I am just about to start playing this game with my room mate, I have read the living hell out of the rule book and been reading around the forums, but how developments work is what I am having trouble dealing with.

Ok, when you play a development, do you have to pay the resource cost of the card? Or are you taking any card and placing it face down as a development?

If the latter is true, are you then unable to play the card anymore as anything but a development? It states in the rule book, "a player may look at his own developments (but not at his opponent's) at any time." This makes me think that you can still play the card after it's played as a development, otherwise being able to look at your developments doesn't matter.

-noob

The rules about developments are pretty clear in the rulebook (that isn't true for other points of the rule) :

- you may place one of the cards in your hand (any card in your hand) face-down as a development in one of your zone.

- this play is free (it only costs you a card from your hand), is limited to once per turn, and you can only do this during your Capital phase.

- you may take a look at the face down card if you want to, but you aren't allowed to play it : it in no longer in your hand. Why would you look at it ? 1) Read the "Wake the Mountains" tactic, this is the way to know what cards you'll not draw from your deck. 2) Read the "Rip 'dere 'eads off" tactic, this is a good way to know where you placed that Bloodthirster of yours as a development.

Developments have the major game effect of adding +1 hit points to the zone they are in (so, a Battlefield Zone with 2 developments will take 10 damages to be burnt). Numerous card effects also count the number of development in a particular zone for their effects ("Savage Gors" being a good exemple).

Hope this helps.

"Abandoned Mine" is a card that will let you place one of your developements back into your hand. You could then play that card as normal (unit,support,tactic).

Awesome, thanks for the clarification guys, I owe you. I just wanted to be clear on a some stuff before I went about teaching my room mate anything about the game.

Baresark,

Did you watch the video tutorial ?

It is very well done and it helped me teach the basics of the game. In one of the sections they explain how developments work. Here's the link:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp