The bench plays by one deterministic rulebook

Core play rules

• Every placed tool occupies cells and can lengthen the ground route; diagonal corner gaps are not passable.
• Placements that block every active route or land on a creep are refused.
• Ground streams use the west and north gates. Flying waves cross dedicated air corridors and ignore the maze.
• Standard sales refund the full amount spent on the tool and its upgrades, except a spent Mousetrap follows its documented spent-state rule.
• Sending a wave early awards bonus gold. Several waves may overlap.
• A run clears only after its final campaign wave while pattern integrity remains above zero.

Current content surface

Campaigns

6 difficulties

Tools

15 workbench towers

Creeps

17 enemy types

The first three campaigns use staged introductions; post-Master campaigns use deterministic varied decks with specialists, relays, champions, armored air, and command bosses. See the campaign ledger and field guide for visible details.

Rules versions and replay identity

The client labels each save with a game version. That label alone does not authorize public ranking. Submission acceptance comes from the D1 published rules catalog, which binds an active version to allowed integrity checksums and the full rules SHA-256.

Read the v0.1 edition brief

The live catalog is available from the read-only rules versions API. This page describes the current surface without duplicating that catalog as an acceptance allowlist.

Guidance never becomes certification

Standard, Finder, Runbook, and Fork provenance remain attached to the replay. Watching a public build guide or following it in Standard does not turn the result into a Ranked Challenge. CERT is reserved for exact qualifying challenge verification.