Honor, Spells & Dragons
A 3D card game where every creature you place is a bid for Power and a grab for territory in the very same move, decided in the end one row at a time.
The Idea
Territory and Power, in the same move
Every card is two plays at once: it adds Power to its row, and it spreads seekers that claim, grow, or capture the tiles around it.
You and your opponent take turns seating creatures onto tiles you control. A strong card banks Power toward winning its row, but the same placement also throws out seekers in a signature pattern, staking new ground, reinforcing your own, and prying tiles out of enemy hands. Good moves do both. Great moves set up the move after.
There is no hidden math. Enhanced cards glow green, weakened cards glow red, and the score bowls at each lane fill with coins as the board tips one way or the other. A glance tells you who is winning, and what just happened to whom.
The Rules
How a duel is played
From the opening roll to the final tally, the whole game in the order it happens.
The board & the three lanes
The battlefield is three rows by five columns, fifteen tiles in all. Player One starts owning the whole left column, Player Two the whole right, and every home tile begins with a single seeker on it. The three middle columns start neutral and empty, waiting to be taken.
Each of the three rows is its own lane, scored on its own. The bowl beside a lane shows the Power you are banking there. Win the lane, keep its Power; the middle of the board is where lanes are won and lost.
Roll For Dominance
Before a card is played, both players roll for the first turn. Each secretly picks a number from 2 to 12, two dice are rolled, and whoever guessed closest plays first. Out of sight, the server makes one silent roll of its own, setting whether Providence, the hidden tile, is in play this match.
Then you look at your opening hand of five. Mark any cards you would rather not keep and mulligan them for fresh draws, or keep the hand as dealt and begin.
Seekers, Rank & influence
Every tile holds seekers, zero to three. To seat a card you must own the tile, it must be empty, and it must already hold at least as many seekers as the card's Rank. Cheap Rank 1 units go down almost anywhere; a Rank 3 monster demands a tile you have built all the way up.
Placing a card is where the board grows. Its pattern spreads seekers outward, claiming empty tiles for you and raising the rank of the tiles you already hold. That is how a lane pushes forward: build the ground with small cards, then drop stronger, higher rank creatures into it.
Power: enhance & enfeeble
A card's Power is never static. Its printed base is only the start; spells and abilities pile on permanent bonuses and penalties, while auras add and remove Power as cards come and go around it.
The board tells you at a glance: green means enhanced above base, red means enfeebled below it, and gold marks a Providence card. Push a card's Power to zero and it is destroyed, its tile emptied and its ground up for grabs. Attrition is a weapon.
Auras & abilities
Abilities are the game beneath the game. Every one is a trigger (on play, on death, while enhanced, while winning its lane, in reaction to an ally or an enemy) paired with a target and an amount. Some fire once; some are auras that hum for as long as the card lives, lifting allies or grinding down foes on the tiles around them.
Because auras recompute after every change, plays chain: you weaken an enemy, it dies, its death fires, a second card drops below zero, all of it settled before your turn ends.
Providence: the hidden tile
About one match in three hides a lucky tile somewhere on the board. It stays invisible until a card lands on it, and the moment one does, Providence fires and both players roll off for it.
The winner may swap one of their own cards already on the board for an equal Rank card still waiting in the part of their deck they have not drawn. A single trade in the right lane can flip a row you were losing. It is the game's wildcard, and it is never guaranteed to appear.
Scoring & winning
When the board fills up, or neither side can make another move, it is counted. In each of the three lanes the side with more Power banks that lane's total; the loser of a lane banks nothing there, and a tie pays neither. Coins drop into the winner's bowl, one lane at a time.
The higher grand total wins. So a lane you barely lose costs you everything in it and is worth pushing to flip, while a lane you can't win may be worth conceding, to pour your strength where it counts.
The World
Fifteen archetypes, three natures
Every creature belongs to a faction that is both its look and its temperament: steel, sorcery, or something older.
Martial
- Knights & Paladins: sturdy front lines and radiant, holy buffs.
- Spellswords: agile rune-blades with self-buffs and tricks.
- Dwarves: stubborn, forge-themed, raising rank and enduring.
- Orcs & Goblins: cheap and aggressive; Orcs hit hard, Goblins swarm and disrupt.
Arcane
- Mages, Wizards & Sorcerers: elemental Power and auras; Wizards are the rare high end.
- Warlocks & Necromancers: dark magic that enfeebles, destroys, and pays off on death.
- Druids: nature auras, growth, and quiet board development.
Beasts & Apex
- Dragons & Griffins: the apex Legendaries; huge Power and splashy patterns, the top end of any deck.
- Elves: precise and flexible, sitting between steel and spell: archers, blades, and wood-mages.
The Roster
The starter deck
Every new player begins with the same 30 card starter set: all non legendary, spread across the families, enough to build a real deck from day one.
Progression
Start with thirty, earn the rest
The starter deck is where everyone begins. From there your collection grows every time you play.
A win is worth 100 XP, a loss still pays 40, and the climb runs all the way to level 30. Every level you gain, from two to thirty, hands you one new card dropped straight into your collection. They arrive weakest first and strongest last, so the cards you most want are the ones you climb toward.
From everything you own, you build a deck of fifteen, doubling up on a favorite if you like, and carry it into a match. Save up to five and pick your weapon for the fight. Beyond leveling, the card packs and the player marketplace fill in the rest of the collection.
The Community
Played on the HIVE
Honor, Spells and Dragons lives inside THE HIVE, a modern rebuild of the classic online gaming lobby, and every duel is played there.
Inside the HIVE: live rooms, players, and chat, all in one place.
One HIVE account is your whole identity. Your collection, your decks, and your level live on your account rather than on one machine, so they follow you wherever you sign in. There are no separate game logins to keep track of.
Sit down at a HIVE table and duel another commander in real time, with push to talk voice chat right at the board. Open card packs and buy, sell, and trade with other players in the HIVE marketplace. The lobby, the matchmaking, the community, and the economy all live in one place.