As always, a new expansion brings new cards as well as some updates to the game itself. This post is going to make you acquainted with what's new and updated.
User interface
The status bar in the middle of the play area got bigger and changed a bit in appearance. As often requested, it will now show your debt and your coin tokens/Coffers as well, so you have your current monetary situation available at a glance:
To the left, right beside the number of Actions you have, is a new icon, the Villager mat. It shows you how many Villagers you have (see the 2nd next paragraph about what they do). That thing in the middle between your 0 coins and 2 debt is the Coffers mat. Originally introduced in the 2nd printing of Guilds, it returns in Renaissance with new cards that use them. The 1 in it simply means that you have 1 coin token in your Coffers. This is more a change of terminology/icons, previously the exact same situation would have been depicted as a grey coin token containing the number 1.
That image to the right is reminding you that you have the Flag, an artifact from Renaissance (which has 4 more of them). Each artifact only exists once in the game, so possession can (and will!) be contested and change.
Villagers are 'canned Actions': During your Action phase, you can remove a Villager from the Villager mat to get +1 Action. You can do this by clicking on the Villager mat. However, you normally don't need to do this, because the game will automatically allow you to play an Action from your hand if you have no Actions left, but still have Villagers. This is how the status bar and your hand look in that situation:
You've just played an Acting Troupe which gave you 4 Villagers. You can play the Smithy (causing 1 Villager to be removed from the mat), but both the red writing and the blue-rimmed Action card should remind you that you are using a resource and might reconsider.
The player info bar now contains more (and less) information. The Villagers, coin tokens/Coffers, debt etc. you have are shown as in the status bar, so the situation from the beginning would look like this:
However, the tokens (with or without mats) are only shown when there are more than 0 of them. So if you have no debt, the debt symbol will not be there. The same goes for Villagers, Coffers, pirate counters, etc. This makes room to show you reminders, that previously were only shown on the status bar, which made them only visible on the turn of the affected player. This includes the new artifacts from Renaissance, as can be seen above.
Here, Lord Rat is both Lost in the Woods and Envious. Maybe you can exploit that envy and make him discard his Harem instead of his Gold when you Pillage him?
Projects
Projects are a new kind of "landscape" card like Events and Landmarks. They stay in the game area, never move into decks or to players, but still can change a game significantly. You get 1 colored project cube per Project in the game, up to 2. We've put them in the info bar, here is the starting view of a game with exactly one Project.
Once you've visited (bought) the Fair, the cube moves to the Project, so everybody can see which player has which Project(s). You now enjoy the benefit of that Project for the remainder of the game, which for Fair means an extra buy each turn.
Study Cards
If you right-click on any card or on most card names in the log, the game will already show you a big version of the card, so you can carefully read it. If the card has an autoplay setting, it will be shown and is changeable (for that game) here. But if you are new to the game and read Tournament, it would be really nice to know what cards are in the prize pile, wouldn't it? Or you play your very first Nocturne games and wonder how you are supposed to get that Ghost that looks so nice but you can't directly buy?
For Ghost, you see whatever is appropriate for that game, and if both Exorcist and Cemetery/Haunted Mirror are in the game, they're both shown.
Of course, this will be really handy with Renaissance because when you have a Swashbuckler it also shows you what a Treasure Chest does!
The Log
By common request, the log now shows more info. There is a new option in the Options tab:
If it is set to "Yes" (the default value), it does what it says. This is shown in the top row of log pictures.
If you turn the option to "No", you get log output as in the bottom row. The difference between them is that anything that has gives a constant, non-changing effect of +Actions, +Buys, +Coins will not be logged below. Market shrinks the most, Village is now missing the +2 Actions and Militia the +2 Coins. That's all because those are constant values that you would usully know anyway. Gladiator misses the initial +2 Coins, but lists the +1 Coin due to the opponent not revealing a Copper. Squire misses the +1 Coin in the log below, but will now for the first time log which choice between +2 Actions or +2 Buys was made.
Remember that "No" is not the same as the settings before this update. Variable amounts (Bank) will now alaways be logged as well as +Actions, +Buys or +Coin due to choices, such as Squire above. Also Treasure generating coin/potion will generally not be logged even with the option "Yes", with cards like Bank etc. being the exception.
In Play
Durations
A first step is being made to make it easier to distinguish between 'old' and 'new' Duration cards. Duration cards that will go away this turn ('old') and ones that will still stay out ('new') will no longer be in a single stack in play. If your turn starts with 2 Fishing Villages from the last turn and you immediatly play another one, the play area will look like this:
At the end of your (long) turn, this might help you to better plan what to discard for Night Watchman or Scouting Party.
