2. Playing cards

Playing a card

What happens when you use a card from your hand

Most of what you do in a game is take a card from your hand and use it. Every card goes through the same steps, whatever kind it is:

1. Show it. Take it from your hand and put it face up where your opponent can see it.
2. Make its choices. A unit needs a place to go. A spell that says "a unit" needs you to say which one.
3. Pay its cost with your runes.
4. It goes on the chain, a spot in the middle of the table where played cards wait to take effect. The next page covers it.

That's how you play a card. Unless a card says otherwise, you play it in your main phase, when nothing else is happening. You can play cards from your hand, and your champion from its spot beside your legend.

Choosing

Some cards pick something specific. Vengeance says "Kill a unit", so you say which unit as you play it. Your opponent sees your pick before they decide how to answer it. What a card picks is its target.

If there's nothing a card could pick, you can't play it: Vengeance needs a unit on the table. And once you've picked, you can't change your mind.

A unit's choice is where it goes: your base, or a battlefield you already have. Not an empty battlefield, and not one your opponent has.

Off the chain

Every card you play goes on the chain first: the spot in the middle of the table where played cards wait to take effect. How long it stays there depends on its kind:

• A unit leaves it at once, for the place you chose. It arrives exhausted, so it can't do anything that needs it exhausted until your next turn readies it.
• Gear leaves it at once, for your base. It arrives ready.
• A spell stays on it until your opponent has had a chance to answer it. Then it does what its text says, top to bottom, and goes to your trash.

A spell's target can be gone by the time the spell takes effect. It still takes effect, but it does nothing to that target. You don't get the cost back.

Vengeance costs . To play it, pick the unit, then exhaust 4 runes for the number and recycle 2 Order runes for the symbols (they can be 2 of the same 4). Vengeance goes on the chain, your opponent gets their chance to answer, then the unit is killed and Vengeance goes to your trash.