Arena Rubra

A tabletop system built around three verbs

Arena Rubra uses the same Plan / Position / Pressure structure that organizes the Starter rules. Planning is the deck, the ENE economy and the choice of what to commit. Position is the hex map, deployment lines, structures and control of Strategic Points. Pressure is what happens when territory, economy or a threat forces the opponent to abandon the plan they wanted to play.

The current tabletop edition is in pre-production. The rules, card structure and component language are substantially defined, but the physical prototype shown on this page has not yet been manufactured. The tabletop images are concept visualizations of the intended experience rather than photographs of a finished product.

The match at a glance

The Starter game is designed for two players. Each player chooses one of five factions, selects a Commander and prepares a legal 30-card deck. The current Starter map uses two opposing Headquarters and three Strategic Points, with a radius-6 hex battlefield establishing the space between them.

Players begin with 3 ENE, a five-card opening hand and a separate Starter Reserve that keeps one light Infantry, one light Vehicle and one Structure available outside the deck. From the second personal turn onward, normal income starts from 3 ENE plus 1 ENE for each Strategic Point controlled, before faction doctrines and card effects are applied.

Position is also logistics

Units do not simply appear anywhere on the map. Infantry, Vehicles and Commanders normally deploy next to the player’s Headquarters or next to an allied Structure. That turns every Structure into a potential extension of the reinforcement network: advancing the infrastructure shortens the path to the front, but also gives the opponent a valuable target.

Strategic Points change control immediately when their occupant changes. Their economic value is realized only if the point is still controlled when income is calculated, so taking a PS and actually holding it are deliberately different problems.

Combat is readable in layers

ATT determines the damage of an attack. DEF is a current shield rather than a subtraction value: if a target has DEF when one damage instance begins, that damage removes DEF only and any excess is lost. Once DEF is already at zero, later damage reaches HP. Direct-damage and “ignore DEF” effects are explicit exceptions rather than the default.

That produces a tabletop-friendly rhythm in which breaking protection and converting the opening into a second attack can matter more than simply stacking a single very large ATT value.

Winning means converting the map

There are two main ways to finish the Starter game. A unit occupying the enemy Headquarters wins immediately if its player also controls at least one Strategic Point. The second route is Strategic Pressure: from the configured threshold onward, the player controlling more PS at the end of a round gains one permanent Pressure, and reaching five wins the game.

If nobody has won by round 50, the rules compare Strategic Points, surviving units and finally unspent ENE before declaring a technical draw.

Five factions, one rules core

The factions share the battlefield rules but ask the player to value different things. Nexus prefers calculated control of Strategic Points and stable networks. Exordium rewards coordinated Infantry and Vehicle assault. Liberti pushes numbers, proximity and attrition. Agathoi builds resilience through Structures, recovery and defensive infrastructure. Fabeot attacks the opponent’s economy, hand and timing through taxation, blocking, theft and conditional conversion.

The important difference is not merely color or illustration. Each faction changes what a good position looks like and therefore changes how the same map is read.

Cards are part of the board, not a layer above it

A legal deck contains exactly 30 cards from one faction and exactly one selected Commander. Pivot, Commander and Elite cards are unique within the deck; most other cards can appear in up to two copies. Unit cards create persistent pieces on the battlefield, while Tactic cards resolve immediate interventions and are then discarded.

The three sample cards shown on this page are current visual material for the tabletop presentation. Their artwork and component language are representative, while statistics and wording remain part of an actively iterated ruleset.

Current prototype status

The objective of this milestone is not to present Arena Rubra as a manufactured board game. It is to make the tabletop project visible as a real design branch with a formal rulebook, established systems, faction identity, card language and a clear component direction.

The physical prototype, production specifications, final component counts and manufacturing decisions remain future work. The digital Arena Rubra project continues in parallel and acts as a rapid environment for testing many of the same tactical ideas before they are frozen for the table.