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NewsBy Juanlu / Erandel

Triara changes again: every match is now a duel of ara poker

Since 21 October every Triara match is a duel of ara poker where you pick the hand and your champions are the jokers, and your squad is a collection that grows with packs. What changes, what goes and where to start.

Three screens of a Triara duel: picking the hand, the two hands clashing and the hands guide
A duel mid-turn: both hands revealed, damage × assist on each side and a tank’s shield waiting for the blow.

Back in August I wrote here that Triara was becoming a team manager game: you signed champions, set the line-up and combat resolved itself. I said the real game happened before the fight, and I meant it as a good thing.

Those of you who played it told me otherwise, almost in the same words: little action, nothing to come back for tomorrow. You were right. Everything that mattered was decided before the match, and after that you just watched.

So I have changed it again. Since 21 October, every Triara match (friendlies, league and cup) is a duel of ara poker. And you no longer sign your squad: it is a collection that grows with packs, and duplicates level your cards up.

How a duel works

Each side has its own deck of 30 cards: three aras (Sun, Moon and Tide) acting as suits, from 1 to 10. You hold a hand of 8 and each turn you play 1 to 5 cards as a poker hand. Once a turn you can discard up to 5 and draw as many.

The hands, weakest to strongest: high card, pair, two pair, straight, flush, three of a kind, full house and straight flush. There is no four of a kind, because there are only three aras, and three of a kind beats a flush because with three suits it comes up less often.

Each hand has a base of damage × assist, from 5 × 1 for a high card to 100 × 8 for a straight flush, and the cards that make it add their value to the damage. Damage times assist is your blow: it goes through your rival’s shield first, and whatever gets past comes off their life. You win by emptying their life or, after 12 turns, by having more of it left. A duel usually lasts about six turns.

The best bit: you both play at the same time and in secret, with 40 seconds per turn, and once you have both played the turn is told blow by blow.

Champions are the jokers

Your champions are not in that deck. They are your match deck, 5 cards (6 with the Order of the Crown) that act as jokers. Each one wakes up with the hand of its class or any hand that holds it:

  • Assassin: pair.
  • Pirate and healer: two pair.
  • Warrior: three of a kind.
  • Archer: straight.
  • Mage: flush.
  • Knight: full house.

A full house holds a three of a kind, two pair and a pair, so it wakes knights, warriors, pirates, healers and assassins all at once. Depending on its role, a woken champion adds damage (melee), assist (ranged) or a shield (tank), and it adds double if any of the cards that make the hand is of its ara.

An example: you play three sevens. The base is 35 × 4 and the sevens add 21 to the damage. A level 1 melee warrior with no gear adds 32, which becomes 64 because a three of a kind always holds all three aras. Your blow: (35 + 21 + 64) × 4 = 480.

Your collection

Every champion you get is your card for good, with its level and its copies, and any of them can go into your deck.

  • Levels 1 to 13. Duplicates are copies, and a card levels up on its own as soon as it has the ones it needs: 30 in all.
  • Rarity is the starting level: Rookie 1, Prospect 3, Pro 5, Star 7 and Legend 9. A Legend gets a head start, but a Rookie reaches the same ceiling.
  • Packs: a free one every day with one card, and another with 3 different cards for 3 orbs. 70% of the cards in a pack are copies of your cards that can still level up.
  • Orbs: they are never sold. You earn them by playing your matches yourself: in the league, 2 for a win and 1 for a defeat; in the cup, 1 per round.
  • Exclusives: four Legends that never turn up in packs, 20 orbs each.

Matches

The league is played every day at 18:00 UTC, and the cup on Saturday and Sunday at 11:00, 15:00 and 20:00 UTC. Five minutes before, you get a call. If you do not join, auto mode plays for you, and it does not look at your champions: in simulations, playing well beats it about 65 times out of 100. Friendlies (3 a day, 6 with the Order) start whenever you like.

What stays

The league with promotion and relegation, the cup, friendlies, the village with its tavern and forge, the realm with its quests and trials, coins, private servers and the Order of the Crown, which now also opens two daily packs where you pick 1 of 3.

What is gone

If you are coming from older posts on this blog, these no longer exist:

  • Automatic 3v3 combat, with its lanes and its stats.
  • Skills.
  • Signings: the market, release clauses, wages, the captain and the weekly batch of new champions.
  • Champion experience: levels now come from copies.
  • Pets as fighters. The creatures stay on as quest beasts and slingshot targets.
  • The aras cycle and its ±10% damage: aras are now suits and a ×2.
  • Saved decks: there is one match deck.
  • The walkable map and the stable, which went a few days earlier: the village and the realm are now menus.

Where to start

You start with six Rookies: five in your deck (two melee, two ranged and a tank) and one on the bench. Open the daily pack, play a friendly to get the feel of it and look for hands that wake several champions at once.

Play at triara.io as a guest, with no account. The rules are in the game guide, and to fine-tune your deck, try the champion guide and the aras guide.

I know this is another big change. The difference is that the match is yours now: you make the call every turn. If you give it a go, tell me what you think on the contact page.