If multiple spirits choose to gain power cards during the same growth phase, is it acceptable for them to all draw their cards at once and then confer before deciding which ones to keep?
Is this still true for gaining power cards off of powers? Does it matter if the two spirits are gaining the cards from seperate powers or from the same power?
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
I don't think this has come up during rule discussion at all. I'm inclined to say that you can do them all simultaneously, if for no other reason than that it makes the game more fun and move faster.
For gaining power cards off of powers, I would say that, at least in principle, one power needs to be resolved completely before starting on another one. (In practice, often everyone can do things at once, as long as you synchronize at the end of the Spirit Phase.)
During the growth phase, I've often heard people informally compare notes about future plans while picking cards, and that's fine. I don't see anything wrong with comparing notes about power card draws, though as with all this planning it's worth putting time limits on it. (But it didn't come up in testing.)
Yes, conferring is AOK. Each Spirit must do their things sequentially - Growth choices, gain Energy, play cards - and all players must finish before moving on to Fast Powers, but otherwise people can speed ahead / wait as they wish.
(Note that each spirit doing their stuff sequentially does mean that Thunderspeaker must choose one Power Card before making their second draw. In hindsight, it might have been better to make this "Draw 7 keep 2" or "Draw 6 keep 2" just to keep things moving a little faster.)
The hard-and-fast rule is that you must completely resolve one Power before starting in on another; you can't pause-and-resume. So Power Cards gained from two separate Powers must be sequential. Two from the same card... strictly speaking it depends on the wording of the card's instructions, but if there's no ordering explicitly specified by the card (or required by "you choose one of the Power Cards they didn't take" or the like), it ought to be fine playing it simultaneously if you want to to speed play.
(Eg: the "gain a Major Power without Forgetting" level of The Serpent Wakes in Power technically says "You gain a Major Power without Forgetting. Spirits with 3+ Presence on your Absorbed Essence track do likewise" or somesuch. I followed strictly this would mean first the Serpent does so, then all Spirits with 3+ Presence do so simultaneously. Practically, the timing of choosing Power Cards wasn't in my mind at all when trying to figure out how to phrase it; the details of its wording are for concise clarity in the available space and consistency with prior levels.)
This actually came up this last weekend. It was my first multiplayer game with Thunderspeaker and I was noticing that my spirit phase would take noticably longer than the other two players whenever I reclaimed and I was the only one of the three that had any real experiecne with the game. I'm wondering if this small problem will fix iteslf as I get more familier with Thunderspeaker or if I should just start houseruling it.
Has anyone experimented with this yet? What do you guys think is a fair alternate to "Draw 4 keep 1" twice, "Draw 7 keep 2" or "Draw 6 keep 2"?
Shoot, didn't think about that.
Draw seven total power cards (any combo of major and minor) and keep two?