We were playing this weekend and ran into a shadows question.

So here's the situation: Turn 1 Player A plays a card into shadows, and for the rest of the turn leaves that card in shadows. Turn two player B goes first. Now according to shadows you must play your cards from shadows at the beginning of the phase, but in this situation, during the marshalling phase, player A will not have any gold to marshall. So then it raises the question, would player A be able to play his cards from shadows during the Following Marshalling phase? And to an even greater extent, is anyone? Is the window to play cards from shadows already closed by the time the first player in the turn gets a chance to claim gold and start marshalling?

thanks for the clarification.

Winged_Human said:

Cards are brought out of Shadows at the beginning of each phase. In Marshaling, the phase begins, then the First Player counts his/her gold. So no one will ever count gold in the Marshaling phase before Shadow cards can come out of Shadows - including the First Player. If any player wants to bring a card out of Shadows in the Marshaling phase, it's either going to have to be an "s0" card, or you're going to need to figure out how to carry gold over from the previous round.

I'm not sure what you mean by "would player A be able to play his card from shadows during the Following Marshaling phase". Putting aside that cards are not "played from Shadows" (they are put into play), the "following Marshaling Phase" is in the next round, so nothing is going to change, except maybe who the First Player is, but that has nothing to do with whether players will have gold at the beginning of the Marshaling phase.

Typically, players will not have gold at the beginning of the Plot, Draw or Marshaling phases - usually limiting their choices of cards to bring out of Shadows to "s0" cards in those phases. Assuming they don't spend all the gold they count in Marshaling, they could have gold at the beginning of the Challenge, Dominance, Standing and Taxation phases. Bring your "s1" and above cards out of Shadows at the beginning of these phases.

Unclearly stated, I meant would player A be able to play any cards from shadows during the marshalling phase of turn two. But, your answered my question fully and I greatly appreciate it.

also, I take it to mean that players may use any remaining gold in their gold pool at the beginning of the taxation phase before players return any remaining gold to the treasury?

thanks for the quick response.

yes, that is correct.

Does bringing a card out of shadows happen before or after you count dominance?

If I'm understanding the rules of the phases correctly, Once the phase starts players are allowed to bring 1 card out of shadows before the actions of that phase occurs.

Before you count dominance, so pulling our a character can be a good way to clinch it.

I discovered this timing on Tuesday while playing, which makes the plot The King's Law much more useful ("At the end of the marshalling phase, discard all cards in Shadows.") than I had initially thought.