Procession

Procession
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Dark Ages
Illustrator(s)	Alex Drummond
Card text
You may play a non-Duration Action card from your hand twice. Trash it. Gain an Action card costing exactly more than it.

Procession is an Action card from Dark Ages. It acts a bit like a combination of Throne Room and Upgrade, allowing you to play another Action twice and then trash it to gain a more expensive Action. This effect can be very powerful, improving your deck while granting you one last double-shot of the Actions you trash to do so, but it's also quite double-edged since you very often don't want to use it on (and thus trash) your strongest Actions, the most obvious targets for Throne Room variants.

FAQ

Official FAQ (2020)

• Playing a non-Duration Action card from your hand is optional (Duration cards are in other expansions).
• If you do play one, you then play it a second time, then trash it, then gain an Action card costing exactly more than it (even if somehow you failed to trash it).
• The gained card can be a Duration card.
• Gaining a card is not optional once you choose to play an Action card, but will fail to happen if no card in the Supply costs the exact amount needed.
• If something happens due to trashing the card - for example drawing three cards due to trashing a Cultist - that will resolve before you gain a card.
• This does not use up any extra Actions you were allowed to play due to cards like Fortress - Procession itself uses up one Action and that is it.
• You cannot play any other cards in between resolving the Procession-ed Action card multiple times, unless that Action card specifically tells you to (such as Procession itself does).
• If you Procession a Procession, you will play one Action twice, trash it, gain an Action card costing more, then play another Action twice, trash it, gain an Action card costing more, then trash the Procession and gain an Action costing more than it.
• If you Procession a card that gives you +1 Action, such as Vagrant, you will end up with two Actions to use afterwards, rather than the one you would have left if you just played two Vagrants.

Other rules clarifications

• If you play Procession on a one-shot card, the stop-moving rule applies and the one-shot will end up where it instructs you to put it. For example, if you use Procession on Horse, the Horse is played, returning itself to its pile, then is played a second time, and then Procession tries and fails to trash it because it has already been moved. The Horse does not end up in the trash, but you still gain a Action since Procession's gaining is not conditional on the Horse being trashed. Similarly, if you play Procession on an Island, the Island is set aside on its mat and is not trashed by Procession, and you gain a Action anyway.
• Similarly, Reserve cards such as Guide also are not trashed by Procession, since they move themselves to the Tavern mat when played; and you gain a more expensive Action anyway.

Deprecated rules clarifications (2014 2017 2019)

If you use Procession on a Duration card†, Procession will be discarded in the same turn's Clean-up, since the Duration card will no longer be in play. † With the 2020 version, you can no longer play Duration cards with Procession to avoid issues with tracking the Duration effect.

Strategy

Procession is a Throne Room variant that also offers trash for benefit, and is extremely powerful in somewhat specific circumstances. Procession’s paradox is that you usually want to Throne your best Action cards, but you also don’t want to remove those cards from your deck. Procession is most impactful when the Kingdom offers the following:

1. powerful cards for Procession to Throne.
2. a way to gain those powerful cards in bulk.
3. another desirable Action card that costs more than the card(s) to be Throned.

Kingdoms with cards that give Horses often fulfill all three of these conditions, and are the most common use case for Procession. Procession playing a Horse increases your hand size by 2, gives an extra +Action, and can gain another Procession. Experiment also synergizes well with Procession for the same reasons.

Whether you're using Horses or other suitable Action cards, Procession’s combination of Action card gaining and Throning makes for a potent combination that often leads to gain and play. A common play is to chain your Processions, for example playing Procession on Procession on 2 Merchants, gaining you a and two cards, in addition to Throning 2 cards and drawing a significant portion of your deck. If you can chain enough Processions, you can often gain and play many cards at once, allowing you to explosively improve your deck in a very short amount of time. This often leads to rapid pileouts. Less commonly, Procession can enable loops, or repeating sequences of Action card plays that gain more components of the cards used in the loop. One example of such is Procession on Procession on a Groom and Horse, gaining a non-stop card costing .

If one or more of the above conditions are not met, Procession can be tricky or outright unusable. As a Throne Room variant, Procession’s ceiling is limited by how good the cards it can Throne are, so if there are no good candidates, Procession is likely not useful. Kingdoms with cheap cantrips are often good for Procession, while Kingdoms with centralizing Durations are not. Additionally, if there aren’t Action cards in the Supply at the right pricepoints, Procession trashes your Action cards for no benefit, hampering your deck in the long run. A similar problem exists if you cannot restock the cards that Procession trashes. Under these conditions, Procession can still be useful if the game is not lasting long enough for these drawbacks to manifest, or if Throning a card is tactically valuable either for a doubling of that card’s effect or for terminal space considerations.

Procession is best added to your deck when you can expect to collide it with and play it on a suitable Action card. Usually this is in the midgame, where you have slightly more deck control and a higher density of Action cards than the opening.

