This article describes what is a battle cycle and how the unit does its job during its cycle. For an overview of the gameflow please visit Workflow. The battle cycle consists of three pasts: Before attack, during attack and after attack parts. When all three parts are finished the battle cycle ends.
At the end of each phase (that means three times per battle cycle), all units are checked if they have 0 health and if so they are dead, being removed from the play into graveyard.
Before attack[]
The list below is what a unit does, according to time.
- Check if either side have 0 morale point. If yes the game ends.
- Check frozen or trapped status. If unit is frozen or trapped, the whole before-attack phase is skipped
- Heal
- Burn All, Blast, Chain Zap, Demoralize, Drainbolt, Firebolt, Firebreath, Harass, Icebolt, Rush, Sneak Attack, Trap, Whip , Zap - If the unit carries these abilities. Pleas notice currently it is unable to determine the priority between these abilities as units process at most one kind of these abilities. No to be confused with artifact abilities.
- Reflect
- Certain artifact abilities - All of abilities acting towards enemy units and enemy morale act first in the whole battle cycle.
Important: Death check is always done in between action. For example, if an unit with Zap, Zap gets killed by the first reflect attack, it is immediately put into graveyard, without performing the second Zap.
Important: Before the monster Pack release in Facebook Warstorm, the artifact abilities were performed before all the card abilities.
During attack[]
The list below is what a unit does, according to time.
- Calculation of damage by attack
- Removal of Previous Boost Attack Plus effect
- Spearhead, Rage, Sneak Attack
- Death Aura (might skip the whole attack phase)
- 0 attack, Frozen or trapped status (skips the whole attack phase)
- Invulnerable on defender (Completely block the damage but does not skip the phase)
- Archery, Trample, Pikeman, Flying
- Block
- Card type Slayer (Ignores flying, block and immune)
The 5 steps cause damage by normal attack but still do not inflict damage, while these below affects units in time order
- Disease (Important: Disease damage will apply before attack damage! This will cause three effects: An unit killed by the disease effect but not the attack damage, will not inflict burning status; Animated units killed by disease will appear with decreased stats, and if an explosive unit is killed by disease and attacked by normal damage in the same battle cycle, it will has small chance to explode twice!)
-
- Applying damage to enemy unit
- Decreasing attack due to sap
- Gaining of Death Aura
- Gaining of poisoned status
- Gaining of burning status (Flaming units failing to damage enemy unit will not inflict burning status, also having 0 attack to attack the flaming unit will not cause burning status) (It works even if unit is frozen or trapped)
- Gaining attack due to berserk and frenzy
- Retaliate (It works even if unit is frozen or trapped)
- Check if either side have 0 morale point. If yes the game ends.
- Important
- if unit is attacking an empty space, the damage is always the current attack value of the unit to opposing morale point.
After attack[]
The list below is what a unit does, according to time.
- Unsummon Self (although the poison and burning damage will appear after that, the damage will appear at the next praticipation in play. For details please see Unsummon)
- Regenerate and Undead Ally due to card ability (It works even if unit is frozen or trapped)
- Poison damage
- Burning damage
- Regenerate due to artifact ability
- Remove frozen and trapped status
- Check if either side have 0 morale point. However, in this phase the check is obscene.