If the second player passes his turn, the round ends immediately without end of turn effects kicking in. Now that I think about it, that does seem counter intuitive, but I do believe that it's intended: it's how you play around cards like cow carcass.
After opening my closed beta keg rewards and considering my card selection I decided to run a Bran Cerys/Queensguard deck. Seems kinda weak honestly: the most you can get out of Cerys is to be able to res her all 3 rounds, and that's just a 7+7+7 = 21 power contribution at best (7 if you discard Cerys with Bran). 2 notable buffs to the archetype are 1. weather no longer instantly wiping out all your strength on melee row, and 2. Doomed is "banish when destroyed", not perma death, which means you can do things like discard a Priestess of Freya to Ermion, then res a Priestess with a Priestess, and have them count towards Cerys' res counter.
SK golds seem like they're all kinda trash :/