A turn costs three action points. Unspent ones carry over, but no more than five can be banked: a MIRV costs ◆4, and it cannot be fired from a clean turn — a turn of preparation is needed. The ground is layered and behaves differently: you cannot dig into stone, a swamp halves the blast, on ice the crater is twice as wide and the machine slides down the slope. Under the ledges there is a void — knock the support out and the ledge falls onto the target.

The map is alive. Fuel barrels detonate in a chain, a bridge holds two hits, breaching the dam floods the lowland, in the sector of an intact windmill there is no wind, an iced ledge falls by itself after six turns, and a turn inside a radioactive zone costs 4 % of your hull.

Every battle has its own arena rule, and it is announced before the loadout is assembled: the tide raises the water every three turns, a shortage halves the ammunition, under high-altitude drift the wind up top is twice as strong, and on a scree the whole map turns to sand.