Combat

Attacking costs Brain Power (BP) and runs a question exchange between attacker and defender before any damage is dealt.

Range and cost

• Attack range is a flat, adjacent hex — no class extends it.

• You need enough Brain Power to start an attack. It’s spent when you answer the Breach question, right or wrong; backing out at the Breach question costs nothing:

  Difficulty	BP cost
  Junior	1
  Medior	1
  Senior	2
  Architect	2

  The same cost applies to attacking a base, but only if you answer correctly — see Attacking a base.

The three phases

An attack runs three phases in order — Breach, Detection, Payload — but can ask up to five questions: a defender’s Firewall shield adds a second Detection attempt, and a defender’s Test Suite buff adds one more question right after Breach. It ends when you miss one of yours, or when the defender answers Detection correctly.

Breach and Detection are asked at Tier 1 on Junior difficulty, Tier 2 on Medior, and Tier 3 on Senior and Architect. Payload uses the tier of the hex the defender stands on. HQ danger fields, Exploit Den and Firewall Node can shift these.

Phase	Who answers	What a miss means
Breach	You (the attacker), on your own class’s domain	Attack fails. Your BP is still spent, and your unit takes the usual miss penalty — see Questions and tiers.
Detection	The defender, on your class’s domain	Correct: the attack is blocked. You’ve already paid the BP and lose 1 AP, but take no HP penalty. Wrong: the attack proceeds to Payload.
Payload	You (the attacker), on the defender’s hex domain, at the defender’s hex tier	Correct: damage lands. Wrong: attack fails, same miss penalty as Breach.

A defender shielded by the Backend class’s Firewall gets two Detection attempts instead of one. An attacker with the Security class’s Zero Day passive ignores that shield. A defender with the QA class’s Test Suite active makes you pass one extra question, in their domain, right after a correct Breach — miss it and the attack ends there, with the same 1 AP and half a heart penalty as a Breach miss. See Abilities and classes.

Damage

A landed hit deals 1 HP damage, plus a bonus from the attacker’s Surge: 0.2 extra damage per point of Surge, rounded down. The Security class’s Privilege Escalation makes the next landed hit an instant kill. A Firewall Node near the defender, or the Data Engineering class’s Data Warehouse, reduces damage, unless the attacker has the Security class’s Zero Day passive. See Abilities and classes and Points of interest.

• A unit reduced to 0 HP is eliminated, unless a class ability saves it.

• The attacker heals back 1 HP on a kill, up to its current HP cap.

• The player who lost the unit gets a Brain Power “revenge” boost, sized to the match:

  Match size	Revenge BP
  Tutorial	1
  Small	2
  Medium	2
  Large	3

Attacking a base

• Your unit must be next to the enemy base.
• It’s a single question: Tier 2 on Junior difficulty, Tier 3 on Medior, Senior and Architect.
• Answer correctly and you pay the attack cost above, the base is destroyed, and its owner loses every remaining unit with it.
• Answer wrong and your attacking unit is destroyed. No Brain Power is spent.