Fifty-five commanders — and every one is somebody's

What a Master IS

A Master = one character NFT (owned or rented) mirrored from the live Ether Fantasy Masters API. In CF, a Master:

• Oversees a territory — one Master per parcel; required while a player owns the land.
• Leads an army — the "leading officer" on a marching army. Their fame contributes to WarScore (capped at 20% hero impact).
• Is your champion in battle — when a battle goes live, you enter as your Master via the normal champion draft.
• Can be KO'd — via the live Masters API. KO'd Masters enter a revive cycle; standing orders persist.

Masters are element-free

Masters carry no elemental type — no fire hero, no water hero. Element play lives in your pet/soldier selection (a UnitClass stack IS a pet species). Masters benefit from their squads' element buffs indirectly, never directly.

Result: hero picks stay about skill, style, and matchup — not counter-picking a weather day. Element strategy is the composition question, decided when you build your army.

Owned vs rented

Hero-vs-hero duels

Sometimes armies aren't needed. Two Masters standing alone on the same land can settle it 1-on-1 — champions decide, troops are spared.

• v1 (now): a card fight (AGGRESSIVE > TRICK > DEFENSIVE > AGGRESSIVE), best-of-3 exchanges, decided by your Master's real rating + HP + equipped artifact spellflares. Animated head-shot fight with real portraits. Turn-based over WebSocket — snappy round transitions, no networking overhead.
• v2+ (upcoming): tiny-arena live 1v1 on the 3D engine.

When you win, you choose:

• RELEASE (default) — the loser's Master walks back to their governor's undeployed pool. They can redeploy immediately. Merciful. Fires automatically if you don't pick within 10 seconds.
• KNOCK OUT — animated K.O. (eyes shut, head slumps, screen dims) → Master enters KO state via the live Masters API. Their owner has to revive them before using them again. Brutal.

Winner takes the ground. Result is public — the World Chronicle records it as a great-deed style beat.

Mythic reinforcement — the pet-companion parallel

Masters aren't the only legendary help. If you own a Mythic pet NFT, that pet may appear as a special reinforcement in one of your battles — once every 10 battles, guaranteed (not random — planable). It arrives at your spawn zone with a shaft-of-light effect and a banner:

• Your side sees: "⭐ The Gods have answered — {Name} arrives!"
• The enemy sees: "⚠ The sky darkens — something is powering the enemy. Be prudent."

Mythic reinforcements are roughly 2× a hero's stats — big HP tank + hard-hitting damage — but they have no skills. They behave like a very durable line soldier under default AI. No player micro needed. Own multiple Mythic NFTs? Each has its own independent 10-battle cooldown.

Signature artifacts — the elemental aura

Masters are element-free themselves (decision 14). But their equipped signature artifact grants an elemental aura to matching-element soldiers in the army they lead.

Example: your Master equips a Flame Scimitar (Fire artifact). Every Fire-species soldier stack in her army fights at +10% while she's alive. Other elements get nothing. Her own combat contribution stays element-free.

Aura stacks with weather × terrain into the same ±35% combined cap — one budget, three sources. Named/legendary artifacts (Singulars) may bump aura higher; mundane weapon artifacts stay at the +10% baseline. Aura is the way Masters shape element strategy without violating "elements live on pet selection."

Master's Sickness — the RTS mode

In some game modes, Masters enter the fight weakened — 50% or even 80% reduced stats. It's not a bug; it's a mode. When your hero is throttled, you have to win by economy: gather materials, build towers, out-produce the enemy, out-formation them.

This flips the MOBA/RTS balance: instead of hero-carry, it's macro-carry. Owner call per-Master via battleStyle: HERO_HEAVY / BALANCED / MACRO + per-battle heroDebuff: 0..1.

Spec: battles page — the RTS layer is the same for MOBA-PvP and CF battles.

A few from the roster

Full list via the Masters API. A sample from the 47 base Masters + 3 heroes we've built demo art for:

Irene

Kai

Leah

Master

Master

Master

Portraits shown are demo head-shots for the card duel v1.

Standing orders (offline-proof)

You're not always online. Set your Master's default behavior once, and the sim honors it while you're away:

• DUEL — challenge any lone Master who walks on your land
• FLEE — attempt escape; caught only if rating fails the roll
• STAND — accept OVERWHELM if outnumbered (lose a few soldiers; your Master KO'd)