SPAM Beginner Guide: Your First Matches Explained

SPAM is a free-to-play turn-based PvP card battler on Steam. You fight online duels with a deck of four cards, destroy the opponent's four cards before they destroy yours, and upgrade your team mid-match through the Tox Shop. This guide walks through everything a new player meets in the first hour.

The goal of a match

Every duel is 4v4: you and your opponent each field four cards. You win by destroying all four enemy cards while keeping at least one of yours alive. Each card has hit points (HP), one element, and a set of abilities. Some abilities need you to pick a target; others hit automatically or affect the whole board.

• A match starts with a coin flip that decides who plays first.
• The player going second receives extra Spamtons (the in-match currency) as compensation — official statistics show a near-perfect 49.5% / 50.5% win split between first and second player.
• Focus your damage. Removing one enemy card immediately cuts the opponent's actions and their Spamton income.

What happens on first launch

The tutorial (hosted by Subject 042) runs through three short bot matches: basic attacking, card stats and passives, and the Tox Shop. After the tutorial you open your first orbs and build your first deck. Since patch 1.23, new players choose the element of their starter orb, so your first pulls always support the element you picked.

Ranked mode unlocks after three casual matches. There is also a Training mode where you can test decks against an AI that does not fight back — useful for measuring damage, not for practising real games.

Turns, abilities and cooldowns

On your turn, each of your cards can use one ability if it is ready. After an ability is used it goes on cooldown: a number on the ability shows how many turns to wait, and all cooldowns tick down by one at the end of your turn. A ready ability you skip stays available for later turns.

Every ability has three stats worth reading before you commit:

• Accuracy — the chance the ability hits at all. A 50% accuracy attack is a gamble every time you cast it.
• Critical chance — the chance to hit (or heal) harder.
• Critical power — how much stronger that critical is.

Elements and bonuses

SPAM has seven elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Nature, Light, Shadow and Ether. Many abilities grant an element bonus when used — for example, the Nature Spirit's Windmill gives Nature bonus (+1). Bonuses raise the damage and healing of your matching abilities, so a deck that generates bonus points every turn hits harder and harder as the game goes on. This is the single most important growth mechanic in SPAM.

Each card also has its own resistances: a card with 20% fire resistance takes 20% less fire damage. Check enemy resistances before choosing targets — right-click a card to inspect it.

The Tox Shop

Every two turns the Tox Shop opens. Each card generates Spamtons every turn (the number on the card), and you spend that pool — plus a bonus that grows with the turn number — on Tox: passive upgrades you attach to a card slot. Tox have rarities, and the shop can be rerolled for a rising cost if nothing fits your plan. Our Tox guide covers the full system.

Watch a first session

First matches and tutorial walkthrough

A community creator's first matches: tutorial, orb openings, deck building and the first casual duels.

Building your first deck

A deck is exactly four cards. For your first builds, keep it simple: pick one element, add that element's Spirit (each Spirit generates its element's bonus every turn), and fill the other three slots with commons of the same element. Duplicates are never wasted — a duplicate unlocks a talent (a hidden passive) for that card. Ready-made examples for every element are on our starter decks page.

Beginner FAQ