HOW TO PLAY
"Welcome to The Broadcast. Here's how you survive."
The Broadcast is a multiverse gladiatorial combat card game. Fighters from across infinite realities compete in wagered, turn-based fights. You build a fighter, choose an archetype, equip abilities, and battle in an arena where every decision matters.
A simultaneous-action card combat game with stake escalation. Both players lock in their move at the same time, then the round resolves. The skill is in reading your opponent, managing your hand, and knowing when to raise the stakes or fold.
A match runs up to 8 rounds. Each round, both players simultaneously choose an action. A typical fight takes 3–8 minutes live, or can be played asynchronously over hours.
No. Both players act at the same time. You don't know what your opponent picked until both actions are locked in. This is what makes reads and predictions so important.
It's rock-paper-scissors: Strike catches Bluff, Guard blocks Strike, Bluff exploits Guard. Three choices, three counters — your job is to read which one's coming.
| Winner | Loser | What Happens |
|---|---|---|
| Strike | Bluff | Strike deals its power as damage (you called their bluff) |
| Guard | Strike | Block all damage, draw 1 card, AND chip 1 damage back at the attacker (counter) |
| Bluff | Guard | Counter! Bluff deals its power as damage (guard was wasted) |
| Strike vs Strike | Both take 2 chip damage | |
| Guard vs Guard / Bluff vs Bluff | Both draw 1 card, no damage | |
Power is the raw number — how much damage a Strike deals, how strong a Bluff counter-attacks, etc. Effect is the special ability on the card: piercing guard, drawing extra cards, applying poison, and so on. A high-power card with no effect is reliable. A low-power card with a strong effect is situational. Your deck is the tradeoffs you choose.
When you Engage, you play a card from your hand. If your opponent also engages, your cards clash (resolved by the type matchup). If your opponent disengages, your card gets a free solo benefit instead.
When you Disengage, you retreat. You don't play a card. You gain:
The healing scale rewards desperate retreats — the lower your HP, the more you recover. Disengaging also sets a flag that enables powerful setup cards like Backstab next turn.
Chase is the third stance — the punishment for an opponent who Disengages. Pick Chase, and:
Chase is high-risk, high-reward. The whole skill is reading when your opponent will retreat — usually when they're hurt and want to heal, or when their hand is empty. Get the read right: 6 damage. Get it wrong: you take damage and waste your turn.
Shadow Assassin takes 5 Chase damage instead of 6 (the Rift Walker passive).
If you engage and your opponent retreats, you don't clash — but your card still does something based on its type:
When you Engage with a Strike card, you can optionally chain additional Strike cards from your hand as a combo. Each combo card adds its power to the total damage.
Cards with auto_combo (like Fan the Hammer) automatically pull the next Strike from your hand and chain it — even if you didn't manually select a combo. This burns through cards fast but hits hard.
| Effect | What It Does | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| ☢ Poison | 1 damage per turn at the start of each round | 2 turns (refreshes, doesn't stack) |
| ❄ Chill | Your next Strike deals −2 damage | Until your next Strike |
| ⚡ Powered | Your next Strike deals +2 damage | Until your next Strike |
| 🐌 Slow | You draw 0 cards next turn (skip your draw) | 1 turn |
No. Applying poison to a poisoned target just resets the 2-turn timer. It doesn't increase the damage. But it does guarantee a longer duration of ticking damage.
Before a fight, both fighters stake Rift Energy (minimum 10). The winner absorbs the loser's staked energy. You generate Rift Energy by fighting, or channel it from outside (AVAX purchase) — but once it's rift energy, it stays in The Broadcast's ecosystem. The rifts only flow one way.
Your entry wager is capped at 20% of your balance, with an absolute ceiling of 500. This is the downside-protection floor — the most you can lose at fight resolution if you don't escalate. Bots and campaign opponents skip the cap.
Between rounds (and before round 1), either player can Raise the wager. Pick a size:
| Tier | Adds |
|---|---|
| SMALL | +25% of current wager |
| BIG | Midpoint between current wager and the battle cap |
| ALL-IN | Push to the battle cap |
Each match has a hard budget of 3 raises total across both players. The skill is choosing when AND how big.
When raised, your opponent chooses:
Up to 2× your entry wager, additionally capped at 40% of your balance and 1000 absolute. So entry 100 → wager can grow to 200; entry 500 → can grow to 1000. The lower of the two players' caps binds — a high-balance opponent can't drag you past your ceiling.
This is why entry sizing matters: a small entry is "safe" but caps the dramatic ceiling. A large entry escalates faster but risks more if you're forced to accept.