Autoplay Treasure
That button we all see in the buy phase gets a slight functionality change. If you have a Sauna in play and have a Silver in hand, playing that Silver (via Autoplay) will no longer ask you to trash someting, it will just assume to that you don't want to. Also, the button will not play a Plunder or Rocks if the pile they are from has the +1 Card token from Adventures on it.
The result of this is that now you can undo pressing that button without your opponent needing to agree! The changes above make sure that no information is revealed by Autoplaying Treasure, so this is safe to do. So if you autoplayed all your 3 Coppers first turn and hover over Ducat with your mouse, realising that that 3rd Copper might now be better in your hand, you can undo the autoplay easily. However, you must ask for this undo immediately after that autoplay happened (before doing anything else), otherwise it is still subject to opponent approval.
Storage cards
A few cards put other cards away for some time to get them back later, examples include Haven, Archive or Crypt (generally referred to as storage cards here). While those other cards were stored away, there was no way for you to find out what they were. Maybe not a problem with a single Haven, but if you have lots of Archives and Crypts, planning your future turn(s) can get complicated. Also if you have to discard for your opponent's attacks, it might be nice to be able to see which cards will come up next turn from your storage.
On your turn, you can hover your mouse over any such card in play and the log area will show you all the cards 'under it':
In this case, an Archive was played, 3 cards were shown, one immediatly taken into the hand and Copper and Silver were placed under it. You can see that those cards belong together by the surrounding white rectangle.
On the next turn the Copper was taken into the hand and an new Archive was played, so now two Archives are in play. If you hover your mouse cursor over your player info bar, you see the contents of all of your storage cards together:
The Silver is still under the Archive from last turn and this turn's Archive has a Silver and a Chapel.
All of this does not only work for you and on your turn, it also works on your opponent's turn and for their storage cards as well. While it doesn't allow you to look at those cards that your opponent stored away, you can at least count them and estimate how much playing and buying power your opponent might have available.
Single Selections from many cards
Sometimes you just need to select a card from your hand. At other times, you need to select a card from the trash or your discard pile, which may be full of cards. Finding that single Witch to topdeck with your Scavenger among all those Coppers is now easier, because all those duplicates stack:
Many other single selection effects now also use this improved interface.
Conclusion
Have fun with the new cards in the Renaissance preview, and hopefully have a little easier and more informed play with the changes to the interface that work for all the cards.
User interface
The status bar in the middle of the play area got bigger and changed a bit in appearance. As often requested, it will now show your debt and your coin tokens/Coffers as well, so you have your current monetary situation available at a glance:
To the left, right beside the number of Actions you have, is a new icon, the Villager mat. It shows you how many Villagers you have (see the 2nd next paragraph about what they do). That thing in the middle between your 0 coins and 2 debt is the Coffers mat. Originally introduced in the 2nd printing of Guilds, it returns in Renaissance with new cards that use them. The 1 in it simply means that you have 1 coin token in your Coffers. This is more a change of terminology/icons, previously the exact same situation would have been depicted as a grey coin token containing the number 1.
That image to the right is reminding you that you have the Flag, an artifact from Renaissance (which has 4 more of them). Each artifact only exists once in the game, so possession can (and will!) be contested and change.
Villagers are 'canned Actions': During your Action phase, you can remove a Villager from the Villager mat to get +1 Action. You can do this by clicking on the Villager mat. However, you normally don't need to do this, because the game will automatically allow you to play an Action from your hand if you have no Actions left, but still have Villagers. This is how the status bar and your hand look in that situation:
You've just played an Acting Troupe which gave you 4 Villagers. You can play the Smithy (causing 1 Villager to be removed from the mat), but both the red writing and the blue-rimmed Action card should remind you that you are using a resource and might reconsider.
The player info bar now contains more (and less) information. The Villagers, coin tokens/Coffers, debt etc. you have are shown as in the status bar, so the situation from the beginning would look like this:
However, the tokens (with or without mats) are only shown when there are more than 0 of them. So if you have no debt, the debt symbol will not be there. The same goes for Villagers, Coffers, pirate counters, etc. This makes room to show you reminders, that previously were only shown on the status bar, which made them only visible on the turn of the affected player. This includes the new artifacts from Renaissance, as can be seen above.
Here, Lord Rat is both Lost in the Woods and Envious. Maybe you can exploit that envy and make him discard his Harem instead of his Gold when you Pillage him?
Projects
Projects are a new kind of "landscape" card like Events and Landmarks. They stay in the game area, never move into decks or to players, but still can change a game significantly. You get 1 colored project cube per Project in the game, up to 2. We've put them in the info bar, here is the starting view of a game with exactly one Project.
