War of the Ring: The Card Game

Battlegrounds and paths are normally activated in the Location step by the starting player (place the card face up and resolve its activation text); battlegrounds can be activated or reactivated from a scoring area and have their activation text resolved again, while only one path can be active at a time and a specific path card cannot be activated more than once in the game (paths replaced by card text still resolve the replaced path’s combat immediately). (pp.8–9)

You may pass and later take an action on a subsequent turn provided the Action step hasn’t ended; you are only allowed to pass when your hand size is less than or equal to your carryover limit or less than each enemy player, and every player’s starting carryover limit is 2 (the carryover limit is the maximum hand you may have at the end of the Action step). (p.10)

Every time you play a card you must immediately cycle a different card from your hand; if you wish to play the last card in your hand you must forsake a card instead because you have no other card to cycle. (p.10)

Items are played onto a specified wielder and the wielder must generally already be in play, but an item’s own game text can create exceptions; when a wielder moves from reserve to a path or battleground, any items with that wielder move with it, and items are cycled or eliminated along with their wielder. (pp.11,15)

Path combat counts attacking (skull) icons, cancels skulls first with defense icons on the path itself, then the Free Peoples must eliminate cards from the path to cancel any remaining skulls until none remain or they run out of cards; any leftover Free Peoples cards are cycled and all Shadow attackers are eliminated at the end of the path combat. (pp.14–15)

Leadership icons count only if the character has an army of the same faction on that battleground (an army can support only one character), and when a battleground is reactivated from an opponent’s scoring area the battleground’s shield icons are ignored during combat resolution even though the attackers/defenders and activation text still apply. (p.16)