Welcome to the first Rules and Gameplay article for LevelAssist! For this article, I’m going to cover something that I’ve seen asked a lot and has a lot of confusion around it: The mysterious ‘Resolution Zone’, Refreshing your Library, and when to take your refresh point.

From the top: The ‘Resolution Zone’ is the gameplay area dedicated to cards that are still being processed. When things are being checked or triggered, they stay in the Resolution Zone. There are four main things that go here, and we’ll go over them in detail: Trigger checks when you are attacking, Damage stacks when you are taking damage, Brainstorms when they are resolving, and then Events that are still doing their effects.

Trigger Checks and Damage Stacks are pretty easy, and mostly the first thing that people learn about. When you attack, you move the top card of your Library into the Trigger zone. You then apply the effect of the trigger: Take a character from your Waiting Room if it’s a Gate/Comeback trigger, bounce an unlucky costed character if it’s a Bounce trigger, add a Soul Point or two to your character for the turn (Yes, the turn! Soul Triggers on characters that can attack again persist.). You then move it to Stock. There was a big deal made at the NA Nationals last year where the Head Judge made a clear ruling before the tournament that if you put a trigger to stock before resolving its effect, you skipped the effect. I may as well mention here: The reason for this is because putting the trigger to stock is a sign your opponent now has timing to play Counters and Backups. You do not play Backups until your opponent has put their triggered card to stock, and if you do they are allowed to change what they do with the trigger (Bounce the defending character instead of the back row so you can’t backup, change their salvage target, etc). By making a clear and concise timing for when each person is supposed to start and end their action, you remove edge cases where someone gains an advantage through their opponent doing things too early and ‘Rushing’. But that isn’t the point of the article, it’s just, again, something I see talked about, and I asked the Head Judge last year for clarification, because I like knowing why things are done.

When you are taking stacks of damage, cards are moved one at a time from the top of your Library to the Resolution Zone, until either a Climax is placed from Library to Resolution Zone, or the last card of Damage is. They are then moved all at once to Clock or Waiting Room, depending on whether it was a Climax or the last card of damage.

Now for the actual tricky ones: Brainstorm and Events. The Brainstorm ability is as follows: “Flip the top (X) Cards of your Library over. When all X have been flipped over, move them from Resolution Zone to Waiting Room all at once. For each (Z) moved from Resolution Zone to Waiting Room, do (Thing).”

Now, most Brainstorms are simple. X is ‘4’, Z is ‘Climax’, Thing is ‘Search/Salvage/Give Power/Draw and maybe discard too’. But there are wacky Brainstorms, but those are mostly events, so we’ll get to them with Events. So when you Brainstorm, you put all the cards to Resolution Zone, and then they go to Waiting Room once all of them are there.

Important to note: There is a difference between ‘Brainstorm’ and ‘Move the top card of your Library to Waiting Room’. There are cards that Brainstorm for just 1, and there are cards that will move between 3 and 11 cards from the top of your Library to Waiting Room. Both Brainstorms and ‘Move from the top of your Library to Waiting Room’ happen in quantities large and small, so just because they look similar does not mean they are the same thing! Examples of both are provided later, so if this confuses you, worry not.

Events, lastly, stay in the Resolution Zone while they are doing a thing. If you play an event that Searches, then it stays in the Resolution Zone until you are done searching. If it Brainstorms, then it stays in the Resolution Zone while the Brainstorm is processing. If you play an Event that shuffles your Waiting Room into your Library, then the Event stays out of the reshuffle entirely.

Now, for the reason why the Resolution Zone gets asked about a lot: Things in the Resolution Zone don’t shuffle back into your Library when you Refresh. So naturally, we need a REALLY good grasp of what goes there, when, and when they leave the Resolution Zone. I will try and hit the big examples here, and explain WHY they happen that way, and hopefully the WHY will also end up explaining similar examples that might come up in day to day life. Note: Because this is a pretty complicated topic, ANY and ALL questions and specific examples are ENCOURAGED. If you have any questions on scenarios not mentioned here, ask away and I’ll most likely add them to the list, or reply privately with how it relates to the existing examples and what not.

‘Refresh’ is an immediate action. The moment you could start saying the first letter of ‘I have no cards left in Library’, you are already reshuffling your Waiting Room into your new Library. You complete this, then continue the current ability until it is completed, and THEN you take the Refresh Point. ‘Refresh’ and ‘Refresh Point’ are two separate parts of the ability, and they happen at different times very frequently.

1.) The last card of your Library is a Climax with a (Gold Bar)/(Gate)/(Book) trigger.

What happens: You move the trigger to the Resolution Zone, because you triggered it, and while it is flying through the air into the Resolution Zone, you refresh your Library and then place it where your Library was, before your trigger even hits the table. Because we’re that cool. NOW you process the Trigger: If it’s a Gate or Pants, you take a Character or Climax from your Waiting Room (Ooops, now empty) and put it to your hand. If it’s a Gold Bar, you have the option of taking the top card of your Library and put it to stock, then put the Gold Bar to hand. If it’s a Book, you can draw a card. Then you move the Trigger to Stock, and now there is a pause where people are allowed to breath, so you take your Refresh Point.

2.) You Brainstorm 4 cards with 4 cards left in Library.

What Happens: You move the cards, one at a time to the Resolution Zone. When the last card is being flipped into Resolution Zone, you refresh the Waiting Room into your Library, and then you continue the ability: You move the cards from Resolution to Waiting Room and process the Brainstorm: Salvage, Search, Draw, whatever. Then you are now done with the Brainstorm, so you go to the next step: Taking your Refresh Point.

3.) You brainstorm 4 cards with less than 4 cards in Library.

