why; they may also ignore it and play on. If the missing player comes back first, the button goes away. While the page stays open, a dropped connection reconnects by itself and takes the seat back at once: the computer stops.

Winning

• The battle is won when the other army has no creatures left. If both armies lose their last creatures in the same exchange, it is a draw.
• If both armies are still standing after 40 rounds, the side with more hit points left wins, and equal hit points is a draw.
• The battle is saved after every action, yours and the computer’s, so closing the tab or reloading does not lose it: the title screen offers Continue. A finished battle leaves no save behind.

Controls

Everything is a tap or a click. Press and hold, or right-click, any stack to read its card. On a keyboard: W waits, B braces, T toggles Threats, S changes the battle speed, F starts Finish for me when it is offered, Enter attacks the enemy you have picked, Esc opens the menu, Tab moves between buttons and Space presses the one in focus.

These are the rules of the game at dankgame.com. The older one-battle game, with different rules, was retired on 5 October 2026; its address now forwards to /battle/, the quick battle of this game.