How to play

One small battle a day, the same one for everyone on earth. There are no dice and nothing is hidden: every unit, every piece of ground and every enemy plan is on the map in front of you. It is a chess problem, not a war game — and like a chess problem it has an answer, which was found and proved before the map was published.

A turn

1. They declare. Red marks appear on the map. That is what the enemy will do at the end of this turn, whatever you do in between.
2. You give orders. Tap one of your counters, then tap where it goes and who it shoots. Nothing happens yet; you can change your mind as often as you like.
3. Press Advance. Your orders and theirs resolve together. Then they declare again.

A dashed ring is where a unit is walking to. Red hatching is where its fire lands. Tap any enemy counter to be told in words exactly what it intends.

Three rules decide everything

Fire pins

Shooting does not usually kill. It pins: the unit loses its next turn and lies there. Pinning the gun that covers the ground you want is how you cross it.

Flanks kill

What a shot does depends entirely on where it comes from. The bars on a counter show the way it is looking — so turn your units, and get round theirs. A tank takes 4 less from the front and 4 more from behind, which is the whole reason to have anti-tank guns and the whole reason to flank.

Supply feeds

A unit with a dotted line back to a dump rallies completely every turn: pin it and it gets up again. A unit past the end of that line does not. Cut off, it only gets worse, until it breaks where it stands.

Your side is a rules swap

Each battle offers two sides, and picking one changes the rules you play by, not your numbers. One may see two turns ahead and have the guns, but may only advance beside a friend and never move and fire in the same breath. The other moves and fires at once and goes where it likes, on a supply leash nobody is going to lengthen. The same ground has to be solved two completely different ways.

Winning

The bar under the map says the mission — hold a hex, take one, get units off an edge, let nothing past — and how many turns you have. Reach it inside the turns and you have won. You get two rewinds a day; using one keeps the run but takes it off the leaderboard.

Controls