¡Welcome

Join me into my crypt and enjoy the company and a nice chat.

Today we will talk about a basic concept, but that sometimes is hard to have it clear as water, and that gives troubles for both new embraces as older generations.

Today we will talk about turn phases!

The turns go around among players clockwise, and every turn has the following phases:

• Unlock phase
• Master phase
• Minion phase
• Influence Phase
• Discard phase

Various effects can happen at the same phase, we can separate them between mandatory (as to hunt) and non-mandatory. The mandatory actions, as its name indicates, go first, and then the non-mandatory, but in every sub-phase, the active player (the one who is playing the turn), decides in which order they take place, as for example:

If several vampires must hunt, the player who controls them decides which one hunts first.

This choice may seem random, but many times it’s not.

I will then explain you, in detail, every phase.

Unlock phase:

It’s the first phase, and first of all you must unlock all the cards that can do so, then the rest of the effects take place, as to gain 1 pool if you control the edge, to pay (or not) contested cards, and pay mandatory effects as Smiling Jack or Constant Revolution.

 

Master phase:

This phase represents yours activity as Methuselah in the game. By default you only have one master action, but some cards may give you more, or if you play a trifle card then you get another master action. You can play 2 trifle cards, but the second one will not give you an extra master action.

If you have played an out-of-turn master, then you have spend your master action of that turn, except if the out-of-turn cards was a trifle one, in which case you will get 1 master phase.

 

Minion phase:

In this phase minions take actions. Every unlocked minion can perform actions by locking themselves, and other players can try to block that actions.

As we have commented before, first of all mandatory actions take place, as to hunt. If a minion should do two or more mandatory actions it will get “blocked” and will not perform any action that will not forbid your other minions to act.

When an action targets one or more Methuselah, or cards that they control, that action is considered a direct action, and only can be blocked by those Methuselah going clockwise to decide the order in which they block. There are exceptional cards that will enable you to block a direct action against another Methuselah as Eagle’s Sight or Falcon’s Eye, but the targeted Methuselah decide first and if they decline to block or are unable to do it, then you can try it.

When the action is undirected, the prey of the action player is the first to decide if he/she wants to block, then the predator of the acting player and then the rest of the players clockwise.

If a minion tries to block and fails, other minions can still try to block, for example:

Juan bleeds Marta, that decide to try to block with an unlocked vampire, then Juan plays a +1 Stealth card so Marta is not able to block with the vampire, but she then declares that Carlton Van Wyk will try to block the action, as he is unlock, and this time she succeeds in blocking the bleed.

When a minion is acting he/she can play Stealth that represents its efforts to do the action discreetly. At the same time, Intercept represents the effort of other minions to uncover their plans. If the intercept equals or exceeds the stealth then the action is blocked. Stealth can only be played in case it’s necessary, as goes for intercept, except that the card says otherwise.

If all the blocks fail then the action resolves successfully, and the effects of the action take place.

Political actions only express the terms of the action once the action resolves, in other words when there are no blocks or all the blocks have failed.

In case that the action it’s blocked, then a combat will occur, and will resolve in one or more rounds. We will live the explanation about the combat subject for another post.

 

Influence phase:

In the influence phase you can use a bit of your power to influence other minions in order for them to carry your will.

By defect, a Methuselah gets 4 transfers that can use in various ways:

• Use 1 transfer to move 1 point of blood from its pool to the minion.
• Use 2 transfers to move 1 point of blood from the minion to its pool.
• Use 4 transfers to move a crypt card from the crypt to the uncontrolled zone.

In any moment of the phase, when a minion has as many blood counters as its maximum capacity it can move from the uncontrolled zone to the ready zone face up.

Transfers are calculated at the start of the influence phase, 4 by defect, and if at the start of the phase, you control any card or minion that may give you more transfers, for example Ennoia’s Theatre, we could use them.

In the case of a minion that enters in play during the phase, and that minion will give you additional transfers, as for example Ingrid Rossler, we won’t be able to use them, because we didn’t have them at the beginning of the phase.

 

Discard phase:

We get a discard action by default. We can use that action to discard a card (and replace it with a new one) or to put in play and Event card. We can only put in play one event card for discard phase, even if we have more than one discard action.

Right before we end our discard phase, we should regularize our hand, that means to discards as many cards as needed until we get down to 7. This may occur when we play for example, Dreams of the Sphinx, which can be locked to get 2 additional cards, in that case we will get 9 cards and when we reach the end of the turn should get rid of 2 in order to reduce our hand to 7 cards.

Winning the game:

When your prey dies, you get 1 victory point and 6 points of pool. When the game ends the player with more points wins, even if he/she is dead.

In case you are the remaining player you get 1 extra victory point.

In the exceptional case, that a player dies at the same time as his/her prey, that player will get the victory point but not the 6 points of pool.

There is an exceptional case in which you can withdraw from the game and maintain all your victory points.

At the start of your turn, when you no longer have library cards and your hand is smaller than 7, you can announce your intention to withdraw. In order to successfully withdraw you have to meet the following requirements:

• None of your minions can enter combat until your next unlock phase.
• None of your minions can lose or spend any of its blood or life, until your next unlock phase.
• You can’t lose or spend any of your pool until your next unlock phase.

If you meet all those requirements, you get your victory point along with all the other victory points that you may have. Your predator gets no victory point nor the 6 points of pool for that.