The decision
Choose one main action: Explore, Learn or Replenish. Eligible free actions can accompany it. Playing a card is not an automatic step before every action. [pp.16–17]
Explore: use a card
Choose a card in your hand. Resolve its permitted movement and/or effect; movement and effect may occur in either order. A card that enables another card must be resolved before that additional card. Check any condition and whether the effect is optional or mandatory. A card’s specific instruction overrides a conflicting general rule. [p.16]
For ordinary movement, use an unstunned pawn. A two-value card gives the printed allocation between two pawns or the combined distance for one pawn; it does not create a freely divisible movement budget. Read the movement guide before crossing an obstacle or taking a special route. [pp.10, 16]
Learn: improve your deck
You need at least one pawn outside the Protected Areas. Choose an acquisition route:
| Route | Cards discarded from hand | Gain |
|---|---|---|
| Normal face-up row | 1 | One available card |
| Face-down Acquire deck | 1 | Its top card |
| Advanced face-up row | 2 | One available card and one Loyalty step |
Place the new card face down on top of your draw deck, not into your hand. Close gaps in the acquisition rows to the right, then refill empty positions from the deck. [p.17]
Replenish: recover, with a consequence
Resolve these stages in order: choose your discards and bring your hand to five; stand up your stunned pawns; move the Dark Arts marker one step and resolve what that causes. This is a main action, not free end-of-turn maintenance. [p.17]
A draw caused by an eligible card, Book, event or bonus space is a different mechanism. Do not advance the Dark Arts marker merely because a player drew a card. [p.12]
Two free-action checks
- You may hold only one Hogwarts Token. Before or after your main action, return a Token obtained on an earlier turn to enable an additional Explore with a matching card. A newly collected Token cannot be spent immediately, and using it does not interrupt an unfinished main action. [pp.11, 17]
- Check whether your pawns simultaneously satisfy two of your three Location cards. Reveal those matching cards and return them beneath the Location deck to gain a Scroll. After the first Scroll, replenish your Location cards to three; after the second, return the remaining Location card and take no more. [p.17]
Finish by discarding cards used during the turn and passing play clockwise. [p.17]
A cost that is easy to confuse
Using Learn to take an Advanced-row card costs two discarded cards. The Advanced-row option on a Card Acquire bonus space costs one. These are different routes, not contradictory costs. [pp.10–11, 17]
Next
Movement and encounters explains what happens when pawns meet. Winning and the Loyalty track explains why you are collecting Books, Scrolls and access items.