This would seem to give a huge advantage to experienced players who know the cards and tactics off the top of their heads. New players need to read the cards, mouse over things, etc. Plus they aren't going to know that it works this way.

This is going to make life difficult for newbies...thus bad for the game in my opinion.

I would humbly suggest that this be changed.

I agree with Zultor that reading cards + time control + losing initiative every turn does put them at a disadvantage... but in my own experience, I didn't play another person until I had played the AI almost 50 times, so it didn't bother me that much...

why doesnt it just alternate? Thats kinda lame if someone has banshee's or timesaps against you. That doesn't seem a fair way of doing it at all. Poor dial up players....

The game does conspire against me... i knew it!!!!!

I totally agree. Or, even some kind of simple metric of who's "winning" to figure it out -- e.g., whoever has fewer flux on the board, or glory, or something... although I guess the problem is that in most of these cases there would be a tie most of the time. One common things in games is just whoever passed first -- if you were done first, then you go first. In a "stable" situation then who goes first would not change, but a player could always choose to change it by not doing something else... yet another strategic trade-off.