Your turn has two main-action choices
Explore uses a card’s movement and available effect. Replenish restores your pawns and hand. Dark Arts does not have the House players’ Learn action. Acquiring cards instead connects to bumping opponents. [pp.20–21]
Explore and deploy
Choose a card and resolve its movement and/or unlocked effect in either order. A reserve pawn costs one movement point to place on a deployment location containing no Dark Arts pawn. A stunned Dark Arts pawn already occupying that location still blocks deployment there. Remaining movement may then be used normally. [p.20]
Crossing obstacles is permitted, but Protected Areas remain off limits. If you finish on a House pawn, use the bump procedure in the movement guide. The Acquire-deck reward for bumping applies once per turn. [p.20]
Check the card’s colour
White effects are available from the beginning. Orange and red effects become available when the path marker first enters the corresponding zone; they stay available after unlocking. An unavailable effect is ignored, rather than preventing all use of that card’s movement. [pp.21, 28]
Replenish works differently here
First stand up your stunned pawns. Then draw until your hand contains five cards. You cannot discard unwanted cards as part of Dark Arts Replenish. This action alone does not move the path marker. [pp.21–22]
When the path moves
Check for an advance when a House player Replenishes, an event instructs it, or Dark Arts collects the complete set of participating House Markers. A normal non-event destination does not trigger an event. [p.22]
On an Event Space, draw from the deck matching the zone. Resolve the House portion first, where possible. Dark Arts then chooses between its event benefit and that zone’s Progress Token, if still available. You cannot leave a zone without taking its Progress Token. Discard the resolved event; decks from earlier zones stop being used after leaving them. [p.22]
Turning progress into a win
Collecting tokens alone is insufficient. You also need your specified destination and the required Dark Arts pawns there simultaneously. The red-zone target can require three or two pawns, depending on when the Location card is taken; the final path space has a one-pawn condition. See the winning page for the precise sequence and final-stage rule. [pp.22–23]
Questions to ask before acting
These are planning prompts derived from the rules, not tested winning strategy:
- Is the effect on this card unlocked?
- Is there an available deployment space, and have I budgeted its movement cost?
- Which House Marker do I still need?
- Would a bump reward give me a useful top-deck card for my next draw?
- Have I accounted for the destination requirement rather than watching only the path?
Avoid these Dark Arts mistakes
- Do not use the House Learn action or its Replenish discard option.
- Dark Arts Replenish itself does not advance the path.
- A stunned Dark Arts pawn still blocks deployment at its space.
- Taking all three Progress Tokens does not remove the destination-and-pawn requirement. [pp.20–23]
Next
Read movement and encounters for bumping; read winning and the final stage before the marker enters the red zone.