Ok so I've been thinking about the discard stalemate problem, here's what I just thought up. What do you guys think?

Discard Cards from Hand
If a player has no mercenary cards, he must discard his hand.

End of round

If one or no players have any cards left, the round ends. If one player does have cards, he may keep up to two and discard the rest.

Commentary

This means, in order to keep cards, you need to be the last one with at least one merc.

Players without merc cards might well like to keep their bishop, winter, surrender cards etc, especially if they have a pact with another player to help them. And might even expect to win a battle with a heroine card. This rule says 'tough;.

From a 'fluffy' point of view, could you hang onto your bishops, drummers, even heroines between battles without some kind of escort force to protect them?

But would this rule seriously damage the game?

The house rule I am running to stave off stalemates of this type is a little simpler. In any battle where a group of people, 2, 3 etc, all pass in a round robin three times in a row the battle is automatically resolved and given to the winner and all cards are discarded to start a new round. Also in any case where a battle is started and no cards are laid down with point value or none at all and the same situation occurs no one wins the battle the condittiere token is passed to left of the current holder.

So far this has worked out well and in just about every case it closed a stalemate with players who had no mercenary cards or the player with a remaining mercenary card went ahead and threw it down on the 3rd pass for an easy victory. So far it has turned out well with minimal impact to the players since no one has to reveal what the had its just resolved because of the stalemated turns.

I like the fact that you can keep your non-mercenary cards since their usefulness is so conditional. Plus, it is entertaining when one of my friends keeps his cards thinking he is clever and not realizing that he is giving his opponents the opportunity to keep battling.