The phases have been run up differently. Here they are:
1. Karma: essentially the Mythos Phase, you draw a Karma card, you resolve it. You place a Problem (gate) on the board with an Enemy (monster) or two depending upon the game size, you move Enemies and place a Tension Token (rift progress marker), and you resolve the text. Environments replace other environments, and I seriously think that they should violate the normal resolution order and take effect before the Problem comes down. If a Problem comes down where there is already a Problem, you get a Vendetta (monster surge), and if a Problem comes down where there's an Exposé (seal) it bounces off with no effect unless it is a Coverup (gate burst), which are very rare. Every time a Problem actually shows up, you get a Doom Token, and the most common way for that to hapen is with the Karma card having a Problem on it.
2. Upkeep: All characters refresh all their cards. Then the First Player changes. From this point on, characters may trade items. Then all characters take turns moving sliders and taking any special upkeep actions they have.
3. Movement: Each character takes turns taking their movement phase. During movement you get a number of movement points equal to your Speed. You can take Movement Phase actions before, during, or after moving. Whenever you move out of a location you encounter any Enemies there. If you sneak past them (or an Elusive Enemy sneaks past you), you get to the next space. If you fight tem, you lose the rest of your movement points for the turn and can't get any more.
4. Encounters: Characters take turns resolving their Encounters. They may take Encounters phase actions whenever they want. Enemies that have not already been Evaded or Escaped from are encountered before drawing or resolving Encounter cards. If an Enemy appears during an Encounter, you encounter that Enemy before continuing with the card. When you encounter an Enemy because of a crd, that Enemy is not placed on the board (and thus does not count against Enemy limits) until the end of the Encounter. If you are at a location other than the streets, you draw the appropriate location encounter card. If there is aproblem token there you draw a Problem Encounter (gate encounter) instead.
And that's the phases. Here are the big differences in resolution:
Terror Track: The Terror Track closes a lot more things. Something closes every other Terror level. Also, the Terror Track is added to the city's Enemy limit rather than limit = infinity at Terror Level 10. And you add half the Terror Track to the number of Enemies you place down when a Vendetta happens. So Terror Management is something that matters a lot more.
Allies: There is no boarding house. All forty Allies begin the game available but generally only appear by name in encounters.
Encountering Enemies: If you attempt to Evade an enemy and fail, you begin combat normally. This encourages people to evade more, and makes Sneak more useful (since even a die of Evade is "better than nothing"). If you are surprised by an Enemy, you skip the entire Evade step and go straight to combat. Enemies perform the Combat check first, and the Investigation (horror check) at the end. If after a round of Combat you want to leave, you can make an Escape test, which is like an Evade test, except that you can use Sneak or Speed. If you Escape successfully you skip the Investigation. Investigations only happen if you defeat the enemy or get knocked unconscious. Weapons are "melee" or "ranged" and resistances apply. The Elusive ability means that you have to mak an Evade check to fight them. The Ambush ability means that if you fail the Evade check they inflict their Combat Damage before the first round of combat, and if you succeed at the Evade check you may choose to fight them or not. Nightmarish is called "Tagged." The Investigation is a Discretion check (secondary to Caution).
Board Encunters: Special encounters on the board are in addition to drawing an encounter card rather than instead of drawng an encounter card.
Problem Encounters: Problem tokens do not have difficulties, nor are there any outworld locations that you get transported to. Instead, each color of Problem encounters has a total of 5 Problem types associated with it (for example: Yellow has Corporate Secuity, Gang War, Yakuza, Triad, and Astral Rift I think). There are 25 of each color of card, so when you draw an appropriately colored card there are 10/25 cards that have a specific encounter and 15/25 that come up other (well, 20/50 for everything but CorpSec and Gang War that are 40/100, but you get the idea). All of the specific Problem Encounters have a "Problem Solving" test at the end. All of the "Other" encounters don't. If you get a Problem Solving chance, you can make the specific test it offers to solve the problem. If you succeed, you take the problem as a trophy and you can spend 5 clues to Expose it.
Mages and Hackers: The Astral Rift is closed to characters who are not Mages. System Failure is closed to characters that are not Hackers. There is a Spellcasting test that is usable only by Mages, it is Secondary Will check. There are magical spells in the Talisman deck that work like Spells in Arkham save that they have Drain that is a Stamina cost instead of a Sanity Cost. There are Hacking Programs in the Contraband deck, which use the Hacking test that is secondary to Logic and only available to Hackers. They have a Signature that costs ID.
-Frank
