I'm pretty sure I can do this, but would just like to check.

I draw Dwarven Tomb at resource phase, then return Stand and Fight from my discard pile, then put Gandalf into play from my discard pile.

Yes?

No. You can play Dwarven Tomb and then return Stand and Fight from your discard pile, but the ally you put into play from your discard pile must be from "any sphere." Gandalf does not belong to a sphere -- he is a neutral ally. The FAQ addresses this explicitly (see first page, numbered 2):

Stand and Fight CORE 51

Stand and Fight cannot return neutral allies from the discard pile, as neutral cards do not belong to “any sphere.”

A lot of players think this ruling is unreasonable, since the text in parentheses on the card is a clarification, which many interpret as meaning that it is there to clarify that the ally being retrieved does not need to be restricted to the Spirit sphere (i.e., many think it would be reasonable to retrieve ally Gandalf based on the wording of the card)… but for the time being, the official ruling is what it is. Make of it what you will.

You could, however, use Dwarven Tomb and then bring back Stand and Fight out of your discard pile to retrieve an ally from any sphere (save a neutral ally) from the discard pile and pay to put him into play under your control. If you were playing a Spirit/Lore deck, for example, you could use that strategy to pull Beorn (Tactics ally) out of a discard pile and bring him into play under your control (even when playing solo without a Tactics hero, I have sometimes included Beorn in a deck, sent him to the discard pile using Eowyn's "quest boost card discard action", then later used Stand and Fight to bring Beorn into play). I hope this helps you make the most of a disappointing official ruling!

Wow! That is awesome and a shock . I might have to replay the quest. Yes, I have used Beorn before in the tactic that you stated and yes, I am playing a spirit/lore deck (Ewoyn, Dunhere, Denethor).

Thanks very much for this. It will greatly affect my gameplay.

I never understood the Stand and Fight ruling - it doesn't make sense to me.

The card states "CAN belong to ANY sphere". For the ruling (that you can't play sphereless allies with S&F) to be coherent with its reasoning, it should read "MUST belong to A sphere".

Personally, I choose to ignore it.

Yeah, I know what you mean, Gibby.

I've gone along with FFG's ruling in my games, even though it seems wrong to me (and a lot of players). Might be worth asking Caleb if the current devs would reconsider that ruling (which is probably several years old now and made by previous devs)?

But I guess that's the nice thing about this game being non-competitive. You can interpret/ignore "rulings," or make your own house rules as you wish. Still, it would be nice to have consistency/coherence from the developers in the application/clarification of rules and card text.

I never understood the Stand and Fight ruling - it doesn't make sense to me.

The card states "CAN belong to ANY sphere". For the ruling (that you can't play sphereless allies with S&F) to be coherent with its reasoning, it should read "MUST belong to A sphere".

Personally, I choose to ignore it.

So where is the difference? Neutral is not a sphere and I think thats a logical ruling. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to play neutral cards with ressources from any spheres because you wouldn't have a ressource match and therefore you could only play neutral cards with ressources from the new Gandalf hero.

I never understood the Stand and Fight ruling - it doesn't make sense to me.

The card states "CAN belong to ANY sphere". For the ruling (that you can't play sphereless allies with S&F) to be coherent with its reasoning, it should read "MUST belong to A sphere".

Personally, I choose to ignore it.

So where is the difference? Neutral is not a sphere and I think thats a logical ruling. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to play neutral cards with ressources from any spheres because you wouldn't have a ressource match and therefore you could only play neutral cards with ressources from the new Gandalf hero.

I like this horse dead and well-kicked.

Yes, now A Good Harvest and Hero Gandalf bring new light to the ruling, since they were created post-ruling. But, at the time, it is very hard to believe that Stand and Fight was created with that ruling in mind. Instead, it feels the ruling was made to counteract how powerful Gandalf (ally, core) was (and still is), since he was the only one the ruling pertained to early on (and Radahast during the Mirkwood Cycle...and no one was going to use Stand and Fight on him anyway).

I never understood the Stand and Fight ruling - it doesn't make sense to me.

The card states "CAN belong to ANY sphere". For the ruling (that you can't play sphereless allies with S&F) to be coherent with its reasoning, it should read "MUST belong to A sphere".

Personally, I choose to ignore it.

So where is the difference? Neutral is not a sphere and I think thats a logical ruling. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to play neutral cards with ressources from any spheres because you wouldn't have a ressource match and therefore you could only play neutral cards with ressources from the new Gandalf hero.

I like this horse dead and well-kicked.

Yes, now A Good Harvest and Hero Gandalf bring new light to the ruling, since they were created post-ruling. But, at the time, it is very hard to believe that Stand and Fight was created with that ruling in mind. Instead, it feels the ruling was made to counteract how powerful Gandalf (ally, core) was (and still is), since he was the only one the ruling pertained to early on (and Radahast during the Mirkwood Cycle...and no one was going to use Stand and Fight on him anyway).

