Battle Maps

Every card that stands on the Battlefield has its own Battle Map, a small diagram printed on the card. It shows where the card may stand and which positions its arrows reach. Try it on 0247 Crystalline Drake below; the same map is on every card page.

Try it: 0247 Crystalline Drake

• Select one of your green squares (Front Far Left, Front Far Right, Back Left or Back Right) to place the card there and see what its arrows reach.
• Select one of your opponent's positions: green means its arrows can reach it, red means they cannot.
• Select its Power under the explanation box to light every Frontline position, yours and your opponent's, in purple. Select an opponent's position to go back to the arrows.
• Select a red square (Front Center or Back Center) to see why it cannot stand there.

How Battle Maps work

Your Battlefield has 8 positions: 5 in the Frontline and 3 in the Backfield. Each has a name and a short code, always from your own point of view.

Row · Positions

Frontline · Front Far Left (LL), Front Left (L), Front Center (C), Front Right (R), Front Far Right (RR)

Backfield · Back Left (BL), Back Center (BC), Back Right (BR)

The Backfield positions sit directly behind Front Left, Front Center and Front Right. Your opponent's Battlefield is the same layout turned to face you, so your Front Far Left faces their Front Far Right. Adjacent means directly left or right in the same row; a Frontline position is never adjacent to a Backfield position.

Cards without a Battle Map, such as Forges, are played in the Foundry instead of on the Battlefield.

• Initial (green): the card may enter play here. Once in play, it may move to any position marked Initial or Neutral on its map.
• Neutral (grey): the card cannot enter play here, but may move here after it has entered.
• Restricted (red): the card can never move here by choice. If an effect forces it into a Restricted position, it returns to its controller's hand.

The arrows on a Battle Map show the card's Targeting Range.

• Melee (Left, Center, Right): the row directly ahead, straight ahead or one position to either side. From your Frontline it reaches your opponent's Frontline. From your Backfield it reaches only your own Frontline, which is useful for effects on your own cards.
• Ranged (Left, Right): like a knight in chess. It passes over the row directly ahead and reaches the row two ahead, one position to the left or right. From your Frontline it reaches your opponent's Backfield; from your Backfield, your opponent's Frontline. The row it passes over does not block it.
• Guard (Left, Right): the neighbouring position in the same row.

An arrow that points where there is no position reaches nothing (for example, Ranged Left from Front Far Left). An effect uses Targeting Range only when its text says "in Range"; Strikes, Retaliation and Guarding always use their own Range rules.

Some card text reaches positions in its own way instead of using the arrows. Crystalline Drake's Power deals its ATK to "a target on any Frontline position", wherever it stands. The site calls these abilities special targeting and shows them in purple. Abilities that say "in Range" are shown the same way, lighting what the card's own arrows reach from where it stands.

Point at Melee, Ranged, Guard or Special above the explanation box to read what each one means. The box beside the map lists every position the arrows reach.

The strips above and below the Battlefields show each player's Foundry, Catalyst Zone, Vault and Archive. Where they are drawn is only a picture; the rules give them no position.