I know that, at the end of your turn, you discard all the remaining cards in your hand (unless you spend influence to keep them) and draw cards from your deck until you have 5 cards in your hand.

However, after being attacked by a instant event card or another player, the game doesn't mention anything about discarding the remaining card from your hand, it only mention that you draw cards from your deck until you have 5 cards in your hand. This seems rather brutal, because if I'm the fourth player and I draw five gold cards in my hand, nothing prevent an instant event card AND all the other players to annihilate me while I can do nothing to defend myself.

I'm I reading this right? If so, what do you think about this specific rule?

after reading your statement, no one should know your hand and since you are the fourth player, the event should not reach you until your turn unlesstold otherwise. after being taken down a couple of pegs, your next hand will be units. spend your 5 gold on something valuable that will alllow you to obtain a high value card.

Maarek said:

Ah, I think you and I play Instant Event cards differently. The rules read like this:

"If the card is an Instant, resolve its text immediately. Event card that affect "each player" are resolved in play order, starting with the first player."

"When an Instant is drawn from the Event deck, immediately resolve the card's effect. Some Instants provide an ongoing effec during the next game round. (...) Some Instant target multiple players. To resolve an Instant that targets multiple players, start with the first player and proceed in standard clockwise order."

So, unless if I'm wrong, if an instant event card attack me at the beginning of a new GAME TURN (which is way before my PLAYER TURN, because I'm the fourth player) while I cannot play any card to defend myself against it, players 1, 2 and 3 will know that I'm defenseless because I won't be able to discard my hand and draw new cards until the end of my PLAYER TURN. This very thing just happened in my last 4 players game and this is how I was eliminated from the game. Dragonlord Khorgard attacked me at the beginning of the GAME TURN and all the other players, seeing that I couldn't defend myself against Dragonlord Khorgard AND that I was stuck with the same five cards in my and, all attacked me during their respective turn. I went from 20 hit points to 0 in a single turn, and I couldn't do anything about it, all because of a single bad hand.

crappy hands happen sometimes. It is unfortunate but also the nature of a game that relies at least in part on luck.

Toqtamish said:

But am I playing the Instant Event card in the proper order? Resolving the Instant Event card in the beginning of the game turn (like I do) is not the same as resolving the Instant Event card at the beginning of every players' turns (like Maarek seems to play).

When I play - we've always resolved the instant at the beginning of every player turn. So - instant card, then refill hand - then spend gold, influence, etc. etc. then another player - instant card, refill hand etc.

Obviously when you only have gold, then you cannot fight the instant card, so you cannot fight it - so you'll take damage or other "when you loose" actions. But then you have your normal turn - and you can spend that 5 gold on anything.

I'm a beginner though, I guess someone would need to confirm that.

Vexatus said:

Can you quote where, in the rules, it is mentionned that you resolve the Instant at the beginning of every player turn?

I have not been able to locate such a rule mentioned in the rule book myself, but it does seem a clever variant for which to handle just the type of situation you've been having trouble with as you previously mentioned.

OK, I'm seeing a lot of confusion here so rather than try to figure out who's doing what right and wrong, I'm going to spell out how the events work and you can see how it applies to you.

After every player has had a turn...

First player draws and resolves an Event card. If it's an instant, you go around the table affecting each player right NOW.

All players draw back to 5 JUST LIKE THEY DO AT THE END OF ANY OTHER PLAYER'S TURN WHEN IT'S NOT THEIR TURN.

First player takes his turn.

Etc

Etc

The OP was worried about being fourth player after an event and getting ravaged by the other players. I don't see where the problem lies here. More specifically, I don't see why there's a "special" problem with being the fourth player. I'm going to need some more explanation to understand where you see a problem here.

OK Trump, I'll try to explain to you what worries me in the Rules As Written (RAW), but keep in mind that english is a second langage to me.

Trump said:

The thing is that the rules state that, after resolving an Instant Event card or a Siege conducted by a player, all player draw back to 5 cards. It doesn't mention anything about discarding the remaining cards in your hand (Step 3 of Player Turns) when you are not the "active player" (the player who plays during his own Player Turn). So it seems that Step 3 doesn't apply to you unless it's specifically your turn. Only Step 4 (draw up to five cards) applies to every player at the end of an Instant Event card or a Siege. Step 3 seems to be exclusive to the "active player".

Drawing Cards
"At the end of each player's turn and the Event phase, all players replenish their hand to five cards. Through card abilities, a player may draw additional cards. There is no maximum hand size." (Rules of Play, p.14)

See? Nothing is mentioned about discarding the remaining cards in your hand.

