SPAM Combat Mechanics: Accuracy, Criticals, Resistances & Cooldowns

Every SPAM duel is decided by a handful of readable systems: turn order, ability stats, cooldowns, resistances and element bonuses. Once you can read these numbers on a card, you can predict most fights before they happen. This guide explains each mechanic exactly as the game presents it.

Turn structure

A coin flip decides who plays first; the second player receives extra Spamtons as compensation, and official launch statistics show the split is almost perfectly balanced (49.5% vs 50.5%). On your turn, each ready card may use one ability. You then end your turn, all your cooldowns decrease by one, and every two turns the Tox Shop opens between rounds.

Accuracy, crits and power

Every ability carries three combat stats:

• Accuracy — chance to hit. Whistling Fin, for example, sits at 50% accuracy: powerful, but a coin flip. Effects like Seabed (accuracy +12%) or the Luck stat from the Tox Shop can fix unreliable abilities.
• Critical chance — chance the ability crits. Some abilities are built around huge base crit rates, like Wandering Feline's Offensive Aim at 50%.
• Critical power — the multiplier applied when a crit lands (typically ×2).

Crits apply to healing too — a critical heal restores far more than the printed number, and many abilities attach bonus effects (extra bonuses, freezes) specifically "on critical hit".

Cooldowns

After use, an ability must recharge: the number shown is how many turns to wait. Cooldowns tick down at the end of your turn, and a ready ability you skip stays available — you can bank a big cooldown-8 ability like Floral Zombie's Aquatic Curse for exactly the right board. Since patch 1.22, your turn shortens automatically when you have nothing left to play, so dead turns waste less time.

Elemental resistances

Each card has a resistance percentage for every element. 20% fire resistance reduces fire damage taken by 20%. Resistances are per-card and per-element, which is why checking the enemy lineup matters: right-click any card to inspect its full resistance table, talents slots and abilities. Talents like Heart of Steel raise resistances every time the card is attacked, and several Tox add resistances to your whole team.

Element bonuses

The counters along the bottom of the board track your bonus in each element. Abilities that say "Fire bonus (+1)" add to that counter, and your matching-element abilities scale with it — that is how a 10-damage Breath of Flames becomes a 20-damage attack late in the game. Bonuses are shared across your team, so mono-element decks double-dip: one Spirit's ramp powers every attacker.

Status effects

Common effects you will meet in your first dozen games:

• Freeze — the target cannot act until the end of the opponent's next turn. Taking new damage, healing or a new Tox shatters the ice and deals bonus damage.
• Poison / damage over time — deals a percentage of the target's max HP at the start of its turns for several turns.
• Taunt — forces enemies to attack the taunting card.
• Vanish / Disappearance — removes the target's last passive, gutting cards that rely on talents or shop upgrades.
• Revive effects — passives like Phoenix return a destroyed card to life with part of its HP.

See the mechanics in a real match

First matches and tutorial walkthrough

Talents and passives

Talents are hidden passives unlocked by pulling duplicate cards — your opponent cannot see them. They trigger automatically: Tenacity leaves a card at 1 HP instead of dying to the first fatal blow (and since patch 1.23 it also blocks destroy effects), Punching Bag grows an element each time the card is hit, and Ancient Healing restores a percentage of max HP at the start of each turn. Browse the full list on our talents page.