Combat

Combat is done mostly through playing a typical game of MTG, with a few key differences:

Party Order
Upon entry to a dungeon all party members must decide their party order. Players will have the choice of being in the front or back. In general, those in the front should be those able to detect traps or take a hit. Players in the back tend to have less health or need to use magic.

Your party order is even more important when it comes to combat. Depending on being in the front or back will determine your role in battle and who and what you are able to attack or target.

FRONT ROW

 * Can attack any enemy player in the front row or any creature in the front row.
 * Can attack any enemy player in the back row.
 * Can target back row creatures, cannot attack them.
 * Can block for themselves or any party member in the back row.

BACK ROW
As you can see, when you are in the front more aggressive row, you have more attacking and defending options than traditional MTG. The unique ability to attack creatures directly and being able to attack back row enemy players, encourage active play. If there is only one player or creature then they are automatically moved to the front row.
 * Can only attack or target creatures in the front row.
 * Can only target enemy players in the front row, cannot attack them.
 * Can only block for themselves.
 * Creatures you control have “T: Move this creature to the front row.”

Players in the back row play a more traditional form of MTG, they and their creatures are only able to attack enemy players in the front row. They cannot block for anyone other than themselves. However they can tap creatures they control to move them forward to the front row for more combat options. They also are generally more protected thanks to the front row players and being out of reach from enemy back row attackers.

Combat Order
All combat encounters begin with an initiative roll. Characters who roll the higest go first, tied allied characters take their turn together, while tied enemy characters are decided by highest Initiative bonus, followed by another roll off.

If any player rolls a crit (20) than they and their party members take the enemies by surprise and take an extra turn at the start of combat. However if any player rolls a crit fail (1) than they are surprised by the enemy who takes an extra turn.

Types of Encounters
So far the rules we have described are in regards to default combat encounters. Certain encounters however will involve the enemy deck to play differently or for the win condition of the encounter to change.
 * ENEMY: Plays out according to all the previous rules, the enemy player or team is meant to play out similarly to the player characters in their combat and abilities with the exception of schemes and other boss tactics
 * HORDE: Similar to the Theros Face the Horde challenge deck. Players win when there are no enemy creatures on the battlefield and no cards in their library. All damage done to the enemy player instead removes that many cards from their library. The horde deck autoplays choosing to cast all cards it draws without paying its mana cost or putting them in the graveyard.
 * OBJECTIVE: These encounters will start of with an emblem objective. The enemy deck will do everything within its abilities to complete the objective before the other players. Some encounters will start off with a set amount of artifacts with the goal to be the team to destroy the final one while other encounters will have creatures who whenever they die reveal the top X cards and put all creatures onto the battlefield. Another example is simply having to survive for a set amount of turns against an escalating assault.

Commanding Combat
Utilizing aspects of their character like their Class and Command Sheet the players themselves act as creatures on the battlefield. On their first turn they suffer from summon sickness, but are able to cast memorized spells from their Spellbook or cast items from their various equipment slots. Spells cast from your spellbook are returned to the command zone after being cast, with their mana cost increasing by (2) for each time cast this combat. When an item or equipment cast from an equipment slot goes to the graveyard add a durability counter to it. This counter does not go away at the end combat and must eventually be repaired.

On their next turn they are able to attack eligible targets dealing damage equal to their power, with all receiving damage reduced by their defensive stat (if they have any).

Difficulty and Scaling
Each enemy player will have a simplified command sheet of their own, like the players they will also have an invocation and evocation ability. This ability will have three stages of difficulty determined based on a roll upon the encounter.

Beyond that, there will be another global rule in regards to larger parties. 1-2, 3-4, 5 all should have varying ways of playing. Something as simple as draw 1+X cards by the enemy player each time, with X scaling based on party size.