How to Play FableBrawl

The game in brief

A game is played in a lobby of eight heroes. In a Solo game you take one seat and computer-run rivals fill the other seven. Each hero starts with a Health total, and most heroes start with 40. You lose Health when your warband loses a brawl, and a hero who reaches zero Health is eliminated. The last hero standing wins.

A brawl is one matchup between two warbands. A round is a shop phase followed by the brawls for the whole lobby, so a full eight-hero round contains four brawls. A whole game lasts roughly a dozen rounds.

Order of play

1. Choose a hero. At the start of a game you are offered four heroes and pick one. Each hero has its own power and starting Health.
2. Shop. You receive Gold, buy characters and spells, rearrange your formation, and cast spells.
3. Brawl. Your seven board slots fight an opposing warband automatically. You cannot act during combat.
4. Settle. The loser's hero loses Health, temporary bonuses disappear, permanent growth stays, and the next shop opens.

Gold and the shop

Your Gold for a turn is 1 plus the turn number, up to a maximum of 12. You therefore have 2 Gold on turn 1, 3 Gold on turn 2, and so on until you reach 12 Gold on turn 11, where it stops rising. Unspent Gold does not carry over to the next turn unless a card, hero, or treasure says it does. Some effects add bonus Gold on top of this base amount.

The shop shows three characters on rounds 1 and 2, four characters on rounds 3 to 6, and five characters from round 7 onward, together with one spell. Treasures and some heroes can add extra shop slots. Characters in the shop range from tier 2 to tier 6, and your level decides the highest tier that can appear.

You can keep up to four cards in your hand. A character you buy goes to a free board slot or to your hand, and you can move cards between the two before the brawl begins. Only characters on the board fight.

Levels and experience

Your hero starts at level 2. Beginning with the second turn you gain one experience point (XP) automatically each turn, and some spells, characters, heroes, and treasures grant more. Every three XP raises your level, up to level 6. Levelling costs no Gold.

Your level matters twice. It is the highest character tier the shop can offer, so a level 4 hero can see tier 2, 3, and 4 characters but not tier 5. It also adds to the damage your hero deals when you win a brawl.

Formation: seven slots

Your board has seven slots. Slots 1 to 4 form the front row and slots 5 to 7 form the back row. Where a character stands decides who attacks it, when it attacks, and which characters it can help.

A character with a Support ability grants its bonus to the living front-row characters it supports, as listed above. A back-row character without Support still fights, but it adds nothing to the row in front of it.

How combat works

Combat is fully automatic. The two sides take turns attacking, and each side moves through its characters from left to right, front row first and then back row, and skipping empty slots. An attack deals the attacker's Attack in damage to the target and the target deals its own Attack back, so two characters that attack each other both take damage. A character at zero Health is defeated.

Who an attacker picks depends on the target's row:

• An ordinary attacker picks a random living character in the enemy front row. Only when the front row is empty does it pick from the back row.
• A Flying attacker does the opposite: it picks a random living character in the enemy back row, and attacks the front row only when the back row is empty.

The front row therefore shields the back row from most attackers, which is why fragile characters with powerful Support abilities usually stand behind sturdy ones.

Hero damage

When one warband wipes out the other, the winning hero deals damage to the loser. The damage is 1 for each surviving character on the winning side, or 3 for each surviving Upgraded character, plus the winning hero's level. If both warbands are wiped out at the same time, or the brawl ends without a winner, no hero takes damage. A late-game win with a high level and a full board of survivors can cost the loser a large part of their Health in one brawl, which is why surviving characters matter even when you would have won anyway.

Upgrades

When you hold three copies of the same character, in any mix of board and hand, they merge into one Upgraded (golden) character. The Upgraded character has double the base Attack and Health, its numbers on abilities scale up in most cases, and permanent bonuses from the three copies are carried over. An Upgrade also offers you a treasure, and the treasure comes from the tier of the merged character.

Not every character follows the standard rule. Some characters need only two copies, some never Upgrade by copies, and some Quests Upgrade the character when its goal is completed. The rules text on the card always says so, and the character guide shows that text for every character.

Spells and treasures

Spells are one-use cards from the shop. You buy one into your hand and cast it on a character, usually to give a bonus or change what you own. Characters with abilities that react to spells, such as Mage's Apprentice, reward a warband that casts often.

Treasures are lasting effects for your whole warband. You earn them mainly by Upgrading characters and by completing certain Quests. A treasure can reward a type, improve your Gold, alter the shop, or change how Support works. Because you can only keep a limited number, a later treasure can ask you to choose between your current plan and a stronger pivot.

Heroes

Every hero comes with a power that shapes the whole game: some give extra Gold or experience, some change what the shop offers, and some reward a particular alignment or type. Most heroes start at 40 Health, though a few start with more or less, so a hero with a lower Health total is taking a risk that its power has to pay back. You choose your hero from four offered at the start of the game, so read all four powers before you decide.

Keywords you will see on cards

New to the game? On the game screen, choose It's my first time here for a guided first run. You can also open the in-game Compendium for the exact wording of every keyword, character, spell, treasure, and hero.