What Happens: Similar to before, you move the cards one at a time from Library to Resolution Zone. The moment your Library empties, you refresh and continue moving to Resolution Zone until you’ve Brainstormed your X. Then you move the cards from Resolution Zone to Waiting Room and do your Brainstorm things. Then you take your Refresh Point.

4.) You play Compass with 3 cards left in Library.

What Happens: I rejoice, because this is my favorite thing to do in the game. Compass, as an Event, goes into the Resolution Zone while you process the ability. It then Brainstorms 3: You move the top 3 cards of your Library to Resolution Zone, then refresh with the Compass event and all 3 cards out of your Library. Now you process the results of the Brainstorm: If you hit a Climax, you pick an opponents battling character and give them the ability “This cannot deal damage to players”. If there isn’t a Climax, then you take the Compass event and put it on top of your Library. Now you take Refresh Point: Which, if you didn’t have any Climax in the Brainstorm, is your Compass event, guaranteeing a non-Climax Refresh Point. It’s like a French Chef kissing his finger and going ‘Mwah!’

5.) You are taking 3 damage, and you have 3 cards left in your Library, and none are Climaxes.

What Happens: When you are taking damage, you move the cards to Resolution Zone and then after the last card is moved there you move them to Clock. So in this instance, you take your 3, you refresh as the last damage is going to Resolution Zone, and then you move them there. If someone in this situation asks ‘Do I level up first, or do I refresh first’, the answer is clearly to Refresh first, because the damage has not even moved to clock by the time you are refreshing.

6.) You are taking 3 damage, and you have 3 cards left in your Library, and the last card is a Climax

What happens: Similar to above, you Refresh as the last card of your Library into Resolution Zone, refresh while it’s in-transit, and then your Library is Refreshed when the ‘Cancel’ happens. They all then move to Waiting Room. Note: You aren’t even checking to see if it cancelled or not until after the Refresh has already happened.

And now for the complicated and crazy ones.

7.) You are at Level 1 with 6 card in Clock and you play a card with an ability that takes the top card of your Library and puts it to clock. You play the card with 1 card left in Library.

What happens: This is kinda crazy, so I’m making sure to explain it fully here. In this one instance, and only this one instance, you get to pick the order of events. Refreshing is a high-priority interrupting action, it happens the moment it can. So is levelling up. This can only happen simultaneously in this one instance, where during your turn you use an ability that causes you to level up and run out of cards in Library at the same time. Damage won’t do it, because Damage goes to Resolution Zone first. Only ‘Top card of Library to Clock’ does this. So in this one instance, you get to pick whether or not you want to level up first and Refresh second, or vice versa.

8.) You are at Level 3 with 6 cards in Clock. You use Musashi, who says ‘The turn this comes into play, when damage dealt by this is cancelled, move the top card of your Library to Waiting Room. Deal X damage, where X is the level of that card + 1’ when you have 1 card in Clock. Your opponent is also at Level 3 with 6 cards in Clock.

What happens: You move the card to Waiting Room, and check its level. You then deal its level + 1 in damage to your opponent and refresh your Waiting Room. The ENTIRE ability processes before you take your Refresh Point, like how you do the entire Brainstorm before taking Refresh Point, and if the damage to your opponent isn’t cancelled, you win before you take your Refresh penalty.

A similar situation is a lot more common in the new Sword Art Online 2 Volume 2 set (Henceforth known as SAO2II): “Sword Skill Succession” Yuuki has an ability with the following effect: Move the top 11 cards of your Library to Waiting Room. Deal X damage to your opponent, where X is the number of Soul Triggers on those 11 cards. If you were at 3/6 and had less than 11 cards left in Library, you would move your whole Library to Waiting Room, count the Soul triggers, then refresh, then move the rest of the 11 to Waiting Room, and then count the final Soul Triggers, and deal that much damage (Which can be upwards of 19, if you hit 8 2-soul trigger Climaxes, but is realistically generally around 3-5 damage). If you do this when you are at 3/6 and it wins you the game, you never end up taking your Refresh Penalty, but if it does not win the game, then you lose from your own Refresh Penalty.

9.) You have a character with Clock Encore and 1 card left in Library and you use the characters Clock Encore.

What Happens: You don’t get the character back. I know this is about Refreshing and Resolution Zone and all that, but this is important! Encore happens when the character is IN the Waiting Room. When you use the Clock Encore, you move the top card of Library to Clock, emptying your Library and forcing the Refresh, and this happens while the character is still in the Waiting Room. You then don’t have the Character to play back to the stage rested, so you get nothing. Don’t let this happen to you!

Thank you to various folks for suggesting additional points! Now I have 11, which is 1 better than intended, which is great.

10.) You cancel with the last card in your deck while your opponent has a character with the ability “Spark” (When damage dealt is cancelled, deal 1 damage)

What happens: You start refreshing your deck before the ‘Cancel’ gets actually processed. You then finish refreshing, then finish moving the last card to Resolution Zone, causing the cancel. You then Refresh Point FIRST, then spark SECOND, because your opponents abilities resolve first (Spark) and your abilities resolve second (Your own Refresh Point). I like to think of Refresh Point as a 51st, invisible card that is memorized before you start the game with the ability: [Auto] When you Refresh your Library, take the top card of your Library and put it to clock. It’s timed like an Auto effect, and it’s timed like one of YOUR auto effects, so this metaphor is pretty solid.

11.) You play Junketsu, Azusa, or any other card that says ‘Look at the top X cards of your Library’ while you only have 1 card in Library.

What happens: ‘Look at the top X’ and “Reveal” and all abilities that do not specifically move the card to a different location (Hand, Resolution Zone, or Waiting Room) all leave the cards as part of your Library. If you wanted to look at 4, but only had 1 left, you only get to look at 1. You do NOT get to Refresh your Library with that 1 out and keep looking. It’s not a Brainstorm.

-McSmashy