Duration
Duration is a card type that was introduced in Seaside and revisited in later sets, starting with Adventures. Duration cards have orange frames, and usually have an effect on the turn after they are played. A Duration is not discarded from play until the Cleanup phase of the last turn on which it does something - usually the turn after the turn on which it is played.
The majority of Duration cards are Action cards, but a few belong to the Night type introduced in Nocturne.
Contents |
List of Duration cards
- Guardian, Haven, Lighthouse
- Amulet, Caravan Guard, Cargo Ship, Church, Dungeon, Enchantress, Fishing Village, Gear, Ghost Town, Secret Cave
- Caravan, Research, Village Green
- Ghost
- Archive, Barge, Bridge Troll, Cobbler, Crypt, Den of Sin, Gatekeeper, Haunted Woods, Mastermind, Merchant Ship, Outpost, Swamp Hag, Tactician, Wharf
- Captain, Hireling, Raider
- Champion
Official Rules
- Duration cards are orange, and have abilities that affect future turns.
- Duration cards are not discarded in Clean-up if they have something left to do; they stay in play until the Clean-up of the last turn that they do something.
- Additionally, if a Duration card is played extra times by a card such as Scepter, that card also stays in play until the Duration card is discarded, to track the fact that the Duration card was played extra times.
- Keep track of whether or not a Duration card was played on the current turn, such as by putting your cards into two lines.
Other rules clarifications
A Duration card played in such a way as to have no effect next turn will be discarded from play the turn it was played. This may happen because the next-turn effects are optional and you chose not to activate them (e,g., Barge), or because they are conditional and depend on a condition that is not met (e.g., a Tactician played with no other cards in hand to discard, or an Archive played with no cards in the deck to set aside). Champion and Hireling remain in play permanently. Archive usually stays in play for two turns after the one it was played (if it set aside 3 cards).Crypt stays in play until the turn on which Treasure cards set aside with it are used up. In all other cases, the Duration will stay in play until the Clean-up phase of your next turn. A card like Caravan that provides +Cards on your next turn stays in play even if you don't have enough cards in your deck to actually draw any on the next turn.
When you use a Throne Room variant on a Duration, the Throne variant stays in play as long as the Duration does even if the Duration is only going to have one effect on the next turn (e.g., if you throne a Tactician, which had no effect being played a second time, or if you throne a Barge and opt for one same-turn effect and one next-turn effect).
When you use an emulator to play a Duration card, the Duration doesn't go into play, but the emulator stays in play as long as the Duration card would. If the same emulator plays multiple Duration cards that would stay in play for different amounts of time, the emulator stays in play until the last of those Duration cards would leave play. If you use a Throne Room variant to play an emulator twice, and it plays a Duration card, the emulator stays in play, but the Throne does not.
Effects that resolve at the start of your turn can be resolved in any order; this includes multiple plays of the same Duration card by a Throne Room variant. For example, if you played a Wharf and then a Throne Room on an Amulet last turn, on this turn you could choose to first gain a Silver from the first Amulet play, then draw 2 cards from Wharf (perhaps triggering a reshuffle and maybe drawing that Silver), and then choose to trash a card from the second Amulet play, now that you have more cards to choose from.
There are a couple of cards that are not Durations but have effects on subsequent turns: Possession and Prince. Despite their functional similarity, these are not Duration cards and the Duration rules do not apply to them: for example, unlike Outpost, Possession is discarded before the extra turn it creates; and Prince is set aside to perform its future-turn functions, rather than remaining in the play area as Duration cards do.
It is occasionally possible to remove Duration cards from play prematurely. The most obvious example is with Bonfire, but it is also possible by using Capitalism to turn Durations into Treasures and applying cards that remove Treasures from play (such as Counterfeit). In these cases, the Duration card's effects will still carry over to future turns (which you will have to remember), and if any Throne Room variant was supposed to stay in play with the the now-removed Duration card, that Throne Room variant will now be discarded from play during Clean-up.
Prior Rules
In the past the rules around tracking cards that play Durations extra times were different.
- Originally, cards that played cards that played Durations extra times were left in play as well (e.g. Throne Room plays Throne Room that plays a Duration). This was changed via a ruling to only be the card that directly played the Duration extra times was left out.
- Also, originally the cards playing Durations extra times stayed in play only until they stopped doing something. This was changed with the release of Empires to have them always stay in play until the Duration left play instead. This affects situations where either the Duration leaves play earlier (e.g. Procession) or the extra play(s) of the card didn't trigger the Duration effect (e.g. when playing Tactician with a Throne Room under normal circumstances).
Strategy
On the turn on which they are played, Duration cards typically have weak effects (relative to their cost), or even detrimental effects; their strength comes in part from the fact that their effects on the next turn do not consume an Action to play or a card slot in your hand. For example, Caravan, on the turn it is played, is a cantrip with no effect; on the next turn, however, it gives you a sixth card in your hand for free—thus playing a Caravan on one turn has the same effect as playing a Laboratory on the next turn.
Although Duration cards' next-turn effects are typically quite strong, they cost less than and are usually considered weaker than cards that have those same effects immediately—for instance, Caravan costs while Laboratory costs . This is in part because it's better to receive benefits earlier—playing a Caravan on the last turn of the game gives no benefit while Laboratory does—and in part because the fact that Durations stay in play for two turns is a disadvantage, since it means that they can actually be played less frequently. For instance, it's possible to draw an extra card every turn by having a single Laboratory and playing it every turn; in order to play a Caravan every turn, you have to have two copies of the card.
Reserve cards can play rather similarly to Durations; most have a weak effect now for a stronger effect later. The difference is that Reserves don't have to be triggered on your next turn; you can wait a few turns to use them, or even use some of them the same turn you play them.
Trivia
In other languages
- Czech: Dlouhodobá
- Dutch: Duurzaam (lit. sustainable)
- Finnish: Toistuva (lit. recurring)
- French: Durée
- German: Dauer
- Polish: Następstwo (lit. succession)
- Russian: Длительность (pron. dlityelnost)
Donald X.'s remarks
Development
Throne Rooms staying in play
In retrospect it would have been better if duration cards not in play didn't do anything (and, if cards you couldn't put into play also didn't do anything). That clears up Procession.
Outpost has an anti-Throne clause. Ideally it would have some form that didn't need that.
Tactician has an extra cost on getting your bonus next turn; that premise requires dealing with the tracking rule, unless the extra cost is something you can always pay (e.g. taking Debt).Ways and removing Durations from play
Lack of Treasure-Durations