Once you've visited (bought) the Fair, the cube moves to the Project, so everybody can see which player has which Project(s). You now enjoy the benefit of that Project for the remainder of the game, which for Fair means an extra buy each turn.
Study Cards
If you right-click on any card or on most card names in the log, the game will already show you a big version of the card, so you can carefully read it. If the card has an autoplay setting, it will be shown and is changeable (for that game) here. But if you are new to the game and read Tournament, it would be really nice to know what cards are in the prize pile, wouldn't it? Or you play your very first Nocturne games and wonder how you are supposed to get that Ghost that looks so nice but you can't directly buy?
For Ghost, you see whatever is appropriate for that game, and if both Exorcist and Cemetery/Haunted Mirror are in the game, they're both shown.
Of course, this will be really handy with Renaissance because when you have a Swashbuckler it also shows you what a Treasure Chest does!
The Log
By common request, the log now shows more info. There is a new option in the Options tab:
If it is set to "Yes" (the default value), it does what it says. This is shown in the top row of log pictures.
If you turn the option to "No", you get log output as in the bottom row. The difference between them is that anything that has gives a constant, non-changing effect of +Actions, +Buys, +Coins will not be logged below. Market shrinks the most, Village is now missing the +2 Actions and Militia the +2 Coins. That's all because those are constant values that you would usully know anyway. Gladiator misses the initial +2 Coins, but lists the +1 Coin due to the opponent not revealing a Copper. Squire misses the +1 Coin in the log below, but will now for the first time log which choice between +2 Actions or +2 Buys was made.
Remember that "No" is not the same as the settings before this update. Variable amounts (Bank) will now alaways be logged as well as +Actions, +Buys or +Coin due to choices, such as Squire above. Also Treasure generating coin/potion will generally not be logged even with the option "Yes", with cards like Bank etc. being the exception.
In Play
Durations
A first step is being made to make it easier to distinguish between 'old' and 'new' Duration cards. Duration cards that will go away this turn ('old') and ones that will still stay out ('new') will no longer be in a single stack in play. If your turn starts with 2 Fishing Villages from the last turn and you immediatly play another one, the play area will look like this:
At the end of your (long) turn, this might help you to better plan what to discard for Night Watchman or Scouting Party.
Autoplay Treasure
That button we all see in the buy phase gets a slight functionality change. If you have a Sauna in play and have a Silver in hand, playing that Silver (via Autoplay) will no longer ask you to trash someting, it will just assume to that you don't want to. Also, the button will not play a Plunder or Rocks if the pile they are from has the +1 Card token from Adventures on it.
The result of this is that now you can undo pressing that button without your opponent needing to agree! The changes above make sure that no information is revealed by Autoplaying Treasure, so this is safe to do. So if you autoplayed all your 3 Coppers first turn and hover over Ducat with your mouse, realising that that 3rd Copper might now be better in your hand, you can undo the autoplay easily. However, you must ask for this undo immediately after that autoplay happened (before doing anything else), otherwise it is still subject to opponent approval.
Storage cards
A few cards put other cards away for some time to get them back later, examples include Haven, Archive or Crypt (generally referred to as storage cards here). While those other cards were stored away, there was no way for you to find out what they were. Maybe not a problem with a single Haven, but if you have lots of Archives and Crypts, planning your future turn(s) can get complicated. Also if you have to discard for your opponent's attacks, it might be nice to be able to see which cards will come up next turn from your storage.
On your turn, you can hover your mouse over any such card in play and the log area will show you all the cards 'under it':
In this case, an Archive was played, 3 cards were shown, one immediatly taken into the hand and Copper and Silver were placed under it. You can see that those cards belong together by the surrounding white rectangle.
On the next turn the Copper was taken into the hand and an new Archive was played, so now two Archives are in play. If you hover your mouse cursor over your player info bar, you see the contents of all of your storage cards together:
The Silver is still under the Archive from last turn and this turn's Archive has a Silver and a Chapel.
All of this does not only work for you and on your turn, it also works on your opponent's turn and for their storage cards as well. While it doesn't allow you to look at those cards that your opponent stored away, you can at least count them and estimate how much playing and buying power your opponent might have available.
Single Selections from many cards
Sometimes you just need to select a card from your hand. At other times, you need to select a card from the trash or your discard pile, which may be full of cards. Finding that single Witch to topdeck with your Scavenger among all those Coppers is now easier, because all those duplicates stack:
Many other single selection effects now also use this improved interface.
Conclusion
Have fun with the new cards in the Renaissance preview, and hopefully have a little easier and more informed play with the changes to the interface that work for all the cards.