Duration

Wharf, a Duration card.

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, and Duration Treasures began to be introduced with Contract from Allies.

List of Duration cards

• Cage, Grotto, Guardian, Haven, Lighthouse, Search
• Amulet, Astrolabe, Caravan Guard, Cargo Ship, Church, Dungeon, Enchantress, Fishing Village, Gear, Ghost Town, Importer, Monkey, Secluded Shrine, Secret Cave, Siren, Stowaway, Taskmaster
• Abundance, Blockade, Cabin Boy, Caravan, Conjurer, Flagship, Garrison, Gondola, Landing Party, Research, Royal Galley, Sailor, Tide Pools, Village Green, Voyage, Rope
• Ghost
• Archive, Barge, Bridge Troll, Buried Treasure, Cobbler, Contract, Corsair, Crew, Crypt, Cutthroat, Den of Sin, Enlarge, Frigate, Gatekeeper, Haunted Woods, Highwayman, Longship, Mastermind, Merchant Ship, Outpost, Pirate, Quartermaster, Sea Witch, Swamp Hag, Tactician, Warlord, Wharf
• Captain, Hireling, Raider, Stronghold
• Champion
• Amphora, Endless Chalice, Figurehead, Jewels
• Prince
   

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 [on a future turn]; 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 [Throne Room, Scepter, Mastermind, Specialist or Flagship], 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

In most cases, a Duration will stay in play until the Clean-up phase of your next turn. But 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 that condition wasn't met (e.g., a Tactician that didn't discard any cards), or if you didn't follow the card's instructions at all (due to Enchantress or Ways). A card like Caravan that provides +Cards on your next turn stays in play even if you won't have enough cards in your deck to draw any next turn. A Duration played this turn that won't stay in play can be trashed with Improve.

Some Durations can stay out for longer than one turn. Durations that set cards aside and return them to you one at a time (e.g. Archive and Crypt) remain in play until they run out of cards. Durations that let you take extra turns (e.g. Outpost and Voyage) stay in play until the Clean-up of its extra turn; if you take multiple extra turns at once, those cards could stay out for more than one turn. Champion, Hireling, Prince, and Endless Chalice have effects that activate every turn, and therefore remain in play for the rest of the game.

Some Durations cards have an ability that is triggered by a certain condition being met, such as Abundance; these cards remain in play until Clean-up of the turn on which the condition is met, which may be the same turn on which they were played or a later turn. If the condition is never met, these cards will remain in play permanently as well.

When you use a Throne Room variant on a Duration, that Throne Room stays in play for as long as the Duration does. This is true even if the Duration is only going to have one effect on the next turn (e.g., if you play a Tactician twice with Throne Room, or if you play a Barge twice with Throne Room and opt for one same-turn effect and one next-turn effect). If the Duration leaves play at an unusual time (e.g. Highwayman and Conjurer) the Throne Room still stays in play until Clean-up; and if you replay that Duration later on, the Throne Room still leaves play. A card that plays a Duration only once (e.g. Elder or Vassal) never stays in play for multiple turns.

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 both played a Wharf and played 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 with the second Amulet play.

Command variants stay in play for as long as the card they command would stay in play, if it were in play. So if you use a Command variant to play a Duration (e.g., Band of Misfits, an Estate after using Inheritance on a Duration card, or any Action card using Way of the Mouse to play a Duration), the Command variant stays in play as long as the Duration card would. And if a Command variant plays a Throne Room variant or another Command variant that plays a Duration, the Command variant stays in play for as long as the Duration does.

If the same Command variant plays multiple cards that would stay in play for different amounts of time, it stays in play until the last of those Duration cards would leave play. For example, if you use Throne Room on Overlord, and the Overlord plays a Swamp Hag and an Archive), the Overlord stays in play for 2 more turns (the Throne Room doesn't stay in play for any turns; see below). And if on the 2nd turn of a Captain, you make it play a Throne Room that plays a Duration, the Captain will stay in play for a 3rd turn in a row.

If you play a Throne Room that plays a non-Duration card that stays in play (such as another Throne Room that plays a Duration twice, or a Band of Misfits that plays a Duration), the first Throne Room does not stay out. On the other hand, if you Mastermind a Mastermind, it's possible to have a chain of Masterminds stuck in play for several turns if they keep playing Duration cards, because Mastermind is itself a Duration.

