The rule book describes the process of sealing a card as revealing and does not call it drawing. Does this means that if you need to shuffle your deck to seal a card, you avoid the penalty since it is not technically drawing a card?
top of page

To see this working, head to your live site.
38 Comments
Thanks! This makes the game easier against a few entities, so I can see why they decided to rule it this way.
Thanks! This makes the game easier against a few entities, so I can see why they decided to rule it this way.
For people (like me) coming late to this thread and wanting an official response to the above, here's the latest official ruling I could find.
Reference from 15/1 2021, confirmed as official ruling by Etherfields group admin Jordan Luminais: https://www.facebook.com/groups/etherfields/posts/1217650415297154/?comment_id=1217663141962548
"[...] when your deck is empty you can't seal and you are not supposed to reshuffle in order to seal. So you cannot pay for actions that require you to seal a card, but you don't get penalized by entities that would make you seal any number of cards. Next time you need to draw you will reshuffle, suffer distress or seal 3, and just keep on as normal."
bumping
These two possible interpretations are both possible. The third is that you can pay a sealing cost with an empty deck and not seal or shuffle. We need a ruling from A/R. Please!
I would play it like When forced to seal with an empty deck - no reshuffle, no penalty, no sealing
When choosing to seal for own use or not choosing another possible punishment - shuffle, get penalty, seal
This is the only way to not break the game, nice to know that the game cant force a seal to also give you penalty
I think the simplest solution is to treat sealing like drawing and do a reshuffle if need be and take the associated penalty with it. Will it make the game slightly harder? I don't know, but this makes the most sense to me as sealing is a punishment and I don't want to game the system if I have an empty deck. Also, I am not locked out of any actions this way :)
I like @David Lewis's solution. It clashes with AR's first atempt at addressing the matter in the other post, but it matches their last answer in this one. It would be cool to have an official estatement to finally settle the question, though.
Bumping this thread as we are still waiting a new clarification clarifying the last clarification :D The first time it was asked what to do when sealing with an empty deck (https://www.etherfields-secrets.com/forum/other-cards/sealing-cards-with-empty-influence-deck) the answer was that you reshuffle, seal the cards, but don't take the reshuffling penalty as it happens out of the Draw step. Then, the Draw step ruling was FAQed to mean "when you have to draw a card". This seemed consistent with the previous answer, as sealing is still not drawing and you would reshuffle but take no penalty. But five days ago, AR wrote in this thread "In this case - if you should Seal cards, but you do not currently have cards in your Influence deck, you do NOT need to reshuffle, so you are NOT Sealing your cards. (We have very deliberately left out the term "drawing cards" here.)". So what is it? I think we all agree that when you need to seal cards to fulfill an action requirement, you cannot do it with an empty deck. But what about when you have to seal cards as a result of a penalty? Do you reshuffle without extra penalty as per the first answer? Or do you avoid sealing due to having an empty deck, as per the second?
From my understanding, this is how it goes:
- if Sealing is not triggered by the player (for example, an Entity effect), and you don't have in the deck the required amount of cards, you Seal the cards you have and remain with an empty deck. When you'll need to Draw, you will reshuffle and get the penalty.
- if Sealing is triggered by the player (for example, as ludevik said, an Action that requires you to spend X Intend and Seal X cards), and you don't have in your deck enough cards to Seal, I think that you cannot perform that action, since you cannot pay the cost in its entirety.
This is just a supposition, though. I'm sorry I have to repeat this but... let's wait for an official response (hoping that the guys at AR won't get mad at us) 🌻