Apologies if this is covered elsewhere. I didn’t see such in a search.
On the Atlantis card Pillars of Hercules it states:
“At the start of every turn, play the top card of the villain deck”
“At the start of their turn, a player may skip the rest of their turn to destroy this card”
Do the above two happen simultaneously, such that the players can decide the order of them, or do they happen in the order they are on the card (, or something else)?
Sounds sequential to me. Step one is play the top card of the villain deck, step two is optionally skip turn to destroy the card. The only “simultainious” actions I’ve ever noticed is when a reference to a number of cards greater than one is described, e.g. destroy 2 equipment cards, deal all hero targets damage, deal damage to the two targets with the highest HP, etc. Even Slash an Burn is a sequential. Step on, 4 melee damage to the lowest HP hero target; step two, deal 6 fire damage to the highest HP hero target.
Those actions are, in fact, sequential, which is why they are printed on separate lines. So, even on the turn that a player chooses to skip the rest of their turn to resolve the Pillars of Hercules, the top card of the Villain deck is played.
As a note, Slash and Burn used to be in the other order, but this would commonly result in one player taking 10 damage, as the highest could easily get dropped to the lowest from 6 damage. Oooh! A glimpse through the game-design veil!
I remember the Slash and Burn card very well, as my cousin was playing the game for the first time and thus I’ll only read the card one step at a time to make it easier to follow. After slashing the card with the lowest HP, I then read the second step, to burn the card with the highest HP. As soon as I read that second step, my cousin began laughing almost uncontrollably. As it turns out, the character with the highest HP was a fully setup Absolute Zero (Coolant Blast, Isothermic Transducer, Null-Point Calibration Unit, and Focused Apertures), with Inspiring Presence and Galvanize in effect, and Coolant Blast already powered up from a couple attacks from Ra. Needless to say, that one card is what allowed us to easily defeat Baron Blade (it may have been close otherwise).
We had a bit of confusion at last night's game. Pillars of Hercules was played and Argent Adept skipped his turn to destroy it. The Adept player felt that skipping his turn meant that he could draw two cards. I felt that skipping his turn meant his turn was done so he doesn't get anything, not even an end phase. Both of those options are different than ending your turn like with Prayer of Desperation which sends you directly to the end phase.
I think if you skip your turn with this kind of thing, you skip your entire turn and you don't draw cards. I think it also skips any start-of-turn effect that you might have, as opposed to skipping your turn to draw extra card, where it will still happen. Basing this on memory though, and hopefully someone will correct me if i am wrong.
Pydro has it right. Technically you don't skip your turn for the extra cards as your draw phase is still part of your turn, you just don't play a card or use a power.
That's how I thought it worked, but we played that he did get the cards. Didn't matter, though. Kismet curbstomped us.
If you skip your turn, this occurs during your Start phase, so you'd still get to do any actions that'd trigger during that phase (yay for Omni-10 :D). But you'd skip everything else in your turn. Anything which specifies to end your turn means you skip straight to the End phase (so can't play a card, use a power, or draw any cards), though not many characters have any possible actions during that phase. Double-drawing due to not playing a card or using a power is done during your Draw phase - if you've skipped your turn, you don't get a Draw phase. Also, drawing during your Draw phase is never mandatory, just as you don't have to play a card or use a power. Just in case you weren't aware of that - sometimes, drawing cards can be rather painful (eg of Apostate has his Tome out).
It seems like it depends on the order the cards came out. If Pillar was out first, you skip the rest of your start of turn, and you don’t perform the actions.
https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/start-of-turn-3342