It is occasionally possible to remove Duration cards from play before they are done resolving all their abilities. Although most of these methods have received errata to no longer be possible, you can still remove a Duration by playing a Throne Room on a Duration, and then play the Duration once for its normal effect, and once as e.g. Way of the Horse. In most cases, the Duration card's effects will still carry over to future turns, which you will have to remember. If any Throne Room variant or Command variant was supposed to stay in play because of the now-removed Duration card, it will be discarded from play during Clean-up.

However, there are also ways to remove a Throne Room variant or Command variant from play, even if they were supposed to stay in play with a Duration (e.g. you play a Royal Galley that plays a Throne Room that plays a Duration, and set aside the Throne Room, or you play a Procession that plays a Band of Misfits that plays a Duration). In these cases, you'll have to remember how many Duration effects you'll get on your following turns.

It's also occasionally possible for a Duration card to remain in play during your Clean-up, but it stops having any effect before your next turn, meaning you'll discard it from play during another player's Clean-up. For example, if you play Voyage and Lich on the same turn, the Voyage turn will get skipped. (Skipping a turn with Lich happens between turns, and not during Clean-up, which is why Voyage still stays in play during your turn.) Since you don't get a Clean-up phase during the skipped turn, the Voyage will stay in play until the Clean-up of the next turn that happens (which could be another player's Clean-up).

Some non-Duration cards have effects for later (e.g. Possession and Lich). None of the rules above apply to these cards, and you'll have to remember their effects for future turns. For example, unlike Outpost, Possession is discarded before the extra turn it creates. And if you play it twice with Throne Room, the Throne Room doesn't stay in play.

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).

Sub-theme

Plunder (expansion) has a sub-theme for its Duration cards: next time. Cards that do something the next time a certain thing happens. They just sit around in play turn after turn, waiting for that thing. The thing may immediately happen, so that they're discarded that turn. Or it may never happen.

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. The main exception to this principle is Tide Pools, which has a powerful immediate effect at the cost of a penalty 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.

Card gallery

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

For Seaside I was still interacting with Valerie and Dale. Valerie in particular did not like Duration cards. So the push was to limit how many there were, not come up with more things for them to do. In fact Haven was out of the set for a while, and made it back in very late when it turned out there was room for a 26th card (and that was a fine card that had been tested; Valerie had felt it was too similar to Caravan).

There was an attack that hit other players' turns (Tax Collector, made cards cost more), that left (well turned into Cutpurse) because it would have left play at a different time from other Duration cards, (end of the prev. player's turn) and Valerie didn't like that. Late in the going I realized I could save Lighthouse by having it produce resources on your next turn, and of course that same solution could have been used for attacks; but Tax Collector had already turned into Cutpurse and again there was anti-demand for new Duration cards.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Groundless speculation about the 2015 expansion

Throne Rooms staying in play

It goes back to before the cards had "duration" on the bottom of them. Something has to track what you're getting next turn. The duration card stays out because it has "something left to do"; the idea is, the Throne also has something left to do.

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).

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Ways and removing Durations from play

[Way of the Butterfly, Way of the Horse, and Way of the Turtle] all existed in January for me. The best solution is still to make the change that means Throne/Feast no longer works and people quit the game. "If this isn't a Duration card" was too awful for the Ways. They could have had a general rule that durations didn't get to use Ways; maybe that's still worth considering for a later printing, but they didn't get it. There had to be new cards and those new cards got to exist.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Lack of Treasure-Durations

By default they're trouble. The duration part has to be conditional on the card being in play, to avoid more problems ala Bonfire / Durations. It's doable, in the same way that Crown exists despite it seeming like there would never be an Action - Treasure (to be fair Crown does generate lots of questions). But, it would take something really compelling.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Durations in later expansions

Every expansion from Adventures onwards has had at least two Duration cards.

Originally all sets from Seaside on were going to have Duration cards; Fishing Village for example was from Prosperity. This didn't happen because of how things went down for Valerie with Seaside; she didn't like Duration cards, and spent a couple pages on the rules for them. My rulebook only spends a short paragraph on Durations, and I like them, and they are very popular with players. They open up card possibilities significantly, especially for Attacks. So, I'm happy having a couple nice ones in an expansion like that, and always have been. And it's no trouble, it's easy to make them.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.