Commanding the Legion

A necromancer’s true strength is the legion. In battle you can only summon the three minions in your deck, Command decides how large a force you can field at once, and corpses decide where you can raise them. This page explains how to build the deck, summon, and give orders. Each minion’s abilities are listed in the Minion Codex, and enhancing, awakening and ascending are covered in Growing Your Minions. The hero’s own skills are in Controls & Hero Skills.

Building your deck

Tap the Altar of the Damned in the village to open the minion screen.
Pick an unlocked minion and press Equip to place it in an empty deck slot.
If all three deck slots are full, the button turns into Swap. Press it, and when “Select a slot to replace.” appears, tap the slot to change. Press Cancel to back out.
Tap a filled deck slot to remove that minion from the deck.

The same minion can’t take two slots. A minion already in the deck shows Equipped on its button.
The deck synergy strip below the deck has Role, Bloodline, Elements and Legion cells. Tap a cell to see in detail what your current deck activates.
Awakened minions count toward synergies with the race and element of the elite form they awakened into.
You build the deck in the village. In battle you can summon only the three minions in it.

Summoning

Input	Result
Tap a slot	Summons at once onto the nearest suitable corpse near the hero.
Hold and drag	Usable corpses are highlighted and your aim snaps to the corpse nearest your finger. Release to summon onto it.
Cancel	While aiming, drag back onto the slot button or to the very bottom of the screen and release.

You can only summon on corpses within a certain range of the hero. Walk closer to use corpses that are far away.
Tap-summoning a normal minion uses ordinary corpses first and only takes an elite or boss corpse when no ordinary one is nearby.
The hero stops for a brief chant with each summon. Elite summons and summons that consume several corpses take a little longer, and time slows slightly while you drag to aim an elite summon.
After each summon there’s a short recovery before the next. An input made just before it ends isn’t thrown away — it fires the moment you’re ready.
There’s no separate cap on how many minions you can field. Summon as many as your Command and corpses allow.

What the summon slots show

Each slot shows the minion’s name and its Command cost (CMD); the cost turns red when you can’t afford it. When you can’t summon right now, the slot tells you why.

Label	Meaning	What to do
CMD required	Your remaining Command is lower than the cost.	Fight with the legion you have. The cost comes back when a minion falls.
Corpse required	There are no usable corpses nearby, or not enough.	Kill more enemies, or move closer to corpses.
Recovering	You just summoned and the next summon is getting ready.	Wait a moment.
Empty slot	That deck slot is empty.	Fill your deck in the village.

When a summon fails, the hero also says why — for example “Not enough Command.”, “I need a vessel.”, “I need … bodies.” or “I need a stronger vessel.”

Command

Every summon spends Command. The cost differs per minion and rises slightly as the minion levels up. Higher ★ (Ascend), the skeleton Bloodline Ritual and gear options that reduce summoning cost all lower it.
Command does not refill over time or from kills. Instead, when a minion falls, all the Command you spent on it comes back. Think of Command as “how big a legion you can field at once.”
Each floor starts with your Command only partly filled, not full. Unspent Command doesn’t carry over to the next floor.
During battle you can gain more from the Altar of the Legion (fills Command instantly, then slowly restores it whenever it runs low for the rest of the floor), gear and runeword options that grant Command on kill, regenerate it or raise the refund, and Sanctum relics earned in Siege.
Your maximum grows with gear options, Relics, the Necropolis of Dominion, and Legion Resonance — the sum of the levels of every minion you’ve unlocked. Raising minions outside your deck still raises the maximum. Necropolis of Dominion · Relics & the Dark Covenant

Corpses

Every enemy you kill leaves a corpse where it fell. Corpses rot away over time, and faster the higher the Eclipse climbs.
Only so many corpses can lie on the field at once; when too many pile up, the oldest disappear first.
Summoning, Corpse Explosion, Absorb and zombies rising again all draw on the same corpses.
Elite and boss corpses are “stronger vessels.” Elite summons use them, and they explode harder when detonated.
You can also make more corpses. The collapse of the hero’s Abyssal Orb weapon skill creates them, and some Dark Covenant nodes and gear options lay out corpses or minions when a floor begins.

Elite summons and the substitute rite

Once you Awaken a minion, it becomes an elite summon and needs an elite or boss corpse as its vessel.
If an elite or boss corpse is nearby, you must use it. Dragging onto an ordinary corpse fails with “I need a stronger vessel.”
If there isn’t one nearby, you summon through a substitute rite that offers several ordinary corpses at once. While aiming, threads link you to every corpse that will be offered.
How many corpses a summon takes differs per minion. Zombies take more than skeletons, and elites more than normal minions.
Dragging a normal minion straight onto an elite corpse uses up that precious corpse. Summoning normal minions with a tap is the safer habit.

