Extra turn

A few card-shaped things have abilities that grant a player an extra turn, in addition to the number of turns they would ordinarily be permitted by the game rules. Extra turns can be a very powerful effect—it's possible to accomplish a lot on a turn—and so the abilities that grant extra turns are usually limited in some way to prevent them being abused.

Extra turns do not count toward the tiebreaker rule that the player who has taken fewer turns wins a game with a tied score.

Lich has the opposite effect, making you lose a turn. If you play a Lich and earn an extra turn on the same turn, the two effects cancel out; you just skip the extra turn and have your next normal turn as usual.

In 2023, Donald X. introduced errata to prevent players from getting more than one extra turn at a time in most cases.

Therefore the maximum turns on a row for the same player is 5:

• extra turn from Possession
• extra turn from card-shaped thing (Outpost, Mission, Voyage, Island Folk or Journey)
• your normal turn
• Seize the Day
• Fleet

List of extra-turn effects

• Outpost: the extra turn starts with a reduced handsize
• Possession: the extra turn is played by another player, who can therefore construct their deck to make their extra turns less useful to you
• Mission: cards may not be bought on the extra turn
• Fleet: only one extra turn is available, and it is at the end of the game
• Seize the Day: may only be used once
• Voyage: you can only play three cards on the extra turn
• Island Folk: it costs 5 Favors to get the extra turn
• Journey: the extra turn starts without discarding the previous turn's cards from the play area

Gallery

Trivia

Errata

I put less value on the exotic cases, and more value on the three-turns-in-a-row problem. It would be great to have everything perfect in all respects; this is what I have currently. Playing Throne on Outpost is super crazy exotic when the card makes it clear that it won't work. You won't do it! Asking what happens exactly then is just an intellectual exercise, or something important for programmers of the digital versions; it's not something that really happens in games. Whereas when you can take 3 turns in a row, you do it.

It came up; otherwise I wouldn't have been thinking about it. I had multiple games where players could take three turns in a row. It sucked hard. I thought, damn Donald X., fix that. I fixed it. It wasn't just Voyage; a variety of extra turn cards came up and we had the awful experience. Then Allies was being reprinted and hey, good time to fix this.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Errata to extra turns

General Rule

It was proposed that instead of changing cards to ban multiple extra turns, the rules could be changed so that you couldn't take more than 2 turns in a row.

Having it just be a rule, no 3rd turns, was proposed, and considered, and wasn't good enough. If it were a new game, with an Outpost in the main set, then it could be in the rules, even though every such rule is super bad, as players never learn them since they don't come up often enough. In Dominion especially, people expect the cards to tell them the rules. Anyway it's not the main set for a new game; it's these cards, and the way for people to know the rule is to put it on the cards. Then you can say, the cards could have treated it like a rule that they were reminding you of: "(Players can't take 3 turns in a row.)" And I mean that was considered too. I don't want a main set rulebook rule like "you can't take three turns in a row" with no way to take extra turns; that's how it is.

"Cards can't cost less than " is much different, because it's what everyone expects will be the rule if they don't know the rule, and when they don't know the rule it's very clear to them that they don't know it. As soon as they ask, "hey does it go to negative ," they know they don't know and can look it up. They never think "oh it probably goes to negative, la la la, let's not check." They think "of course it won't go negative" or "I don't know." Whereas! You can't tell that you don't know "you can't take 3 turns in a row"; there's no hint for you that a rule is missing. By default you sure think you can.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Errata to extra turns