Folding forfeits what you've already escrowed. Accepting a raise commits you to the new (higher) wager. If you're behind on HP, low on cards, and your opponent raises — folding might be the smart play. Losing 100 hurts less than losing 200. Knowing when to walk is part of the skill.
| Condition | How |
|---|---|
| ⚔ Knockout (KO) | Reduce your opponent's HP to 0. Fight ends immediately. |
| 🌑 Blood Moon | After 8 rounds, the fighter with more HP wins. If tied, it's a draw. |
| 🏳 Fold | Your opponent folds after a raise. You win their wager. |
If both fighters are knocked out in the same round (from a clash, poison tick, or chip damage), it's a Double KO — the match is a draw.
Yes. Poison ticks at the start of each round, before any actions resolve. If poison drops you to 0 HP, the round ends immediately as a Poison KO.
If neither fighter is KO'd after 8 rounds, the match enters Blood Moon — the fighter with the higher HP total wins. If HP is tied, it's a draw. This prevents stalling and rewards players who dealt more net damage.
Each archetype has a different fighting philosophy. Pick the one that matches how you like to play:
Each archetype has 5 ability sets. You equip exactly 3 to build your deck. Each ability set contributes 3 cards, giving you a 9-card deck + 1 auto-added basic card = 10 cards total. Your ability loadout defines your playstyle within your archetype.
You start with the first 3 ability sets unlocked. The 4th unlocks at level 5 or 10 PvP wins; the 5th at level 10 or 25 PvP wins. Once unlocked, mix-and-match freely — loadout swaps are free.
Yes — each archetype carries a signature passive baked into the engine:
Yes — loadout swaps are free, so experiment with which 3 of your unlocked ability sets synergize. Changing your archetype is the real commitment (500 Rift Energy, first respec free).
Each match can have an arena condition that modifies the rules. Both players see the condition before wagering, so you can adjust your strategy (or fold pre-match if it counters your build).
| Arena | Effect |
|---|---|
| Open Arena | No modifier. Pure skill. |
| Burning Arena | All Strikes deal +1 damage. |
| Fortified Arena | All Guards block +1. |
| Shadow Arena | Bluff counters deal +2 damage. |
| Blood Pit | Both fighters lose 1 HP per mutual disengage. Punishes passivity. |
| Storm Arena | Max hand size reduced to 5. Resource pressure. |
PvP, by a lot. PvE has a 50-energy daily cap to keep inflation in check. PvP is uncapped and zero-sum — whatever you stake, you can win double back (entry + accepted raises, up to 2× entry). A single 200-energy PvP win on a raised fight is the equivalent of a full week of PvE grinding inside the cap.
The trade-off is variance. PvE pays steady; PvP pays lumpy. A losing streak in PvP drains faster than PvE earnings refill, which is why we cap entry wagers at 20% of your balance. The cap is the floor — you can never lose more than 20% in a single fight at entry-decision time.
No. Never. Rift Energy modifies appearance, not strength. Power is earned through combat alone. Abilities, stats, and anything that affects fight outcomes come from gameplay — the rifts don't play favorites.
The rifts only flow one way. Once energy enters The Broadcast, it stays in The Broadcast. You can channel AVAX in, but you can't pull rift energy back out into any reality. That's just how dimensional physics works.
Five ways into a fight, each with different stakes and pacing:
| Mode | Opponent | Stakes |
|---|---|---|
| Quickfight | AI | Free — tutorial / warm-up |
| Challenge Board | Human or ghost AI | Player-set wager (PvP earns the most) |
| Tournaments | Bracket of humans | Entry fee → prize pool |
| Gauntlet | Wave of AI | Run-based; consumable shop between waves |
| Campaign | Story bosses + lore beats | Low-stakes; soulbound fighter drops |
Bracket play. The host posts a tournament with an entry fee and a registration window. Bracket size auto-adapts to entries (4 / 8 / 16 / 32 slots, with byes if undersubscribed). Win your match → advance. Lose → out.
Endless wave survival. You pay an entry fee, then fight increasingly tougher AI. Your fighter's HP persists between waves — if you finish wave 5 at 4 HP, you start wave 6 at 4 HP. Between waves, a consumable shop sells healing elixirs and buffs at escalating cost.
Loss = retry. Losing doesn't advance the wave; you fight that wave again. Wins credit milestone rewards and waves-completed.
Drops: Gauntlet drops fighters up to Rare / power 80. Legendary and Mythic stay pack-exclusive. The prestige tier for deep runs is Wave-Forged — named characters that drop at milestone waves 20 / 22 / 25 / 30 (50% / 45% / 35% / 30% chance, idempotent per account).
Three chapters of story content with bosses that teach core mechanics:
Beats include visual novel panels with branching choices. A mentor choice mid-campaign unlocks a cross-archetype ability. Boss wins drop soulbound fighters to your collection.
