1. Play a lesson card; or
2. Play a Creature card; or
3. Play a spell card; or
4. Play an item card; or
5. Draw an extra card.

You can do the same action twice instead of doing two different actions. Also, there are some types of cards you can play that require using both of your actions, such as characters and adventures.

Lesson cards
- Lessons give you the power you need to play other cards. When you play a lesson card, all you need to do is take it from your hand and play it on the table. Lessons stay in play after you play them.

Creature Cards
- Creatures damage your opponents deck - not other creatures. They stay in play after you play them.

Power needed: In one corner of the card, you will see a number and a lesson symbol. You must have this many lessons on the table to play this card, and only one of them has to match the lesson symbol. For example, Surly Hound has a cost of 3 (Care of Magical Creatures). To play it, you'd need 3 lessons in play, and at least one of them would have to be a Care of Magical Creatures lesson. Health: If your opponent's spell does this much damage or more to your Creature, discard it. Damage each turn: Your opponent discards this many cards from his or her deck every turn. This damage happens on step 3 of your turn, so your Creature doesn't do damage on the turn that you play it.

Spell Cards
- To play a Spell card, show it to your opponent, do what it says, and put it in your discard pile. Spells don't stay on the table like other cards do.

Power needed: You must have this many lessons in play to cast this card, but only one of them has to match the symbol on the card. What the card does: This is what happens when you play the card. Some cards do damage to your opponent or to one creature on the table.

Adventure Cards
- Adventure cards are a kind of card you can play to give your opponent a challenge to overcome. You don't need any lessons on the table to play Adventure cards, but you do have to use 2 Actions to play them instead of 1. Each player can only have one Adventure in play at a time, so if you already have an Adventure in play, you can't play another one.
An Adventure card has three parts:
Effect: This is what the Adventure does as long as it's in play.
To Solve: This is what your opponent needs to do to solve the Adventure. She can do this any time during her turn after she's drawn her first card, but she has to solve the Adventure all at once, not one piece at a time
Opponent's Reward: If your opponent solves the Adventure, He or she's the school hero! The Adventure card will say what her reward is. Then you put the Adventure in your discard pile.

Item Cards
-Items are a lot like Creatures: you need to have a certain amount of Power to play them, and then once you play them they stay on the table (unless some card tells you to discard them). Some Items (Wands and Cauldrons) give you extra Power - just like Lessons, but even better. Other Items have all sorts of different effects.

Character Cards
- When you play the Harry Potter TCG, you always start with a character in play that represents you. In the advanced game, you can also have other Character cards in your deck. Just like Adventure cards, you play a Character card by using up 2 Actions, and it doesn't matter if you have any Lessons or not. Once you've played a Character card, you can use its special ability. Whether it's the Character you started with or one you played during the game, you can use the ability any time after you've drawn your first card. Your starting Character is special in another important way: it can never be discarded from play for any reason. For example, if a card tells you to discard three cards from play, you can't pick your starting character as one of those three. As long as the game is still going, your starting character is there - because it's you!

Some card has stated their uniqueness, so for each unique cards you may only put one in play.
The meaning of in play means that the cards is lay on the table,not in the discard pile or in your hands.