Promising Future

Q: So what exactly happens when someone plays Promising Future?

Start with the player whose turn it is—probably Promising Future’s controller. That player looks at their top 5 cards, banishes one of them, and recycles the other 4. Then each other player in turn order repeats this process. Each player can see which cards the players before them have chosen. Then, starting with the next player in turn order this time, those players put the cards they chose onto the chain as pending items, with the player whose turn it is putting their item on the chain last.

Then Promising Future finishes resolving, and the players finish adding their pending items to the chain in the same order they were put there, ignoring Energy costs but still paying Power costs. They must pay mandatory additional costs (like the cost of Cruel Patron), and may choose to pay optional additional costs (like Accelerate).

Each card that’s a unit or gear resolves immediately, which may cause other things (such as play effects) to be added to the top of the chain as pending items. Any cards that can’t be played for any reason remain banished.

Once this process is done, any units or gear that were successfully played this way will be on the board, while spells chosen this way will all be on the chain in the same order they were put onto it. (This may result in spells that don’t have Action or Reaction being on the chain above other items, which is usually not possible. That’s fine.) Then, resolve the chain as normal.