Each player draws from his deck until he has one card for each sortie left in the battle; this is his base hand size. For example, in the first sortie of a battle, each player draws seven cards. In the second, each player draws until he has six; if a player already has six or more cards, he doesn’t draw.

If at any time a player must draw a card but there are none in his deck, he shuffles his discard pile into his deck before drawing.

After the first draw stage in a battle, there is a rally stage. The first player may choose to rally, spending one karma to discard any two cards and draw two cards from his deck to replace them. He may rally as many times as he desires or until he is out of karma. The player to his left may then rally until satisfied, and so on until each player has had an opportunity to rally.