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  ===Rounds and phases===
  The game is played through repeated rounds until one or more players meets the winning condition, or all but one player has met the elimination condition. Rounds are divided into 7 phases, with each phase allowing players to alternate actions that affect the game state in some way.
  The first phase every round is the ''Plot'' phase. Each player selects one unused plot from his ''plot'' deck, and all players reveal their chosen plots simultaneously. Initiative values from plot cards and other resources are tallied, and the player with the highest initiative chooses which player will go first in each phase of the current round. The textbox effects of plots are then resolved in the order chosen by the first player.
  In the second phase, the ''Draw'' phase, each player is allowed to draw two cards from their ''draw'' deck.
  Although divided into turns for each player, the ''Marshalling'' phase is a single phase for all players. At the beginning of each player's turn in the Marshalling phase, the player counts all income from plot card and any other resources available. The player is then able to bring new resources in the form of characters, locations, and attachments into play by spending the gold. Some events and other triggered effects also require the payment of gold, and unused income is not carried over into other rounds, so resource management is important.
  The fourth phase is the ''Challenge'' phase. As with the ''Marshalling'' phase, each player has a turn to initiate challenges against other players. Generally, players may initiate one each of ''Military'', ''Intrigue'', and ''Power'' challenges each round, but several cards can allow exta challenges to be initiated or deny certain challenges at all. Also, in a multiplayer game, he can either use all his challenges on one opponent or divide them among his adversaries. He doesn't have to use all of them. Challenges can be initiated in any order, and require a player to ''kneel'' one or more characters with an icon matching the challenge type to begin the challenge. Then, the player being attacked may kneel one or more characters to attempt to oppose the challenge. Once all player actions are taken, the player with the highest total strength in the challenge wins. If the defending player wins, nothing special occurs, but if the attacker wins, then the defender suffers losses depending on the type of challenge initiated.
  * Military - if the defending player loses, he must ''kill'' a number of characters he controls equal to the claim value on the attacker's plot.
  * Intrigue - if the defending player loses, he must randomly discard a number of cards from hand equal to the claim value on the attacker's plot.
  * Power - if the defending player loses, he must remove a number of power tokens from his House card equal to the claim value on the attacker's plot, and place them on the attacker's House card.
  In the fifth phase, the ''Dominance'' phase, each player counts the total strength of all controlled characters that are still ''standing'', plus the amount of gold still remaining in his possession (unspent). The player with the highest total wins dominance that round, and claims 1 power token for his House, taken from the power common pool.
  In the ''Standing'' phase each player changes each ''kneeling'' card to ''standing''.
  With the LCG format came a new phase, the ''Taxation'' phase, in which each player returns unspent gold to the common pool (in the CCG format, players could not use gold outside of their turn in the Marshalling phase).