Text should read: must belong to any sphere…..

Crabble,

I don't fully understand which are the instances of sphere rule related issues that your question "So where is the difference" pertains to.

Let me take a blind stab and go through an examples of how Stand and Fight and A Good Harvest should work given their wording.

A Good Harvest. The card reads:

Action: Name a sphere. Until the end of the phase, you can spend resources of any sphere when paying for cards that belong to the named sphere.

Example of allowed action: Name Tactics and play Thicket of Spears paying with a resource from say Aragorn, Denethor, and Baggin's sphere Bilbo each.

Example of invalid action: Name Tactics and play Thicket of Spears paying with a resource from Aragorn, Denethor and Gandalf (Hero).

In the latter case Gandalf does not belong to a sphere and hence his resources cannot be spend as tactics resources, even with A Good Harvest.

Stand and Fight:

Action: Choose an ally with a printed cost of X in any player's discard pile. Put that ally into play under your control. (The chosen ally can belong to any sphere of influence.)

It seems painfully obvious that the text in parentheses was added as a clarification that the ability to recur allies is not restricted to Spirit allies. If its purpose had been to restrict its usage by excluding neutral allies, then it would have read "The chosen ally MUST belong to A (or ANY) sphere" or even "Neutral allies cannot be chosen". Also, in that case the role of the parentheses would not be very clear.

Ignoring the added reminder text, nobody would have doubted that the card can be used to return Gandalf from a discard pile to play, except for those doubting that anything outside the Spirit sphere can be returned at all. I admit that the reminder text as it is phrased is a bit awkwardly. My guess is that the phrasing is an artefact of a designer not being aware of the existence an allies that does not belong to any sphere (Gandalf). If there were no sphereless allies, then the text would be perfectly clear in its function to express that the ability is not restricted to Spirit allies. The intention of the phrasing becomes less clear and confusing in the presence of the coreset's sphereless ally. However, even with the confusing wording, Gandalf is not excluded as a target (since it is nowhere stated that the chosen ally HAS TO (or MUST) belong to a sphere.

The ruling that followed, as MightyRauros pointed out, was probably to prevent overly excessive Gandalf abuse in the early days of the game (as if Sneak Attack * 3 (6 with dwarven tomb) plus three hardcasts per player weren't enough). While I think that this was not the most appropriate way to address the Gandalf issue, I respect the designers' intention. What bothers me about the ruling is that it attempts to retcon the misguided reminder text by bending it beyond any reasonable interpretation of its original phrasing.

If you just consider the Stand and Fight ruling an "errata" rather than a "clarification," we can drop all the passive aggressive silliness that comes up every time we discuss this card.

If you just consider the Stand and Fight ruling an "errata" rather than a "clarification," we can drop all the passive aggressive silliness that comes up every time we discuss this card.

Well spoken.

Back in the days where we had a limited card pool availabe this ruling might have been "big" and surely could have been better by making an errata to Stand and Fight itself rather then making a "new" rule like they way they did but you know I think I got used to it over the last years and with 3*Tome of Atanator and 3*Sneakattack you can still do a fair amount of legal Gandalf abuse if you want.

For the record, I did not intend to engage in "passive aggressive silliness." As a newish player who has only played Core + Mirkwood cycle, I do not have access to a broad card pool, have not "snuck a peek" of cards in sets I have not yet played (I like to be surprised when I get a new set) that may render Stand and Fight obsolete, and was not aware of the history of discussions regarding the Stand and Fight card.

I don't know how long Gibby has been playing the game, how large a card pool he has, or the extent to which he has followed the Stand and Fight debate over the years. And I did not research the history of the Stand and Fight debate on these boards before I replied to jimjim19681968's question… I just quoted the FAQ (which remains the only official document on the subject put out by FFG beyond the Core rules), gave my two cents, and evidently a number of players including Gibby think the ruling and wording of the FAQ for Stand and Fight are inadequate (whether as a clarification or errata), which is a reasonable position, and chimed in.

At the risk of sounding passive aggressive… Is it really necessary to accuse those of us who don't have the years of experience, card pool, and historical knowledge of discussions regarding a specific card of engaging in "passive aggressive silliness" or "Gandalf abuse"???

And don't get me wrong… I can easily live with the Stand and Fight ruling. It's not like being able to fetch Gandalf out of the discard pile using Stand and Fight is critical to victory in the majority of games, even with limited (Core only?) card pools. The bigger issue here is how some posters/players are making assumptions and characterizing other posters/players unfairly.

Grand Spleen, I respect your knowledge and experience of the game, and the tone of most of your posts on these boards is both knowledgeable and respectful… but I think that you yourself came across as passive aggressive and full of assumptions this time around that aren't exactly charitable to newbies. Just calling it as I see it, no disrespect intended…

I hope you'll forgive me for "standing and fighting" … and I hope this discussion will not devolve further.

