How to Play Batomon Showdown

Batomon Showdown is an asynchronous auto-battler. You field up to six Batomon that share one battle HP pool. Individual units can be knocked out while the side keeps fighting until that shared bar hits zero. You do not take turns. You do not click abilities in combat. You prepare a board, press Battle, and the game resolves start-of-battle effects, cooldown casts, ongoing auras, knockout triggers, and victory bonuses against a snapshot from the same numbered day.

This page is the ruleset. For the first-hour checklist use Getting Started. For inputs use controls. For gold and copies use shop and merging. For status math use the combat guide.

What a run is

A run alternates untimed shops and automatic battles. It ends at 10 wins or when the life pool is exhausted after its one Second Chance. You start with 10 lives.

• Days 1–2: a loss costs 1 life.
• Days 3–4: a loss costs 2 lives.
• Day 5 onward: a loss costs 3 lives.

The first time lives reach zero, Second Chance puts you back on 1 life and opens a reward event. The next time the bar empties, the run is over. There is no secret five-loss limit. Players who treat “I only lost twice” as safe on day 7 are reading the wrong resource.

Take as long as you need in the shop. Once Battle is confirmed, buying and positioning stop. Playback controls sit at the top of the battlefield: pause and Fast Forward. Those buttons change how you watch, not how the simulation is decided.

Full gameplay loop: shop, auto-battle, and team synergies

Who you fight

You fight saved, day-matched boards, not a live opponent. Human entries are snapshots. When the pool is thin, the game can fill with generated day-specific bot boards. A normal search prefers the current balance snapshot and initially excludes your own board, boards flagged out of matchmaking, Extended boards, and humans you already faced this run.

Casual first prefers a not-yet-faced casual human at or below your casual MMR, then any fresh casual human, then a fresh ranked human. Before your first 10-win run, there is also a chance to try a bot early. Ranked searches a wide MMR band on day 1, then tightens, then widens again if needed. Bronze through Platinum initially keep Master boards out of the pool; Diamond and Master do not use that split. If nothing legal remains, both modes can relax rematch guards, cross Casual and Ranked, then try bots. The last fallback can even be one of your own same-day snapshots.

A few boards are withheld on purpose. The ??? trainer never enters matchmaking. Outside Extended Mode, a run that held a Mythical is withheld unless it is Ranked and you are Master. Boards containing Dirgefin, Reapra, or Celestia are withheld unless you are Master. If a candidate contains a Mythical you have not seen, the game can roll alternatives. Outside Extended, lower ranks may also see softened snapshots: smaller permanent buffs, stripped trinkets, or missing Basilord. That softening fades through Platinum and is off in Diamond and Master. This is why a tier list built on Master VODs can overstate a unit in Gold.

Search is still online. Choosing Battle locks the shop while it looks. Failed fetches retry; empty searches wait briefly; you can cancel before an opponent is accepted. Non-Extended Ranked Master runs even cache later days in the background.

Shop, items, trinkets, events

Each day starts with five shop slots. Shop rank sets rarity odds. A normal reroll costs 3 gold; a free reroll spends the token instead. Three level-1 copies make level 2; two level-2 copies make level 3 and open a trinket gift.

Your trainer is equipped for the whole run. Trinkets usually stay in the bag and can stack; some fire once and move to a used pile. Items resolve when purchased: permanent buffs, shop edits, extra units, extra trinkets. They are not equipment you click in combat. Normal events are scheduled before days 3, 6, and 9. Second Chance adds its own event. Extended Mode (also called endless) is a continuation after a 10-win finish, up to day 40 or until lives die, and it does not score extra ranked stars. Details sit on the 10-win guide and patch notes.

Combat in one paragraph

Cooldown abilities fill their own timers. Cooldown Speed changes how fast those timers complete. Start of Battle, On Cast, Ongoing, Knockout, and On Victory can all exist on the same board, so a “strong” unit that never shares a trigger with its neighbors is often a trap. At 30 seconds, sudden death damages both shared HP bars every half-second and ramps until someone dies. Position matters because abilities target slots, directions, or adjacent allies. Shock, Burn, Poison, and Shield have their own stacking rules on the combat page; do not assume status damage retriggers Shock, because it does not.

The gameplay video in the middle of this article is a full shop-to-battle session. Use it to see how long a patient shop actually takes. Then come back and reread the life table before you queue Ranked from the ranks page.

Modes and launch context

Casual teaches. Ranked scores stars and MMR after you complete a 10-win Casual run. Extended is optional and must be enabled in Settings after that first championship; it does not start every run automatically. The Steam page lists Windows PvP, full controller support, and “playable at your own pace.” There is no shared-screen couch mode and no live simultaneous duel. Android is planned alongside the September 15, 2026 Steam launch; iOS is later. Until those store pages go live, treat mobile as announced, not as a guarantee of shared saves.

If a rule on this page disagrees with a creator’s month-old VOD, trust the catalog and updates hub. Balance 14 already reworked Berroon, Membership Card, and several cooldowns. A screenshot comp is a hint, not a patch note.