The Events Area
To the right of the map, beside the Cup of the Wrath of God, sits the panel that shows what the world is about to do to the land. It gathers four things: the events waiting, the events in force, the card piles, and the region legend.
Events
The first block, Events, has 3 slots and holds the event cards that have been drawn but have not happened yet.
When someone draws an event card in the Draw Cards phase it never enters a hand: it comes straight here. The newest card takes the first slot and pushes the others along. When a fourth event arrives, the oldest is discarded without ever having happened.
That detail is a real lever: drawing events can push out a dangerous event that was about to be announced.
There is one exception: a second Sandstorm drawn in the same round is discarded immediately, without taking a slot.
A card sitting here can still be cancelled by the Blessing — but only before it takes effect. Once announced, there is no undoing it.
Terrain Events
The second block has three fixed slots, one for each terrain that can receive events: Plains, Mountains and Desert. It shows what is in force right now.
It is in the Announcements phase that cards move from the first block to the second: each event is rolled onto a terrain (1-2 plain, 3-4 mountains, 5-6 desert), or placed at the choice of the Prophet’s owner. No two events share a terrain — the newer displaces the older, which goes to the discard pile.
Terrain events last one round. In the following Announcements phase they are discarded, even if no new event comes on stage — that is how a Sandstorm stops sealing the desert.
Reading this block is the first reflex of each round: it tells you where income will rise or fall, where the plague has already passed, and whether the desert is closed.
Draw and Discard
Below sit the two piles, each with its card count:
- Draw — the cards still to come, face down.
- Discard — the spent cards, with the most recent one face up. Long-press it to open its details.
Nothing is lost for good. When the draw pile does not hold enough cards for a deal, the discard is shuffled back into it. Dead generals, items from captured generals and spent single-use cards all return to circulation.
Watching the thickness of the two piles is useful information: when the discard is fat and the draw pile thin, everything already played is about to come back.
Regions
The last block is the region legend, with each region’s name and colour. It is the key to reading the dashed coloured rings the map draws around settlements — each ring says which region that settlement belongs to, and therefore which Judge title it helps to form.
An event card’s journey
The whole cycle is worth keeping in mind, because it spans three phases:
- Draw Cards — the card is drawn and goes straight to Events (not to a hand).
- Announcements of the following round — it is rolled onto a terrain and moves to Terrain Events. The Plague resolves on the spot; Abundance and Hunger come into force for Income; the Sandstorm seals the desert.
- Announcements of the round after that — it expires and goes to the Discard, from where it will one day return to the deck.
In other words: between drawing an event and suffering its effects there is always a full round in between — time to prepare, to play a Blessing, or to push it out of the area with newer events.