When does the turn end? It's complicated...

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]What's the play here? Looks simple, right? Play our cards, spend our energy, get value out of pairing shield, and pairing shield did not go off. Okay, if these relics are triggering after infection, then we can play one defend for five, let our block drop to zero, and then Oracalum will block for six.

[00:00:21]And that didn't work either. What's actually going on here?

[00:00:30]Okay, I dug into the code and mapped out what happens when you click end turn and it's a lot. For example, in after auto post play, your card effects trigger.

[00:00:41]Powers go first. So, stampede will trigger before I am invincible. Good to know if you're ever in this common situation.

[00:00:49]Great. Now, what about pairing shield and oricalum? Oracalum gives block during the before end turn step along with other relics like ripple basin and they trigger in the order that you acquired them. So does the order actually matter here? No, because the flag for whether oralum will give block or not was defined two steps prior in before end turn very early. What about pairing shield that triggers way down here? A lot of stuff happens before that. Notably, feel no pain will give you block for ethereal cards here, which works in your favor, and the infections will drain your block here. I feel like this is pretty awkward from the player perspective. Pairing shield and oracalum are worded the same way, but they don't work the same way at all.

[00:01:46]And I think the fix is pretty simple.

[00:01:49]Hello editor me stepping in. Turns out it was not simple. This is not a bit by the way. Uh I had basically fully edited the video and what I was going to propose was that you have a trigger where pairing shield currently has a trigger and another one where Oracalum has a trigger and then I realized that this Oracalum trigger is also messed up.

[00:02:18]Uh I kind of mentally shortcut it as it measures the amount of block you have when you click end turn, but that's not true because the card phase comes before that and lots of weird things can happen there. For example, I am invincible can break your oracalum and cause you to die. Stampede can break your pairing shield and cause you to die. And you can even have block when you click end turn and still get Oraalum to trigger. I think it can cover all the cases by putting checks in three different spots.

[00:02:59]I don't know if this is considered spaghetti code, but basically what you're trying to get to happen is uh one that you have consistency between relics that are worded the same way and two that what the player expects to happen does happen. So that's this example. We're going to move on to another one that's hopefully a bit more clearcut. Another much more common timing issue involves Gremlin Horn. Say there's an enemy that will die from doom or poison or thorns on its turn. Gremlin Horn will give you a card and an energy and then you keep the card and lose the energy. This makes no sense. So why does this happen? It's because the game handles cards and energy differently.

[00:03:54]Currently, for cards, you flush or discard your hand at the end of your turn, and then at the start of your turn, you draw five more cards. For energy, your energy just sits there during the opponent's turn and then gets reset to your max energy at the start of your turn. So, the fix here is clear.

[00:04:15]Just treat energy and cards the same way. So now, instead of resetting our energy at turn start, we're going to set our energy to zero at the end of our turn and then add our max energy at the start of the turn. Now, Gremlin Horn will let us keep the card and the energy. Thank you for watching and if you