Rotating daily and weekly objectives ("win 3 fights", "land a Bluff counter", "finish a fight under round 5"). Claim rewards once complete. Streak tracking compounds over consecutive days — missing a day resets the streak. No comeback bonuses — rewards pull you forward, not back.
Three paths, in order of friction:
Wallet auth uses signature challenges — the server gives you a random nonce, you sign it with your wallet, and the server verifies the signature came from your address. No password, no email, no central database of credentials. The signature isn't a transaction — it costs nothing and doesn't move anything on-chain.
AVAX purchases are real on-chain transactions, so they need wallet confirmation and gas. Cosmetic and ability changes inside the game just spend Rift Energy — no wallet popup, no gas, instant.
| Item | Tradeable? | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Wave-Forged fighters | Yes | Gauntlet milestone drops — player-paid mint |
| Rare / Legendary / Mythic fighters | Yes | Pack pulls — player-paid mint |
| Common / Uncommon collectibles | Soulbound | DB-only, never minted |
| Story mode drops | Soulbound | Story rewards — never tradeable |
| Cosmetics | Some | Shop or claim flow (only items flagged as NFT in catalog) |
Tradeable fighters from pack pulls and Wave-Forged milestone drops are player-paid mints. You pull the fighter and they sit in your collection as a claim; clicking MINT signs a transaction that sends the fighter to your wallet as an ERC-1155 on Avalanche C-Chain. The fee is the AVAX gas the network charges to write to the chain — the project doesn't keep it.
If your wallet is short on AVAX, the mint button prompts you to fund it first, then click MINT again. Until you mint, the fighter is usable in matches but doesn't live on-chain.
Pyrrhus is the Arena Founders fighter — tokenId 10019 on the BroadcastNFT contract. He's the only fighter portrait that anyone can equip for free, owner or not. Verified holders get a gold ORIGINAL ✓ ribbon on the card and a FOUNDER ✓ chip next to their name in the locker.
Non-holders can wear the face, but their fights with Pyrrhus credit only their personal-flex history — not the public Character Points ladder. The shared CP ladder stays owner-engagement-honest.
Every named tradeable fighter has one shared tokenId. Multiple holders increment the ERC-1155 balance instead of each minting a unique tokenId — this keeps marketplace listings consolidated under one collection page per fighter, instead of fragmenting them across thousands of one-of-one IDs.
The prestige is in the immutable original_owner receipt and (for Wave-Forged) the milestone drop chance, not in artificial scarcity per copy.
7.5% royalty on secondary sales, enforced via EIP-2981 on the BroadcastNFT contract. Marketplaces that respect the standard route royalties to the project; ones that don't (rare) skip them.
The buyer gets the fighter NFT and can use it in matches. Their wallet now holds it; yours doesn't. Your in-game record (wins, losses, kills) doesn't move — that's tied to your account, not the fighter. Roster eligibility comes back if you re-acquire the fighter (or pull another copy).
200+ items across 9 categories:
Some items are achievement-gated (visible but unpurchasable until you've hit the requirement) and some are limited supply (the counter ticks down as players buy).
Heads up: a few cosmetic categories — card backs in-hand, fighter skins, and entrance animations — are still being wired into the in-fight rendering pipeline. They're collectable and tradeable today, but you may not see them visually applied in every surface yet.
No. Never. Skins, frames, emotes, and arena themes change appearance only. Combat power comes from abilities, levels, and matchup decisions — nothing you buy moves a damage number.
The shop offers BUY WITH AVAX for the deficit — a single transaction sends the AVAX equivalent of what you're missing, then the shop auto-completes the purchase. No two-step "top up first, then buy" flow.
The referral program. Share your referral link — when someone signs up through it, they're tagged as your scout. As they progress, both of you earn rewards.
Each recruit progresses through four milestone tiers. Both you and they get an energy grant at each step:
Some scout-side payouts are held back until the recruit has logged a few PvP wins — an anti-farm gate against alt-account abuse.
Your rank is gated by how many of your recruits have hit the RETAINED milestone:
Energy returns diminish past 20 total recruits, so the ladder rewards depth (retained players) over breadth (sign-up spam).
Profile screen has your referral link — copy it, paste it anywhere (Discord, X, group chat). When a new player signs up, the link auto-tags them as your scout.
The Broadcast runs on Avalanche C-Chain. All contracts are deployed on mainnet and publicly verifiable.
Fighters, cosmetics, and collectibles. Supports soulbound and tradeable tokens, per-token max supply, and 7.5% royalties on secondary sales.
Rift Energy purchases. Accepts AVAX and converts to in-game credits. One-way — the rifts only flow in.