Rally

Input	Effect
Tap	Every minion teleports to your side and holds position briefly.
Drag onto an enemy	Every minion focuses that enemy for a while and chases it even from far away. Works on Seal statues too.
Drag onto the ground	Every minion teleports to that spot and holds position briefly. Point too far away and they only go as far as they can reach.

While aiming, release on the button or at the very bottom of the screen to cancel. Each order has a very short cooldown.
Rallied minions hold their spot only briefly, then go back to fighting on their own.
Golems from the Forge of the Colossus follow Rally and focus orders too. Doran’s Mine & Golems

Behavior by role

Role	Where it stands	How it fights
Tanker	Front line	Charges at new targets and, on arrival, taunts nearby enemies into attacking it. Goes for elites first.
Melee	Front flanks	Your main damage dealers, fighting up close. Goes for wounded enemies first to finish them off.
Ranged	Rear flanks	Shoots from a distance and repositions when a wall blocks its line of fire. Goes for elites first.
Controller	Very back	Casts a wide crowd-control spell once enough enemies gather, and harasses with weak shots in between.

Minions follow the hero and fight the enemies around you, especially those in front of you.
When an enemy closes in on the hero, lagging Tankers and Melee minions teleport forward to block it.
Minions that fall too far behind teleport back to your side — except while carrying out a Rally or focus order.
Archer-type Ranged minions (such as the Bone Archer) shoot in an arc, so they can miss moving enemies, but each shot hits harder.

Elements

Element	Effect
Physical	No extra effect.
Fire	Briefly stuns what it hits. The deck synergy strip shows it as Explosion.
Freeze	Slows what it hits.
Bleed	Deals stacking damage over time.
Dark	Targets take more damage (vulnerable).

Element effects grow stronger with element-enhancing options and Elemental Resonance. A hero wielding a weapon of the same element gets stronger along with the legion.

Deck synergies

Role Loop

Deck roles fall into three groups: Primer (Tanker / Controller), Spreader (Ranged) and Reaper (Melee).

Enemies hit by a Primer, and those around them, receive a Mark and are briefly slowed.
When a Spreader hits or kills a marked enemy, it deals echo damage to nearby enemies and passes the Mark on. A thread links the enemies as the Mark jumps.
When a Reaper strikes a marked enemy, it deals bonus damage, splash damage and bleed, then claims the Mark. The lower the enemy’s health, the bigger the bonus.
A deck with all three roles forms a Full Loop: Marks last longer, echoes reach one more enemy, and combo damage rises.
When minions of all three roles are active on the field, Requiem is unleashed for a while: every combo grows much stronger, and marked enemies release a soul harvest that damages those around them when they fall. Opening Requiem with an elite summon makes it last longer and Marks all nearby enemies at once.
If your deck has no Primer, the other roles’ attacks occasionally leave a Mark instead.

Bloodline Ritual

Two minions of the same race activate the 2-Set bonus; three activate the stronger 3-Set.

Skeleton: Minion attack speed rises and summoning costs less Command.
Zombie: Minion health and life leech rise.
Zombie 3-Set: “Fallen zombies rise once more.” At the moment a zombie would fall, it devours a nearby ordinary corpse and stands back up with part of its health. This happens once per summoned zombie, and without a corpse nearby it can’t rise.

Elemental Resonance

Two minions of the same element activate the 2-Set bonus; three activate the 3-Set. Physical doesn’t count.

Attacks and effects of that element grow stronger. It applies to the whole legion, and a hero wielding a weapon of that element benefits too.
Awakening branches can change a minion’s element, so think about your whole deck’s elements when you awaken.

Moving to the next floor

When you clear a floor, your minions vanish along with you. On the next floor you raise your legion from scratch.
Command starts fresh on the new floor as well. Level-up card effects do carry across floors. Floors, Combo & Grades

Deck-building tips

Start by mixing roles. One Tanker or Controller, one Ranged and one Melee completes the Role Loop as a Full Loop.
To chase the Role Loop together with Bloodline Ritual or Elemental Resonance, look for minions that share a race or element but fill different roles.
Match Elemental Resonance to your weapon’s element and the hero gets stronger too.
Skeletons rise from a single corpse and quickly build numbers; zombies eat more corpses each but are sturdy and, with the 3-Set, rise once more. In a zombie deck, go easy on Corpse Explosion and Absorb to leave corpses on the ground.
Don’t hoard Command. A fallen minion’s cost comes straight back, so unspent Command is just strength you aren’t using.

Common mistakes

Saving Command. It comes back when minions fall. A full gauge is wasted power.
Spending elite corpses on normal summons. Don’t drag normal minions onto elite corpses — tap to summon them.
An elite slot keeps failing. If an elite corpse is nearby you must use it (a tap picks it for you); if not, you need several ordinary corpses.
Absorbing or detonating the corpses you meant to summon on. Summon first, then use what’s left.
Trying to summon on distant corpses. Only corpses around the hero can be used.
Filling the deck with a single role. The Role Loop never activates.
Expecting your minions to follow you to the next floor. You raise a new legion on every floor.