Your first battle
- Open Play and pick Skirmish.
- Choose your army, a commander and a battlefield, then Begin battle.
- On your turn, select a unit, pick a tile to move to, then choose what to do there: attack, capture, wait, load into a transport, and so on.
- Select a workshop, dock or roost you own to build new units with your funds.
- Open the map menu and choose End turn when you are done.
You win by capturing the enemy headquarters or by routing every enemy unit.
Controls
| Action | Keyboard | Mouse | Gamepad | Touch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Move the cursor | Arrows or WASD | Point | D-pad | Tap |
| Select, confirm | Enter or Space | Left click | A | Tap |
| Back, cancel | Esc or Backspace | Right click | B | Back hint |
| Map menu (end turn, intel, options) | Esc, or Enter on an empty tile | Right click | Start | Menu button |
| Next unit that can still move | Tab or N | Right trigger | ||
| Zoom in / out | Q / E (or + / −) | Wheel | Pinch | |
| Pan the camera | Arrows or WASD | Drag | ||
| Toggle top-down camera | T |
With a unit selected, hovering a reachable tile draws the route there; click to move.
The rules of the woods
Paw & Claw follows the rules of Advance Wars 2 and Dual Strike. If you know those, you know this. The short version:
- Funds. Every property you own pays income at the start of your turn. Spend it at workshops (ground units), docks (boats) and roosts (fliers).
- Capturing. Foot soldiers capture properties. A capture takes 20 points, and each turn removes the capturing unit’s health (1–10). Leave the tile and the capture resets.
- Combat. Damage depends on the attacker, the defender, both units’ health and the defender’s terrain. A unit that survives strikes back if it can reach. Catapults, trebuchets and other ranged units can’t move and fire in the same turn, but nothing hits back at them.
- Terrain. Thickets, brambles, boulders and properties give cover; fliers ignore it. Roads are fast, creeks are slow, ponds are for boats.
- Supply. Units on your own properties heal 2 health and resupply at the start of your turn. Fliers and boats burn stamina every day and are lost when it runs out.
- Fog of war. On foggy maps you only see what your units see. Thickets and lily pads hide units from all but their neighbours.
- Commanders. The power meter charges as units are damaged. See the commanders for what each power does.
On phones and tablets
Hold the device sideways. Tap to select and act, drag to pan, pinch to zoom, and use the menu button in the bottom-right corner for the map menu. On an iPhone or iPad you can add the game to your home screen from Safari’s share menu to play full screen.