Please help me understand how these cards work, or how they come in useful:

1) Professor Lake (Character): "Forced Response: After a player plays a card, until the end of the phase that player can only play cards that belong to a different faction then that card"

Say Prof Lake is played as my last card in my Operations phase. Does this response "wait" until the next card is played, no matter what phase? So, if during the action phase of the following Story Phase my opponent plays an event with a faction, does that trigger the response then? How about if the next thing that happens is I commit a character to a Story in my Commit step... do I now trigger that effect on me?

2) Cathouse (Support): Response "After you overpay for a triggered ability, choose and ready any character"

So, I play this during my operations phase, then in the Action phase after I commit to a Story and exhaust my characters, I can overpay for and Action on any card already in play (ie a character with an Action) and then unexhaust the character I just committed and exhausted. Oh, I've gone cross-eyed!

Thanks!

BrooklynMike said:

Lake doesn't 'see' himself get played, so he doesn't trigger himself. If you play a MU card while he's in play, you can't play more MU cards that phase though.

Next phase is fine, you can play, say, Binding, but it will trigger Lake again.

Committing isn't playing a card, so that won't have an effect. Playing a card is paying, then putting into play.

Professor Lake is there to stop some large/infinite combos, for example.

BrooklynMike said:

I'm not sure what the question is, but yes, you can.

Checking my undersanding of these cards and those that are similar like "Sleepwaker".

Stealthy Byakhee x3.
Cost 2.
1x Combat. 1x Arcane.
2 Skill.
Servitor.
Response: After Stealthy Byakhee commits to a story, choose an opponent’s character without an Arcane icon. That character cannot commit to the same story as Stealthy Byakhee.

Does the portion I have noted only take place if a character of your opponent's is not already committed to a story? If so that would mean the response has to be used before the opponent commits characters to the stories and cannot be used to remove committed characters, correct?

Boremac said:

No, they can't "kick characters out", just prevent committing.

Just played my first game yesterday and a few uncertainties/questions about specific cards came up:

1) F23, Steve Clarney says: "While Steve Clarney is committed to a story, all characters lose all Toughness." Does this mean that if there is a previously wounded character with Toughness in play (and not necessarily even committed to any story), it is destroyed?

2) F163, Frozen in Time: "Each player must discard 2 cards from his deck for each resource attached to one of his domains, or destroy that resource." If this only affects one domain per player, who gets to choose which? The player who won the story or every player for themselves?

3) F116, Opening the Limbo Gate: "Choose and put into play one character from each player's discard pile." Do the characters enter play all on the player's side who played this card or on their respective owner's side? Thematically I think the former would make sense but we weren't sure how it is meant to be played.

Jusaz said:

1) Yup.

2) There's been some discussion about this one. As written, every player chooses for himself, although this makes this story effect pretty weak.

3) I've always played it that the cards don't change owners. I never thought it might be different, but I'm not so sure now...

I'm pretty sure on Limbo Gate that each player keeps their own character. I don't see why it would be different. Also, not that on all stories in this set the effects are equal for both players, so that would be consistent.

For #2, the "intent" of the card during playtesting, (according to the prior CoC world champ, (the one with the lightning hands)), was not the interpretation given above. It was that for each resource attached to any one of a player's domain have to go through the "discard 2 cards or the resource" step. So the phrase "any one of their domains" really means attached to any of their domains. Gives the card a bit of bite.