The text of the card "Vengeful Lianas" reads as follows:


Now, unless I'm missing something, according to the text of that card it should activate the turn you play it. However after testing I have concluded that it has no effect until the fight after the one you play it in.

I'm not certain if this is a bug or just misleading text on the card, or it could even be that I don't understand the rules.

No, it only activates at the start of every fight, ie. the phase before the new cards you just played activate, so it will never activate on the turned it is played.

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Ty Boadicea for the awesome farewell gift. Now just to think up an avatar to go with it. Anyway, I'm still a Sap/Nomad/Pirates fan and user.

Other cards that trigger "at the start of the fight" trigger after you play cards from your hand though, not before.

The example I'm thinking of is Master-Mage Robe. This card gives a defense bonus at the start of the fight based on how many spell cards are in your hand, but the defense boost drops if you play spells out of your hand. If the effect triggered before you played cards then it wouldn't matter if you played the spells out of your hand or not.

You right, the card with "start of fight" effect give their effect after the cards are played, but not after the cards are activated.
The doesn't give any defense bonus when the card is played. Only on the next fights.
acts exactly the same. No effect when the card is played, effect on next fight.

Fight has the following steps :
- Choose the characters
- Order bonus for the characters
- Play the cards
- Activate the played cards in the display order, beginning by the cards played on previous turn.
- Physical attack
- End of combat effect (beginning by the player who has initiative)
- Characters return to the line
- Characters die
- Discard phase
- End of turn

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Collectionneur de cartes

And what I meant by start of the fight is really after what you're calling playing the cards. I didn't really consider choosing the characters, their turn bonus activating, and playing the card as being part of the fight phase but the lead up to the fight phase.

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Ty Boadicea for the awesome farewell gift. Now just to think up an avatar to go with it. Anyway, I'm still a Sap/Nomad/Pirates fan and user.

Some characters have start of the fight effect like this buddy :

Or this one :

Their effect triggers before you play cards.
So the beginning of fight is before you play cards.
But the cards are resolved at their time and not al in one time before you play cards.

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Collectionneur de cartes

Or in a case of a card I am familiar with because I play nehant zombies on occasionally and haven't ever been able to afford Ourenos, , which makes me why cards like Vengeful Lianas don't either activate before you play cards or when played first on a turn you go first when neither character has any cards attached to them.

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Ty Boadicea for the awesome farewell gift. Now just to think up an avatar to go with it. Anyway, I'm still a Sap/Nomad/Pirates fan and user.