The Model

Explore a recorded position: board, our deck, opponent’s cards, and global state →

Every card is a composition of mechanical primitives. A transformer reads the whole board as a set of rows and returns a policy and a value.

194

features a card’s printed text alone determines

3

segments in a card row: printed, instance, learned

Encoder

The board, legal actions, and global context form an unordered set of rows. Attention connects the whole position; separate heads return action scores and the judge’s estimated win probability.

The board becomes card and state rows; the engine supplies legal-action rows.
The transformer reads all rows together to score legal actions and estimate win probability. Probabilities shown are illustrative.

Card effect decomposition

Each card combines printed mechanics, its current state, and a learned identity. Shared effects give unfamiliar cards a representation even without a trained identity vector.

Each row combines printed card-text features, live instance state and a learned identity.
Similar at a glance, different in utility: the primitives distinguish protection from card draw. Shared primitives enable knowledge transfer: Sylveon, rare in training, can reuse what the model learns from Crustle.

Action composition

An action row combines a type, mechanical features, and pointers to relevant cards. The model reads the parts of a choice, not a separate vocabulary entry for every possible combination.

Different attacks share a feature vocabulary, allowing learned relationships to transfer across moves.

Pre-training

Imitation learning uses public ladder games rated above 1000 ELO. Each decision pairs the acting player’s board view with the action taken. The base model was trained on an NVIDIA RTX 3090.

Recorded games become decision examples: the acting player’s view, action taken and game result. Imitation learning trains the base model’s policy and value; the daily games also refresh archetype decklist data.

Submission hyperparameters

The submitted checkpoint balances capacity against the ten-minute search budget. Search explains how the policy and judge are used; Self-play covers subsequent training.

Complete general pretraining configuration: model architecture, optimization, training scale and the policy and value objectives.

Card space explorer

These columns compare printed facts, their trained projection, and the card token with its learned identity. The projection is shared across cards; it is not the per-card “Learned” segment above.

Compare cards in three representation spaces —of — cards have no learned identity at all

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Printed facts

The 194 printed facts, standardized

Projected effects

Through the trained 194→64 projection

Card token

Plus the 192-d learned identity

What it does

What it is

Neighbours are cosine similarity in each space. A neighbour in accent appears in that column only. Cards badged MWO are the 56 Mew World Order cards: ported, never trained on, identity exactly zero.

Inspect the submitted deck’s printed features

The detailed matrix below shows which primitives each card uses.

1play.gate.shuffle 2play.fetch.deck 3play.draw.n 4play.gate.reveal 5play.disrupt.hand 6play.cost.discard_hand 7play.disrupt.energy 8play.energy.accel 9play.fetch.trash 10play.gate.coin 11play.gust 12play.order.top 13abl.energy.accel 14abl.gate.reveal 15abl.draw.n 16abl.gate.shuffle 17abl.trigger 18abl.damage.counters 19abl.fetch.deck 20abl.heal 21abl.move.hand 22abl.order.bottom 23abl.order.top 24atk.damage.extra 25atk.damage.spread 26atk.move.hand 27atk.restrict 28atk.status.confuse 29atk.switch.self 30target.any 31target.basic 32target.energy_basic 33target.non_rule 34target.pokemon 35target.supporter Meowth ex1× Meowth ex — abl.gate.shuffle Meowth ex — abl.trigger Meowth ex — abl.fetch.deck Meowth ex — atk.damage.extra Meowth ex — atk.move.hand Meowth ex — target.supporter Dudunsparce1× Dudunsparce — abl.gate.reveal Dudunsparce — abl.draw.n Dudunsparce — abl.gate.shuffle Dudunsparce — abl.order.top Dudunsparce — atk.damage.extra Fezandipiti ex1× Fezandipiti ex — abl.gate.reveal Fezandipiti ex — abl.draw.n Fezandipiti ex — atk.damage.extra Drakloak4× Drakloak — abl.gate.reveal Drakloak — abl.move.hand Drakloak — abl.order.bottom Drakloak — atk.damage.extra Budew2× Budew — atk.damage.extra Budew — atk.restrict Dragapult ex3× Dragapult ex — atk.damage.extra Dragapult ex — atk.damage.spread Dreepy4× Dreepy — atk.damage.extra Dunsparce1× Dunsparce — atk.damage.extra Dunsparce — atk.switch.self Munkidori2× Munkidori — abl.heal Munkidori — atk.damage.extra Munkidori — atk.status.confuse Basic {D} Energy2× Basic {D} Energy — abl.energy.accel Basic {P} Energy4× Basic {P} Energy — abl.energy.accel Basic {R} Energy3× Basic {R} Energy — abl.energy.accel Boss’s Orders3× Boss’s Orders — play.gust Buddy-Buddy Poffin4× Buddy-Buddy Poffin — play.gate.shuffle Buddy-Buddy Poffin — play.fetch.deck Buddy-Buddy Poffin — target.basic Crispin3× Crispin — play.gate.shuffle Crispin — play.fetch.deck Crispin — play.energy.accel Crispin — target.energy_basic Poké Pad4× Poké Pad — play.gate.shuffle Poké Pad — play.fetch.deck Poké Pad — target.non_rule Ultra Ball4× Ultra Ball — play.gate.shuffle Ultra Ball — play.fetch.deck Ultra Ball — play.cost.discard_hand Ultra Ball — target.pokemon Judge1× Judge — play.gate.shuffle Judge — play.draw.n Judge — play.gate.reveal Judge — play.disrupt.hand Judge — target.any Unfair Stamp1× Unfair Stamp — play.gate.shuffle Unfair Stamp — play.draw.n Unfair Stamp — play.gate.reveal Unfair Stamp — play.disrupt.hand Unfair Stamp — play.order.top Unfair Stamp — target.any Lillie's Determination4× Lillie's Determination — play.gate.shuffle Lillie's Determination — play.draw.n Lillie's Determination — play.gate.reveal Crushing Hammer4× Crushing Hammer — play.disrupt.energy Crushing Hammer — play.gate.coin Crushing Hammer — target.any Night Stretcher2× Night Stretcher — play.fetch.trash Night Stretcher — target.any Risky Ruins2× Risky Ruins — abl.trigger Risky Ruins — abl.damage.counters 1. play.gate.shuffle 2. play.fetch.deck 3. play.draw.n 4. play.gate.reveal 5. play.disrupt.hand 6. play.cost.discard_hand 7. play.disrupt.energy 8. play.energy.accel 9. play.fetch.trash 10. play.gate.coin 11. play.gust 12. play.order.top 13. abl.energy.accel 14. abl.gate.reveal 15. abl.draw.n 16. abl.gate.shuffle 17. abl.trigger 18. abl.damage.counters 19. abl.fetch.deck 20. abl.heal 21. abl.move.hand 22. abl.order.bottom 23. abl.order.top 24. atk.damage.extra 25. atk.damage.spread 26. atk.move.hand 27. atk.restrict 28. atk.status.confuse 29. atk.switch.self 30. target.any 31. target.basic 32. target.energy_basic 33. target.non_rule 34. target.pokemon 35. target.supporter when played ability attack what it points at
Every card in the submitted deck that asserts an effect, against the effect primitives it uses: 23 cards, 35 of the table’s 194 columns. A filled cell is a clause the card actually carries. Column numbers refer to the horizontal key below.