Every card has a level. Each level adds a little health, a little damage, a little more healing, and effects that last a little longer. The step is the same for every rarity, and the rarer cards start higher and have fewer levels to climb, so a Common at the top stands exactly as strong as a Legendary at the top.
That is the whole idea behind the rarities. Common, Rare, Epic and Legendary say how hard a card is to find, not how strong it ends. A Legendary does something bigger from the first level, and costs more Runic Power for it. A Common at a high level is a real card, not a placeholder.
A card goes up when you have enough copies of it and enough Silver. Spare copies of a card that has reached its ceiling turn into Silver, so nothing you win is wasted.
A battle pays Silver and a copy of a card. A win pays more, and the first wins of the day drop a chest. A chest opens the moment you get it. There are no timers and no keys, and the game never asks you to come back in three hours.
Chests hold Silver and copies, and the bigger chests hold the rarer cards. There is a ceiling on what one day can pay out, so nobody can farm the game, and nobody has to.
Once a day there is a gift in the hall. Once a week, a bigger one.
Pick one card as your Focus, and the copies your battles pay go to that card until it goes up. It can be any Common or Rare you own that is not yet at its ceiling. Epics and Legendaries are left out on purpose: the Focus is for building the deck you play, not for chasing the one card everyone wants.
Open any card to see what it does now, what the next level adds, and which chests it comes from.
Every day there is one battle with a rule bent: twice the Runic Power, every figure healing a little each second, all the crystals from the start. Win it and the day counts. Seven days build a week's ladder of rewards, and you claim each step as you reach it. It does not touch the trophy road, so it is a good place to try a strange deck.
A season runs about a month. Your first few battles each day, and your first wins, fill the Banner Pass, and every tier you reach pays out Silver or copies. There is no list of chores: playing is what fills it. Rewards you have not claimed are yours when the season ends.
The free track is in the game now. The paid track is in the game as a test, with no real money behind it, until the shop is real.
A win pays trophies and a loss costs some. Trophies carry you up the road through eleven arenas, and each new arena pays a chest when you reach it. You never fall back below an arena you have reached.
Upgrading cards earns XP, and XP raises your own level. Every level gives your castle a little more health, and the higher levels let the rarer cards into your chests.
Silver comes from battles, chests and gifts, and pays for upgrades and for the cards the shop puts out each day. Amber is the rare coin. It will be sold for real money once the shop is real, and it is also earned by playing: a little in the ordinary week, more at the top of the leaderboards and in warband contests.
Everything on this page is free, and every card can be earned by playing. What the shop will sell, and for how much, is still being decided; the shop and the paid pass track in the game today are tests with no real money. Online matches, real leaderboards and warband against warband all need servers, and those come after the alpha.