Notable synergies

• Border Village
• One-shots were going to be lost anyway when you played them, so the disadvantage of Procession's trashing is obviated.
  • Horse gainers, especially Cavalry, provide an especially strong synergy with Procession.
• Actions that give a benefit when trashed, notably Fortress and Catacombs
• Reserve cards and Way of the Turtle allow you to avoid trashing your Throned Action to Procession, but still gain another Action costing more than it.

External strategy articles

Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information or give historical perspective. Caveat emptor.

• 2012 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		You may play an Action card from your hand twice. Trash it. Gain an Action card costing exactly more than it.	Dark Ages	August 2012
		You may play an Action card from your hand twice. Trash it. Gain an Action card costing exactly more than it.	Dark Ages (2017 printing)	September 2017
		You may play a non-Duration Action card from your hand twice. Trash it. Gain an Action card costing exactly more than it.	Dark Ages (2020 printing)

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Czech	Procesí			Můžeš zahrát kartu akce z ruky dvakrát. Zahoď ji na smetiště. Vezmi si kartu akce, která stojí přesně o vice než zahozená karta.	…než zahozená tato karta.
Dutch	Optocht			Je mag een actiekaart uit je hand tweemaal spelen. Vernietig deze daarna. Pak een actiekaart die meer kost dan de vernietigde kaart.	(2013)
Finnish	Virkanimitys (lit. appointment)
French	Procession
German	Prozession			Du darfst eine Aktionskarte aus deiner Hand zweimal ausspielen. Entsorge jene Karte. Nimm eine Aktionskarte, die genau mehr als jene Karte kostet.	(2019) Rulebook: "...Du musst dann eine Aktions­karte vom Vorrat nehmen, die genau 1 mehr kostet als die ent­sorgte jene Karte…" one or more other versions listed here
	Prozession			Du darfst eine Aktionskarte, die keine Dauerkarte ist, aus deiner Hand zweimal spielen. Entsorge sie. Nimm eine Aktionskarte, die genau mehr als jene Karte kostet.
Japanese	行進 (pron. kōshin, lit. march)			手札のアクションカード1枚を2度使用してもよい。それを廃棄する。それよりコストが高いアクションカード1枚を獲得する。
Korean	행렬 (pron. haenglyeol)
Polish	Procesja				Although Polish version is not released, this card is referred to in the Polish version of Empires rulebook
Russian	Шествие (pron. shyestviye)
Spanish	Procesión			Puedes jugar una carta de Acción de tu mano dos veces. Elimínala. Gana una carta de Acción que cueste exactamente más que la carta eliminada.	(2014) …que la carta eliminada ella.

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

There was an ancestor of this card in the original large Alchemy. It was, play an action from your hand, trash it, gain an action costing up to + or +, play it. So you could go, play a Moneylender, trash it, gain a Golem, play the Golem. It was crazy and confusing but had a certain something. Another Throne variant in Dark Ages didn't work out, and I thought of that old card and made this one. It does not go so crazy but can still facilitate a cool transforming engine.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dark Ages Cards

Relevant outtakes

There was a Throne Room variant that gave +1 Card +1 Action, and had every opponent play the card you Throned on their next turn. It had built-in super-crazy just by playing it on itself.

Another Throne was "Choose one: +1 Card +1 Action; or Throne." It cost when Throne Room itself cost . When Throne Room had to cost there was no place for this card, which would be sad at .

Another Throne hung around, set aside, until you wanted to use it (it was and also gave you +1 Action when played). This works differently from Throne in multiples; two of them would let you do an action three times total, since each one just did it an extra time. This card was cool and was in the set for a while, but setting it aside indefinitely was problematic - in the past we've included playmats for that, and I didn't want playmats here - and the card was strong. A few times Bill Barksdale built a deck with lots of these Thrones and an Altar, which would take advantage of not actually having to trash a card to Altar if there are none in your hand, and would suddenly buy a pile of Duchies. One of those games, Bill pared his deck down to just an Altar and five copies of this Throne, drew the five Thrones and then watched a trashing attack trash his Altar. Good times.

Another Throne had you draw 2 cards, play an action twice, then discard 3 cards. That may look straightforward, but it's all kinds of weird.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dark Ages Cards

Retrospective

It's bad that Procession has a tracking-poor interaction with durations. And there was no fix for it (saying "non-duration" doesn't catch Throne Rooms on duration cards). I could do Procession or not. It seemed sufficiently fun to do anyway.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Well Procession is a lot of fun. If I could change Throne Room / Feast from day one I would; that would kill e.g. Procession / Horse, but that would be fine, there are all the other fun things in the game. But people cling to these things so you can Procession a Horse. Procession often has a tracking issue, even with "non-Duration"; trashing a card that gives +, you have to remember the +. These days I prefer e.g. Vault to be more like e.g. Mill - if the amount is fixed, you can tilt the card to indicate whether you got it or not. No amount of tilting tells you what Vault did for you. But, Vault doesn't ruin games, and normal non-Duration use of Procession doesn't either.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Obv. in the case of Procession on BoM on Amulet, BoM vanishes and there's a hole in our tracking. Trashing cards from play is trouble...For years we just had that tracking issue, and I guess we survived; I could solve it someday with non-Command on Procession.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Replaying durations that aren't in play