Line Tower Wars Gauntlet Mode

The Gauntlet is a rogue-lite climb for Line Tower Wars. Thirty-two floors across four biomes, and every floor is a duel: your lane against a named rival warlord with their own economy, their own maze, and something to say about your chances. Win, and your maze, your bank, and your relics climb with you. Fall once the horns sound, and the run is unmade.
The Climb
Eight floors per biome, from a smoldering emberwood to a spire hanging in the void. Your towers carry upward from floor to floor, but the ground does not: each floor re-rolls the arena beneath your maze, with new obstacles, new chasms, and new glyphs burned into the stone. A maze that was perfect one floor ago is merely a good start.
The Rivals
Every floor has a face. Brann the Underfed is sloppy, slow, and hungry. Sister Maro has nothing left but patience. By the top of a biome you are dealing with warlords who field war-ready mazes and spend nothing on walls they can spend on war. Bosses hold floors three, six, and eight, and bosses cheat: Gravelord Osk taxes an extra tether from every leak, the Pale Warden's creeps arrive shielded, and the Gauntlet's master brings both habits at once.
The Crossroads
Between floors, choose your power: relics, element sigils, gold, or mending. Elements are drafted here, never bought, so every run builds its arsenal a different way. Boss relics offer more and take more. The Crown of Cinders will happily make every tower burn brighter, and charge you a tether per floor for the privilege.
The Glyphs
Runes seared into each floor that cannot be walled off. Enemy creeps thread them on the way to your gate and come out the other side healed, hasted, armored, or airborne. You cannot block the road. You can only make the detour cost them.
Ascension
Clear a biome and a harder Gauntlet unlocks behind it: five cumulative ranks, from Iron Rivals to The Long Climb, each stacking a new cruelty on top of the last. The mode is finished when you say it is.
The Gauntlet requires Line Tower Wars. Solo only: the climb is between you and the mountain.