How does HOT FEPR actually work?

HOT FEPR stands for H andle O utstanding T asks; then F inalize, E xecute, P ass, R esolve. Outstanding Tasks include the various procedures of the turn: things like readying all of your game objects on the board in the Awakening Phase, scoring battlefields in the Beginning Phase, drawing 1 in the Draw Phase, the steps of a cleanup, and the substeps of the Combat Phase, among other procedures. Each of these tasks is made outstanding when a player is expected to perform them, and a player must handle any outstanding tasks before proceeding to the next substep, step, phase, or turn. FEPR is the process by which items on the chain are processed. Finalizing an item on the chain involves making choices, paying costs, and checking legality. Executing items to the chain means a player adding an item to the chain when they have priority, or passing priority. When all players Pass priority in a row, the topmost finalized item on the chain Resolves . While there are tasks outstanding, the FEPR process will be paused in place until all tasks are handled. An initial question many players are going to have is why add this system at all? Wasn’t FEPR good enough on its own? The reason we implemented the HOT part of HOT FEPR is that prior to this system, the game only had one rule to address how and when items on the chain interact with the procedures of the game: what is now rule 305. It says “when there are no items on the chain and the turn player cannot or chooses not to perform any discretionary actions, the current phase or step of the turn ends and the next phase, step, or turn begins.” FEPR was a great starting point, but there were several places that were unclear about how it functioned. Primarily, for our purposes, how we approached the sub-rules of a given step. Do we pause to FEPR items between each sub-rule and procedure? Or between several procedures? We realized that it needed more clarity. HOT FEPR as a system tells us precisely when the FEPR process can occur during the turn and when it is precluded from occurring. While tasks are outstanding, pause FEPR and handle those tasks. Once all outstanding tasks are handled, any items on the chain undergo the FEPR process. Then when there are no more items on the chain and no outstanding tasks, we can move to the next procedure of the turn, per rule 335.3. An important point that is easy to miss in the HOT FEPR system is that it is recursive, that is the procedures which designate tasks as outstanding are themselves steps or substeps. Anytime the Core Rules Document says “the following task(s) become outstanding,” that step itself waits until any outstanding tasks and any items on the chain are completed. This will hopefully help make sense of the various procedures where HOT FEPR orders the turn. Let’s look at two examples to illustrate this: The Resolution Step of Combat can be broken down into four subsections: The Combat Cleanup Determine Combat Result Establish Control Combat Ends As we move between each of these subsections, there will be a window to perform the FEPR process on chain items, and only after the chain is empty and there are no outstanding tasks, would we proceed to the next subsection. The second example is that cleanups work in the inverse, where several tasks are queued at once and all must be completed before the FEPR process will initiate.

Related: Rule 334, Rule 335, Rule 335.3, Rule 336