A round
What you start with
Every seat opens with a Command Rig, a Workshop, a Generator, six workers, a scout, two line units and a commander, plus 300 Alloy and 60 Flux. Workers on slots earn Alloy or Flux; a floor of income never stops, so a raid hurts but cannot starve anybody.
The Workshop trains scouts, line units and anti-armour; the Rig trains workers, twelve at most. Supply caps the army at twenty-four.
Relays, score and Overdrive
Relays wake at 0:45. A ground combat unit standing in the ring claims a neutral relay in six seconds, two or more in three; an enemy relay must be neutralised first. Two hostile sides in one ring freeze it.
An owned, uncontested relay scores a point a second, two a second in the final three minutes. Overdrive a relay you hold and for twenty seconds your units near it move and fire a fifth faster while it scores nothing. One Overdrive per side at a time; a minute before that relay can be Overdriven again.
How it ends
A side is out when its Core falls; the Core is shielded for the first three minutes. If one side is left standing, it wins at once. At fifteen minutes the surviving sides are compared on score, then Core hull, then relays held. Equal on all three is a draw.
In a team battle every seat on a side shares the result. In a free-for-all every side is on its own.
Seats, sides and stand-ins
Team Battle is two equal sides of one to four seats; Co-op puts every person on one side against stand-ins; Free-for-All is two to eight sides of one. Stand-ins fill the chairs you choose, visibly, with no hidden bonuses.
Leave the tab and a stand-in holds your seat after eight seconds; come back within ninety and it hands the army back. The clock never pauses for anybody.
On the sheet
Questions people ask
Can I play on a phone?
Yes. Tap to select, drag to pan, pinch to zoom. Targeted orders show a preview with Confirm and Cancel, and a switch lets you stack orders the way Shift does on a keyboard.
Can I play alone?
Yes. Play Solo starts a one-against-one match with a stand-in at once. You can also set up any team or free-for-all layout and fill the other seats with stand-ins.
Does it really stop at fifteen minutes?
Yes. Live play is exactly fifteen minutes, with no overtime. A close match is decided on score, Core hull and relays held.
What if I lose my connection?
A stand-in takes your seat after eight seconds and holds it for ninety. Come back in that window and the army is yours again, with the orders the stand-in gave shown to you.
Does anybody have to install anything to play Held Ground?
No. It runs in the browser everyone already has open. One person opens a room, reads out the six-character code or pastes the link into the channel, and everyone else is at the table in a couple of seconds.
Do we need accounts?
No. There is no sign-up, no password and no email address anywhere in the flow. You pick a name when you sit down, and that is the whole of it.
How many people can play Held Ground?
1 to 8 — best with four. A room seats up to 12.
How long does a game of Held Ground take?
About 15 minutes, which is the length of a coffee break rather than the length of a games night. Nobody is the host in the sense of holding the controls, so a round finishes whether or not everyone is still looking at it.
Does it work over a video call?
That is what it is for. The game is on the screen and the talking is on the call — nobody has to describe a board to anybody, and the parts that must stay private stay on the server rather than being read out.