PARA BELLUM

Choose your civilisation

🏛️

Mediterranean

Disciplined legions and phalanxes. Units gain strength when fighting together.

⚔️

Barbarian

Fierce raiders and berserkers. Fast, aggressive, overwhelm with numbers.

🌙

Near Eastern

Ancient empires and war machines. Powerful but costly units that dominate the field.

🏯

Far Eastern

Strategic cunning and discipline. Manipulate the flow of battle with orders and tactics.

🗿

Mesoamerican

Sacrifice and power. Trade your own strength for devastating effects.

Para Bellum is designed for desktop play. You'll have a better time on a bigger screen.

How to Play

The Goal

You are a city under siege. Reduce the enemy's walls from 10 to 0 before they do the same to you. Deploy units from your villages, issue orders, and break through their defences.

Card Types

Villages (dashed gold border) generate Culture when tapped. Play one per turn. They're your economy.

Units (burgundy) fight for you. They have attack (sword icon) and defence (shield icon). They cost Culture to deploy.

Orders (green) are one-shot commands: draw cards, buff your army, damage enemies, or restore walls. Used once then discarded.

Your Turn

Draw one card from your deck automatically.

Main phase: Click cards in your hand to play them. Villages are free (one per turn). Units and orders cost Culture, shown as coloured and grey pips in the top-right corner of each card. Your villages tap (rotate) to pay the cost.

Attack phase: Click "Go to Attack", then click your untapped units to select them as attackers. They'll tap when they attack. Click "Declare Attackers" to confirm, or "Skip Attack" to pass.

You can also click "End Turn" during the main phase to skip attacking entirely.

Combat

When you attack, the enemy AI chooses which of its untapped units to block with. When the enemy attacks, you'll see a blocker assignment screen where you choose which of your untapped units block each attacker.

Blocked units fight each other. If the attacker's attack is equal to or greater than the blocker's defence, the blocker is destroyed (and vice versa). Both can die.

Unblocked units deal their attack value directly to the opponent's walls.

All damage resets at the end of each turn. Units that survive combat are back to full strength next turn.

Culture and Costs

Each untapped village gives you 1 Culture. The coloured pips on a card show how much faction-specific culture it costs. Grey pips can be paid with culture from any faction. All your villages untap at the start of your turn.

A card with 2 coloured pips and 1 grey pip costs 3 culture total.

Tips

Play a village every turn if you can. More villages means more culture, which means bigger units and more orders.

Hover over any card to see a larger preview with full ability text.

Click the skull icons (☠) in the top bar to see what's been destroyed or used.

The battle log on the right tracks everything that happens. Scroll up to review earlier turns.