Ancient Beast

Overview

Before a single hex of the duel is fought, you spend plasma to materialize a squad of creatures, and that draft is already half the battle. Each unit's cost equals its level plus its size — one hexagon for a small beast, two for medium, three for large — so a full roster under your Dark Priest means choosing between a few expensive high-tier heavyweights or a wider screen of cheaper, cuter low-tier units. Ancient Beast is a free, open-source turn-based tactics project maintained for over a decade by Dread Knight and the FreezingMoon collective, written in TypeScript on Phaser.js and running in any modern browser at sixty frames per second. Seven realms themed on the deadly sins field seven tiers of units, and every creature carries four abilities — a passive, a basic attack, a basic ability, and a fight-swinging ultimate — alongside nine statistics and up to nine damage masteries such as burn, frost, pierce, and mental. The stated goal is a chance-free esport, "the chess of the future," playable in 1v1 or 2v2 against bots, hot-seat, or online, with no pay-to-win layer anywhere in the loop.

How to Play

Players alternate materializing units onto the hexagonal battlefield until both plasma budgets are spent, then the duel begins in initiative order, higher-level creatures acting first. On a unit's turn you spend its movement points to reposition — split around ability casts — then trigger one of its four abilities, each active one costing energy and usable once per round. Freshly materialized units arrive with sickness: they skip their first turn and cannot regenerate, so where you summon matters as much as when. Mouse drives the default flow — hover an ability for its tooltip and damage preview, click a hexagon to move or target — but every menu has a hotkey and the whole game is playable without touching the UI, while touchscreens get a dedicated interface for tablets and phones. Your Dark Priest, the avatar every player shares, can burn plasma to raise a shield when the line buckles, and losing it ends the match.

Tips & Strategy

Respect the plasma formula when you draft: a level-five small unit and a level-two large creature both cost seven plasma, but the small one acts sooner on the initiative queue while the large one threatens area damage and absorbs punishment — balance the curve instead of stacking one beater. Guard your Dark Priest first, because the match ends the moment it dies; keep a tanky body adjacent and reserve plasma to refresh its shield under pressure. Bait enemy ultimates out of position before committing your own, since each fires once per round and a wasted one usually costs the hex it was meant to hold. Summon behind cover, not into the open, because sickened units cannot act or heal on turn one. Space large creatures apart so area-of-effect strikes do not clip multiple of their hexagons, which amplifies damage by punching through part of their defense. Read the mastery grid before you commit: parking a burn-vulnerable unit next to a fire-type is a death sentence no stat line rescues.