At the end of the 21st century a colossal object appeared around the orbit of Pluto and scientists named it "The Shard" because of it's look. The Shard emitted a deadly aura which changed and destroyed the essence of space and every life which came near it and it's destination was the planet Earth. Humanity wasn't able to change the course of the object and feared that a collision would destroy the planet but instead of ramming Earth, the object landed in north-east Siberia. But the joy over this surprising turn of events didn't last long: Now called "the plague", the aura of the ship began to change the plant and everything on it.

Several centuries have gone by since the Shard landed. The plague is still active and the human civilization, as it existed in the 21st century, is no more. Instead the survivors build five so-called MegaCities in which they live behind tons of steel and cement only leaving the safety to gather much needed resources from the surrounding lands. Everyone else that didn't die from the plague mutated and got stronger through it. They gained strange powers and talents and now call themselves the Tribes. But the humans are no longer alone on the planet: A third faction has appeared and no one really knows who those mysterious beings, called the Cult, are nor what they want but surly the Shard has something to do with it.

While the game features a story campaign, that puts the player in the shoes of a human Lord Commander with pre-defined unit layouts and skill sets, the heart is the multiplayer-mode which features both Player-vs-Environment (= Coop) maps as well as Player-vs-Player-battles.

Before the start of a match the player choose between the three factions and build up a small army. Each army consists of one or more hero and several smaller units. But the players can't just take an unlimited amount of everything. Instead the player has a specific number of recruitment points available and each unit costs a specific amount. While a normal soldier only needs only one recruitment point, a mighty Hellfire swallows almost a quarter of the available points. But the main role still has the hero.

While playing the game the player collects artifacts, gets rewards and Xenoshards. The artifacts and rewards are items that help either the hero of a specific faction or boost a unit from that faction. For each faction there is a limited number of slots available where such items can be put. The Xenoshards are instead used to buy talents that grant the hero access to new spells and abilities. Anything that the player defines will be available for every gameplay mode.

Once all the choices have been made and the game begins, everything plays like a normal RTS but also the differences between the modes become obvious. In the story and on the coop-maps the players only have a limited number of troops available. Some heroes have the ability to respawn fallen units but overall he has to get by with what he has. While the player of course follows the story in the campaign, the coop-maps are free to explore and mainly contain creeps and boss monster that the players need to take down in order to get powerful items and collect Xenoshards.

The three PvP-modes (Deathmatch, Training and Skirmish) are instead more like Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. You need to collect the resource Xenolit, built a base, recruit units and heroes and destroy the enemy completely. Except for the training-mode, the players fight for battle points and artifacts in these matches. And in contrary to the pre-made maps in the PvE-modes, the maps for the PvP-matches are generated randomly so no two matches are the same.

If the player can't find any human enemies, he can also play against bots.