The Play Area[]
Score: John - 0 Mary - 0
Click on a card to view more information about it!
Both players have just finished setting up their play areas; their Mane Characters are located at their respective Homes, they’ve both selected a Starting Problem from their Problem Decks (It’s Alive! for John, Cloudbursting for Mary) and they’ve both drawn six cards. John’s cards are on the bottom, while Mary’s cards are on the top.
Let’s take some time to examine the cards that are already in the play area before the first turn begins.
Mane Character Cards[]
There are three important pieces of information on this card that you should always be aware of:
- The power value, located in the top right corner, consists of a number value (how much power) and a color (what type of power it is). As you can see, Twilight Sparkle has a total of one Purple power.
- The Home Limit, located in the game text area of the card. This value determines how many Friends you can have at your Home at one time; if you have more Friends than the limit allows, you’ll have to retire some of them (send to the discard pile) at the end of your turn. Twilight Sparkle is a Mane Character and not a Friend, so she doesn’t count against the Home Limit.
- Additional game text underneath the Home Limit tells you what you need to do in order to flip Twilight over to its more powerful Boosted side; in this case, winning a faceoff with Twilight Sparkle involved.
Problem Cards[]
In order to win the game, players need to play or move characters (Mane Characters and Friends) to Problems such as It's Alive! in order to confront them, scoring points as they do so. This card also has three important pieces of information:
- Your play requirements are located on the bottom of the card. You need to have characters here that generate enough power of enough different colors in order to start confronting the problem. It’s Alive! requires John to have at least 1 Purple power, and then at least 1 Power of a color other than Purple.
- Your opponent’s play requirements are similar, except instead of powers of specific colors they only need to amass a total power that can be of any color(s). In order to start confronting this problem, Mary would need at least 4 total power.
- The bonus points are a reward for the player who is able to confront this Problem for the very first time.
This is the Problem belonging to Mary, Cloudbursting. For Mary to confront it, she’d need to have at least 1 Blue power, and then at least 1 Power of a color other than Blue. For John to confront it, he would need at least 4 total power.
Starting The Turn[]
A player’s turn is divided into the following four phases:
- The Ready Phase, where that player draws a single card, readies all of their exhausted cards, and gains action tokens based on the highest person’s score.
- The Troublemaker Phase, where the player can challenge their opponent’s Troublemaker cards to faceoffs or reveal their own.
- The Main Phase, where the player can play new cards from their hand and use the abilities of cards already in their play area.
- The Score Phase, where the player can score points for confronting Problems and winning faceoffs against their opponent’s characters that are also confronting Problems.
Ready Phase[]
Normally John would be able to draw a card here, but because it’s the very first turn of the game he doesn't. He also doesn’t have any exhausted cards in his play area to ready. The only thing John can do is gain action tokens, as determined by the player with the highest score. Since the game just started both players have 0 score, looking at the score slider card shows that John gains 2 action tokens.
Troublemaker Phase[]
Neither player has any Troublemakers in play, so nothing happens in this phase.
Main Phase[]
During a player’s Main Phase, there are a number of things they can do (as indicated by their Turn Card):
- For 1 action token, they can draw a card from their Draw Deck.
- For 1 action token, they can play a Troublemaker from their hand face-down to either Problem in the play area.
- For 2 action tokens, they can move one of their characters in their play area:
- From their Home to a Problem.
- From a Problem to their Home.
- Between Problems.
- For 2 action tokens, they can ready one of their frightened cards.
- If they meet the action token cost and play requirements, they can play Friends, Resources or Events from their hand. Friends can be played to their owner's home or to either Problem, Event cards are dismissed after they've been played and take effect, and Resources can be played to wherever their game text says to play them to.
- They can also use the abilities of cards already in their play area.
Choosing not to play any cards this first turn, John chooses to use 2 action tokens to move his Mane Character from his Home to the It’s Alive! Problem. With 1 Purple power now at that location, John is halfway towards confronting the Problem!
Score Phase[]
Sadly, points aren't awarded for halfway efforts, meaning John still only has a score of 0.
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