Now, why does it worry me? Let's pretend that you are Player 4 and that Player 1, during is own turn, chooses to attack you just for the fun of it. So be it, but you, Player 4, have only 4 Gold cards and 1 Forced March Tactic card in your hand. Since it's not your turn (it's Player 1's turn), you cannot play any of those card (because they cannot be played during a Siege). After taking damage tokens or loosing a Neutral City because of the Siege, according to RAW, you do not discard any of your remaining cards (which means all your cards in this specific situation), only Player 1 does (at the end or his turn, during Step 3). So, since you still have 5 cards in your hand at the end of the Siege (because you couldn't play any of them during the Siege), you cannot draw new cards either. It means that you're stuck with the same hand, and now it's Player 2's turn, and Player 2 knows that you couldn't defend yourself from the Siege conducted by Player 1. Knowing that your are probably defenseless, he choose to attack you (you know, just for the fun of it). Rince and repeat until it's your turn, if you're still alive at the beginning of your turn, of course.

Note that the exact same thing could happen to Player 1 after is own turn. Player 4 is not really at a disadvantage here. I just picked Player 4 as an example, because it was more easy to visualize. An Instant Event card, however, could be more harmful to Player 4 if it reveals that this player cannot defend himself against the Attack conducted by the Instant Event card.

This is my interpretation of the RAW, and it seems a little unfair. I don't know if this is really the rules as intended (RAI), so that's why I would like to know your thoughts about it. I hope I succeeded to make myself clear.

After doing a quick browsing of the rules I can not find any mention of a defending player being allowed to discard before replenishing his/her hand back up to 5 cards. If this quick browsing make me draw a correct conclusion, then I believe that the OP simply had REALLY bad luck by being at the recieving end of 3 attacks. 4 if counting the Instant Event Card

That's another thing that's odd: Some people seem to play Instant Event Card effects at the beginning of each player's turn. To me, as an old Magic the Gathering player, sounds like the effect of my Instant card (let's take a Lightning Bolt targeting my opponents 8/3 creature with protection against creatures as an example.) would somehow be delayed until my opponents turn. That would mean that he/she could use his 8/3 creature to block my 26/9 creature AFTER the 8/3 creature has been killed by said lightning bolt because it won't REALLY happen until HIS turn... Just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

I believe that Instant Event Cards should be played like this: Player A draws an Instant Event Card. Normal play then PAUSES as the IEC effect is applied to first player A, then player B, then Player C and then Player D. AFTER this, Player A resumes his/her turn as per normal.

This is my personal oppinion because I think that instants should be instants (and thus happen instantaneously) and not a delayed effect.

To summarize: I understand the OPs concern and share it fully. He/she should submit a rules question to FFG to get an official ruling. Also, a FAQ for this game would probably be useful...

Maerimydra said:

OK, I follow you. You acknowledge that it's not a last player problem, and I agree. As for the rest... you're right, that's how it works. Is it a bad thing? I don't know. The rules don't allow for all players to discard, but that's probably not a bad idea. Maybe someone else can see where this would cause a problem to allow it?

Trump said:

Well, it can become a last player problem when some Instant Event cards come into play because of the afore mentioned reasons. Allowing all players to discard, however, would come with its own problems. For example, in the PvE scenario (The Cataclysm), a player with a bad hand could ask his fellow players to attack him (by conducting a Siege against his Neutral Cities) so that he could discard his cards and draw new ones. It seems that there's no perfect solution for this "problem". When you have a bad hand, your only defense is bluff. Tell the others players that you didn't defend yourself against the Siege or the Instant Event card because you wanted to keep all the cards in your hand to make a super combo during your turn. Of course, that could incite some players to attack you even more.

Let me preface this by saying I've only read the rules, and will be playing the game for the first time this weekend:

Being forced to discard your hand at the end of every player's turn would get tired very quickly. Even if it's only after being attacked, it'd still be a pain, because you could FINALLY have the hand you need to buy card X, then a player attacks you with a little 1 value weiner, and you're forced to draw a whole new hand, which means that your turn which follows leaves you with little or no buying power.

From my impression of the rules, however, it would seem that the first player does have an advantage because of the event cards. They get first crack at any monsters with rewards attached to them, and they get a whole new hand after being attacked by an instant event and before the next players turn, which is the polar opposite of the OPs situation, where being defenceless against the instant event, immediatly becomes the hitting boy of the other three players for the round.