EDIT: Given how many times the Core set has been reprinted (with "errataed" cards corrected), FFG could easily have corrected Stand and Fight in its latest printing, as well, but for whatever reason has decided not to.

If you just consider the Stand and Fight ruling an "errata" rather than a "clarification," we can drop all the passive aggressive silliness that comes up every time we discuss this card.

Really? I see none of that passive-aggression here. Maybe a bit of silliness, but that is always a given here The discussion is interesting and quite civil, is it not? perhaps I missed something.

Anyway, I grant the topic is for many discussed to death. But not all of us have been here from the inception of the game and something so controversial as this ruling is bound to come up once in a while. It is because it shocks majority of players who hear it for the first time. I know I was devastated

Still, you are very right Grand Spleen that all this discussions would have been avoided by doing an errata.

Unfortunately, the designers decided to publish official interpretation instead. So since they chose that way, they were not supposed to alter the rules (which is natural and expected form time to time), but to act within the existing rules system. And most players felt the Stand and Fight ruling was absolutely not in line with the game system. It seemed like a random and arbitrary modification through means that were designed not to change the principles, but only to clarify minute details.

The rulebook, the card texts, FAQs and official interpretations all create the rules of the game we love. The illogical ruling on Stand and Fight damages the cohesiveness of the system. It makes the rules less comprehensible in general, and adds totally unnecessary layer of casuistry that we need to observe. Of course we can shrug it off as not important ("just a game", "co-op only so do what you like"), but then we can do that about any aspect of this game.

That is why people keep discussing it, and that is why perhaps it would be best to address this properly one day. I would love a new reverse ruling. Perhaps it is not possible for some reasons (balance?). But if not, an errata to solve once and for all would be nice. Until then, this for me is a gaping hole in the otherwise generally quality fabric of the game.

Then in the first faq ffg change the rules. Which is make sense. That was to broken combo…..

Perhaps it did, I can certainly be persuaded to believe that. But publishing a casuistic and controversial ruling is not the proper way to address it. It creates more trouble than it solves. It just feels like bending the rules so that the card sort-of, kinda works the way you wish, instead of actually fixing the text.

BTW, I actually always felt that the SaF ruling just "happened", without any greater sense or reason. But maybe I am wrong, it is just my impression.

Yes, something like that would do. So why not do it.

My own passive aggressive silliness is included in my original tactless snipe.

I was overreacting to some wording in multiple persons' posts that I shall refrain from pointing to. I apologize if offense was taken!

As far as I'm concerned, we're all good, Grand Spleen… but thanks for the apology (don't know if it was the wording in one of my posts you took objection to... if it was, then I'll return the apology… didn't mean to rub anyone the wrong way).

I simply love how bringing Gandalf back with Stand and Fight paying 5 spirit resources is a broken combo, while taking the full benefit of him by paying just 1 leadershit resource is JUST FRIGGIN FINE!

This ruling is one of the most stpupid ones, given the circumstances.

You sire, need a Very Good Meal

Also, when gandalf comes up 3 times, this is very good, when he comes up 6 times, this is insane, when he comes up 9 times, this is totally crazy, when he comes up 15 times (with both records on sneak attack and stand and fight), you're pushing it too far, and when you add attachment recovery and dwarven tomb, this is just pure sillyness.

Well, the good things about stand and fight is when you are playing on discarding your own deck, this way stand and fight is better than sneak attack because you might have gandalf and stand and fight earlier than gandalf and sneak attack. Of course with the limitation that it's more expansive... also he remains the whole turn compared to just one phase.

Well, I don't see any bad wording on stand and fight myself and don't need it for the gandalf I don't play...

From above, Gibby made me realise we actually can't play Ticket of Spears with Gandalf hero after using A Good Harvest since Gandalf doesn't belong to a sphere UNLESS Thicket of Spears is the top card of your deck and you use Gandalf's ability which gives him Tactics.. so that's still a good combo.

The thing is, with Sneak Attack you can play Gandalf literally 7 times per turn. 7! In one turn.

And yet they nerf harmless Stand and Fight. Brilliant.

Also, when gandalf comes up 3 times, this is very good, when he comes up 6 times, this is insane, when he comes up 9 times, this is totally crazy, when he comes up 15 times (with both records on sneak attack and stand and fight), you're pushing it too far, and when you add attachment recovery and dwarven tomb, this is just pure sillyness.

Well, yes, but then you are still paying the cost and using a card each time. It is not an infinite loop. Sure, this is powerful, it is not broken or excessive in any way. Besides, it does seem thematic (its Gandalf!), though I understand for some this might be irrelevant from a game mechanics perspective.

And yet they nerf harmless Stand and Fight. Brilliant.

yea, the nerfing of SaF is a fact. Though it always felt to me more like a case of ill judgment than a willful balancing.