Clash

How it is won

There are no keeps on this field and no Builder. The last army standing wins: a side is beaten the moment it has no troop left alive.

If neither host has destroyed the other after fifteen minutes of fighting, the field is called for the side with more of its army still standing — what each troop cost, weighed by how much of it is left.

Setting out your host

Both commanders open on 300,000 gold and earn nothing after it. You spend it in the first 60 seconds, setting out troops one by one inside your own lines — a deep band of your half of the field, well back from the middle. Every troop you have unlocked for your kingdom is on offer, each at ten times its worth in the troop table, and 300 gold a head on top: 500 gold for the cheapest troop in the game, 9,050 for the dearest.

• Pick a troop card, then click — or drag across your lines — to set them down, one, five or ten to a click.
• Right-click a troop to take it back off the field. Every coin comes back.
• Select troops and right-click to carry them somewhere else in your lines. Tell them to hold, and they stay there when the battle starts.
• There is no cap on the size of your army — the chest is the only limit. The head price is what keeps that honest: the whole chest buys at most 600 of the cheapest troops, so a horde of levies and a few hundred knights cost the same and fight very differently.

The battle starts the moment both sides are ready, or when the clock runs out. Against the AI it starts as soon as you are ready. A commander who sets out nobody is given a host anyway — a battle that is over at the first horn is not a battle.

Commanding it

When the horn sounds, both hosts advance across the field, keeping the shape they were set out in. From then on they are yours to command:

• Click a troop, or drag a box, to select; Shift adds; double-click takes every troop of that kind on screen; Ctrl+A takes the whole army.
• Ctrl and a number sets a control group; the number recalls it.
• Right-click the ground to move there. Troops on a move walk through whatever they pass and fight when they arrive — the way to pull archers out of a melee or swing horse round a flank.
• Press A and click to attack-move: march there and fight everything met on the way. Right-click an enemy to set the selection on it.
• H holds position, S stops, P patrols.

A group ordered to move together keeps the shape it was in, and marches at the pace of its slowest troop, so a line arrives as a line and the horse in it do not run ahead of the foot.

Two hosts meet as two lines rather than one knot: troops in a melee stand a little apart and strike across the gap, a blade looks for a foe nobody else is fighting, and one whose way is blocked by its own side already fighting waits its turn behind them rather than shoving in.

The full list is on the controls page.

The field

It is a field dealt for battle and nothing else — 6.7 times the ground of the duel's arena — fresh every match, in one of seven forms:

• Fords. A river runs between the hosts. The fords are the quick way over, and one of them floods on the tide.
• Ridge. A ridge of high ground runs down the middle of the field. Whoever holds the crest shoots farther and hits harder.
• Pass. A wall of rock splits the field, broken by a few narrow passes. Every pass is a door, and every door can be held.
• Greenwood. A belt of old forest stands between the hosts. Arrows are lost in it, horses founder in it, and anything inside is hard to see.
• Fen. A fen fills the middle of the field. Causeways cross it fast and in the open; everything else wades.
• Ruined Town. A burned town stands on the field: walls to hide behind, a watchtower to shoot from, and streets to fight down.
• Steppe. Open, rolling grassland with a few low heights and wind-scoured flats. Horse country.

Whatever its form, the field is the same from both sides — every feature off the middle has its twin across it — and it always holds the same three kinds of ground worth fighting for:

• A height in your own lines — a hill to set your shooters on before the horn. A shooter on high ground outreaches and outhits one below it, and a troop that climbs to strike at it strikes 15% softer.
• Cover on the wings — woods and tall grass to hide a flank march in, so a commander who goes round has somewhere to go.
• Power ground in the middle — giving whoever stands on it something the other host does not have. It is one of these:

• A standing dais, still blessed. Every blow struck from it lands harder.
• A carved war-totem. Whoever fights beside it fights in a frenzy.
• A ring of carved stones humming with old magic. Whatever is loosed from inside it flies farther.
• A wardstone keeps this ground. Every blow taken on it lands softer — arrows, axes and spells alike.
• A clear spring. The wounded who stand in it close their wounds.

Before the horn the deployment plate names the field, says what it asks of you, and lists every kind of ground on it.

Kingdoms

Any of the ten kingdoms, each fielding the troops you have unlocked for it in the Armory.

Starting one

Choose Clash on the home screen, pick your kingdom and march. You are matched with another commander, or you can start straight away against the AI.