Army of Zero is a two-player card and dice battle game that also contained a puzzle competition. The objective of the puzzle had to be discovered by finding details in the cards.
Graphic on back of all cards followed by various character cards, plus shield and sword cards.
Though the game rules were obviously fully available, the company did not reveal much about the objective of the puzzle. The only initial details revealed were that:
the shield and sword cards weren't part of the puzzles, nor were the backs of the cards.
the 84 character cards were all that needed to be used to solve the puzzle
the 5 shields down the left side of the character cards were not related to the battle game, only the puzzle
The cash prize goes to the person who submits the “best solution” based on an unknown grading system before the deadline date.
The puzzle contest was only open to residents of the UK, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. Solutions were to be mailed in, and must have also contained the competition rules card from the game to prove the game was purchased.
Solution
Solver(s):
Tim Pickup from Peckham
The secret to solving the puzzle was to realize that a character card was missing, and to determine the character's rank, name, and clan. This was primarily done by ordering the cards in 6 different sequences, and by laying out the 84 character cards in 3 different 12 by 7 grids.
First, one had to realize that the character ranks were in a progression of 8, except for the Generals. 1 Lord, 8 Generals, 17 Commanders, 25 Guardians, 33 Thegns. If there was another General, all ranks would contain 8 more characters than their higher ranking predecessor. A General is missing!
The top left shield was used to create 6 different lines of Morse code based on 6 unique ordering sequences.
Sequences
All 6 of the rearranged sequences of cards used Morse code created by the top blue shield on the play cards. The blue shield had three variations: plain, with a white dot, or with a white horizontal line, and this created the Morse code after rearranging each time.
order the cards alphabetically by character name, ignoring their rank that precedes their name on the card
order the cards alphabetically by clan (individual order or members of the clan didn't matter, because the Morse code symbol on the blue shield is identical for all members of a clan)
order the cards by the “reversed binary” on the second shield where orange is 1 and blue is 0. Least significant binary digit is top left.
order the cards by character stats: lowest speed stat, lowest combat stat, lowest combat stat, lowest weapon stat.
order by atomic number of element created by the third and forth letters in the characters name, ignoring their rank that precedes their name on the card
Finally, the most convoluted sorting uses shields 3, 4, and 5, which haven't been used yet for ordering. Find the character card with the 1 digit for their 5th shield. Now take their 3rd shield, and find the other character card with that matching shield as their 4th shield. Place that newly found character card as item one in the sequence, and repeat finding the next character card with the 2 digit for their 5th shield, etc.
Each above ordering gives a different line of Morse code. Decoding each code gives GPS coordinates in degree/minute/second/cardinality format, though the degree, minute, and seconds indicators didn't appears in the code, leaving the hunter to determin this formatting over decimal-based GPS coordinate format. In addition, the first 5 Morse codes ended with the “wait” Morse code prosign (.-...) whereas the sixth ended with the “out/end of message” prosign (.-.-.). The use of these is a rarity in puzzles, and most online translators don't ev. The 6 cities in sequence order are:
Ottawa (45°25'00"N 75°41'00"W)
Edinburgh (55°57'39"N 03°10'03"W)
Veracruz (19°11'45"N 96°07'35"W)
Dakar (14°41'17"N 17°26'41"W)
Lisbon (38°42'57"N 09°11'25"W)
Atlanta (33°45'01"N 84°23'03"W)
Remember how a General character card is missing? Well, a hunter would also need to realize that all Generals' names are letters in reverse alphabetical order. Doing that with the first character of our city names, ones gets VOLEDA. Our General's name is General Voleda!
Rearranging the 84 character cards three different ways spelling “triplet” in the orange cards. Wide notches aligned spelled TR (left), narrow notches aligned spelled IPL (middle), and triangular notches aligned spelled ET (right).
Two of the triplet siblings.
Notches
Each of the character cards are on a blue or orange background, and the edge of those backgrounds has 3 unique notches on almost each side: wide square, narrow rectangle, and triangle. Aligning all 84 cards so that adjacent cards have a single notch type matching spells letters out of the 23 orange cards on a blue background. Doing this for each notch type, then combining the letters spells “triplet.”
Finally, the missing character's clan is determined, but realizing they are one person of a set of triplets, and in the deck, there are two character cards that are nearly identical other than being mirrored graphics with slightly different color clothing. These two are part of the Crocodile Clan.
Final Answer
Putting all this information together, we get the final answer. The missing card is: General Voleda of the Crocodile Clan
Credit: The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has an archive of the full solution that was originally posted on the game's now defunct website.
