Rising Sun is the 16th expansion to Dominion. It has 300 cards, with 25 new Kingdom card piles. There are Shadow cards that leap out from your deck, and Prophecies that will someday happen and change everything. Debt and Events return.
Rising Sun has Omens and Prophecies. Prophecies are rules that will eventually apply to the game; Omens provide a way to tick down time until the Prophecy.
In every game with one or more Omen cards, deal out one Prophecy for it. Only use one Prophecy no matter how many Omens you have.
Put 5 Sun tokens on the Prophecy for 2 players, 8 for 3 players, 10 for 4 players, 12 for 5 players, and 13 for 6 players.
"+1 " means, remove a token from the Prophecy. Then if it was the last token, the rules text on the Prophecy becomes active, right then and for the rest of the game.
"+1 " always appears first on Omens, before anything else the card does.
"+1 " does nothing else once all the tokens are removed.
Prophecy text does nothing until the last Sun token is removed..
Rising Sun five a Shadow cards.
These cards all have unique backs, and can be played from your deck.
When shuffling Shadow cards, put them on the bottom. If you have multiple Shadow cards, they can go in any order at the bottom. They can also be mixed with any other cards you specifically put on the bottom, such as Fated cards from Plunder.
You may wish to turn your Shadow cards sideways at the bottom of your deck, so that it is easy to remember that they are there.
Shadow cards will not necessarily stay on the bottom of your deck; they are just put there when shuffling them.
Shadow cards are not put on the bottom when gained, or at any time other than when shuffling them.
You can look through your deck at the card backs at any time, and see where your Shadow cards are.
Whenever you can normally play an Action card, you can play a Shadow card from your deck. It can be anywhere in your deck. You play it exactly as if playing it from your hand; it goes into play and you follow its instructions.
When a card like Throne Room tells you to play a card from your hand, you can use that opportunity to play a Shadow card from your deck.
You can play Shadow cards from your deck as if in your hand, but this does not mean the Shadow card is in your hand; for example you cannot discard it to an ability like Alley's (unless it is actually in your hand)..
Rising Sun has Events, which first appeared in Adventures. In your Buy phase, when you can buy a card, you can buy an Event instead. You pay the cost indicated on the Event and then do its effect.
Events are not Kingdom cards; they sit on the table and provide an effect you can buy. There is no way for you to gain one or end up with one in your deck.
Buying an Event uses up a Buy; normally you can either buy a card, or buy an Event. If you have two Buys, such as after playing [Ranger, Villa, Sanctuary, Sack of Loot, or Fishmonger], you can buy two cards, or buy two Events, or buy a card and an Event (in either order).
The same Event can be bought multiple times in a turn if you have the Buys and available to do it.
You cannot play further Treasures that turn after buying an Event.
Buying an Event is not buying a card and so does not trigger cards like [Haggler†, Swamp Hag†, or Charm†].
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, Flagship, or Daimyo], 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.
Flavor text
We journey now to the islands to the east – or west, depending on where you are relative to them. Here your title is Emperor. They tell you you’re just a figurehead, though you can still order whatever breakfast you want. They may be right; you did get that breakfast. Your ceremonial sword and armor are made of paper. The samurai never let you into their tea parties, and the ninjas are always tying your shoelaces together. And the epic poem they wrote about you is only 17 syllables long. Rice has been adopted as currency, and no-one seems to even be trying to get your face onto the grains. But when you wake up each morning and look out over the land, life doesn’t seem so bad. Now, what’s for breakfast?
There is in fact a new expansion on the way, called Rising Sun. My best guess is March 2024, but as usual I will know more in say February. And there's a promo coming called Marchland (no relation to the month or expansion), which I expect will be in an issue of Spielbox, and all the other promos are available in English from BoardGameGeek so I don't know why this one wouldn't be.
The new Dominion expansion also has a narrative arc thing in one of its mechanics. A really different thing, and that is, of course, completely unknown to the world.
The latest rough release date for Rising Sun is... August. We're waiting on debt tokens and we're told we'll get them at the end of June. And then it takes a month to cross the ocean.
In a surprise move, the date has moved up rather than down. Previews will be August 5th-9th. Digital versions are allowed to go public on the 10th or 12th or later if they don't make those dates.