In the Forest phase of Activation, you must build a tableau of cards from the Forest Deck that meet the direction icon requirements of your map card.

To build this tableau, you’ll draw, choose, and place cards, one at a time, until you complete your map.

1. Draw & Choose. Each time you’re ready to add another card to the tableau, begin drawing cards from the Forest Deck.

• Draw cards one at a time from the bottom of the Forest Deck. If you draw a card with an Ambush effect, it must be resolved immediately.

• After each draw, either place one of the cards you’ve drawn so far into the tableau, or continue and draw another card to expand your options.

• You can draw up to a total number of cards equal to your Strategy before you are forced to stop drawing and place one of the cards you’ve drawn.

• If you would draw a card and the Forest Deck is empty, shuffle the Forest Deck discard to create a new Forest Deck. Do not flip the discard over or change the facing of any of the cards, as the side discarded face-up is the side you are meant to face when you draw them again.

As you continue to draw or choose not to, you’ll be balancing the flexibility of increasing the pool of cards you can choose from with the peril that any given card you draw might have a with an undesired effect.

2. Place & Check. Place the card you chose into your tableau. Discard the other cards you drew but did not select, with the drawn side face-up. Then, check to see if the direction icons on the cards of the tableau collectively satisfy the roster of direction icons shown on your map card.

• If some icons on your map are still missing from your tableau, return to the “Draw & Choose” step to select another card, checking the map icons again after each forest card you add to the tableau.

• On the other hand, if you check your new card and your map is now complete, finish any immediate action it requires and move on to the Bribery phase. You cannot continue drawing once the map is complete.

As forest cards join your tableau, their and effects activate immediately. These may affect how you can continue to build your tableau.

You will often add more cards to your tableau than are needed to satisfy your map. This leads to more difficult engagements than are strictly necessary, but can also grant beneficial rewards!

Some forest cards do not have a direction icon on them. They complicate your encounter (or sometimes, help you!) without any potential to help satisfy your map.

The physical order of the map cards in your tableau doesn’t matter. You can arrange and rearrange them as you wish. They do not need to be lined up in the order you drew them, nor arranged in the order shown on your map card.

WILD DIRECTION ICONS

Some forest cards have wild direction icons. A wild icon can be used to satisfy any of the glyphs on your map, and wild icons can be re-assigned as needed over the course of a round (if, for example, your map card changes due to some effect).

Different icons in your tableau can be used to satisfy different directional icons. That is, all of your don’t need to stand in for icons of the same direction.

icons are allowed to be assigned sub optimally. That is, you may choose to assign a as a map direction that the map does not require in order to keep drawing more cards to add to your tableau. icons never count as one of the four directional icons for the purposes of other effects. This is true even when a icon is currently “standing in” for an icon of the specified type.