My best advice from having played other deck building games is balance! If you focus too much on one type of card, you'll suddenly find that there are whole categories of actions which are completely inaccessable to you. Having not played this particular game, though, I am completely talking out of my smurf here.

Hopefully this clarifies things from the rules:

Page 7 about the Player Turn

3. Discard Hand: During this step, the player discards all
remaining cards in his hand. However, he may retain
cards by spending one influence per card that he wants
to keep. By doing so he can save cards for future rounds.
4. Draw up to Five Cards: During this step, each player
draws cards from the top of his deck until he has five cards
in his hand.

At the end of each player's turn, he/she should have 5 cards.

Page 9 about Event Cards and the Event Phase

After the Event card is resolved, all players draw back up to five
cards in hand and the game round continues as normal.

At the start of the next round, All players should be back to 5 cards. The real difference is that you don't get to discard during the Event Phase. You're stuck with the cards that you didn't use to resolve the Event.

Osaka said:

We're not talking about being FORCED to draw a new hand. We're just saying that it'd be nice to have the option to discard at the end of the turn before drawing.

Osaka said:

Yeah, you'd think that at first, but other event cards reward the LAST player.

So about the discarding, what do you guys think about this. When it's NOT your turn and you're about to draw cards to refill your hand, you can spend Influence to DISCARD instead of SAVING cards in your hand.

Trump said:

This is a house rule I could roll with, but this option should not be avaible in the Cataclysm scenario.

Trump said:

Honestly, this would be a MASSIVE advantage to the player being attacked. He could just recycle his hand if he wanted to... I'd beg for players to attack me if this was the case.

I don't really think there is a problem with the rules as written, and here's why... whenever a player is attacked, presumably he will defend himself by playing military cards, and then draw enough cards to replace them. Obviously, there is a very real chance that those cards are replaced by a mix of militar/non-miitar cards, in effect making it more likely that the overall militar power on his hand is brought down. (this may not happen, of course, but generally it should be the case). So, when you attack a player, you can safely assume you are probably making his hand weaker (in a military sense).

A very direct consequence of this is that, as a rule of thumb, if you attack a player other than the player immediately after you in play order you are in effect softening him up *for the benefit of the players that will get to play before him*. In other words, all else being equal, the games promotes attacking the NEXT player in play order as the sensible/best default strategy. This naturally dissuades indiscriminate piling up of attacks on the same player, and balances the game.

The OP describes a case where not only a terrible hand is drawn (an unlikely event unless you are screwing up badly your deckbuilding) AND the next player chose a play that is, in most cases, suboptimal for him... So no, I don't think that is a problematic situation at all...

I am checking this game out because I am thinking about buying it. I saw this thread and wanted to comment based on reading the rules.

It seems it would alleviate the problem if the player under siege could discard one card when they pass. Thus, if their hand is really trash they would at least be able to dump their worst card when attacked. If they are sieged over and over again, then they can just cycle out that bad hand. This would not be required, just an option for the player under siege.

msteelman said:

As an owner of Rune Age, I believe it could use a strong expansion to flesh itself out. As it stands, Rune Age has some catching up to do if FFG wants to compete with Dominion and Thunderstone fame (which I support FFG doing). Standalone, I felt the game becomes predictable, slightly unbalanced, and for now just sits on my shelf because there's not enough to return to. The Dice Tower does a good review. Unfortunately, I do not foresee how FFG could do a PoD expansion because of card texture difference, so any expansion must be box. It's up to you if this sounds worth it; I would definitely recommend buying a copy of Rune Age if FFG announces an upcoming expansion.

Other recommendations I have are Wiz-War and Space Hulk: Death Angel. Wiz-War has a slight build-a-deck mechanic in drafting school decks and hints greatly in support of future expansions, which means more build-a-spellbook. Overall, it is an outstanding achievement of a game. Death Angel also is a very fun and inexpensive purchase, and the PoDs are guaranteed, as there have been 4 so far and the quality of each PoD release continues to improve.

My two-cents on your future consumerism. If you really, really want a build-a-deck game with fantasy theme, take a look at Thunderstone Advance (essentially Thunderstone 2.0) coming out next month which also has my eye (I might for once buy a non-FFG board/card game). Ascension also would be a good recommendation. Rune Age, imo, has room for improvement but has stood itself up as having great potential if FFG invests in it.

Then again, I just spied that if you look in the right place, you can buy Rune Age for a little over 20 bucks, which, you know, why not?