Stratagems, an on-chain turn-based strategy game by Etherplay, is now officially live in alpha on the Base network with a prize pool of $1000 so far.

Launch Details

The 2D blockchain title challenges players to work together in creating the persistent game world by placing land as one of 5 player-owned factions. To place land, you’ll need to stake a small number of ETH, but if you’re playing in the free-to-play mode, you can then use Test Tokens instead. The amount needed varies based on the number of land tiles you will place in your turn.

Each player can only make one turn every 24 hours, with turns referred to as epochs. An epoch consists of 2 phases: the commit phase and the reveal phase. The commit phase lasts 23 hours and it is during this time that you can change your decision and collaborate with other players before fully committing, trying to make sure you don’t place land on the same spot. In the 1-hour reveal phase, all player moves are automatically revealed before the start of the next epoch. According to the documentation, not even the developers know what actions players make before the reveal takes place thanks to the use of certain technologies called FUZD that makes it so that transactions are encrypted until it is time for them to be processed.

Players need to work together to make sure they don’t place land on the same spot, because if you end up staking on the same land, a 6th faction not owned by players will pop up, requiring players to try and attack it in order to reclaim their deposited ETH or Test Tokens.

Each land tile that starts off without any neighboring land comes with 2 lives visually represented by houses. Lives are increased by one after each epoch, but if there are opposing factions next to each other, they will start automatically fighting each other until they lose all their lives. The player that controls more of the land being fought upon will be the one to get the deposited ETH, but if it’s, for example, only 1 blue land against a red one, then both players will get their deposits back.

The staking-based title went live in alpha on March 21st and consists of 2 phases, each of which last a month, meaning the playtest will conclude on May 21st. A leaderboard system is in place with $1000 worth of rewards up for grabs for the best players. Test Tokens are being distributed in the game’s official Discord server for the first phase, while the second phase will consist of a new token called GEMS, which the developers plan to use in the official release. The amount of GEM tokens each player will be able to get will depends on the amount of lands they have, with the tokens said to be generated per second.