Cool new card! I see some major skill lowering destroying things.

Only one point of confusion though, is the "Deep One" effect referring to the card Title or Subtype? I think it's referring to Title but it certainly seems like Subtype would make a lot more sense.

See the story @ www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp

Yeah, the templating turned out a little odd. I'd say it's impossible to change a title of a card, since it would create funny effects with unique characters, so apply it to the subtype.

If called "deep one" means having the Deep One subtype, the templating is far from odd, it is very very out of the window. But if it gets the accepted ruling, it will be funny how Shub Nigurrath is a card called Ancient One and A Single Glimpse a card called spell.

Fortunately, even if this dreamlands insanity inducing interpretation gets through by developer's fiat, at least no other cards use the word "call" or "called".

Really, was it that difficult to text it: "... Those characters are now considered skill 1 CCA characters with no abilities and the Deep One subtype".

I'd love to read Donald or Ron input on this card. Was it in the "corrections which Nate ignored" list?

Edit:

There is (at least) one mistake in the article:

"Furthermore, it overrides most of the transformed characters’ functions, including keywords like toughness and willpower, effectively blanking them"

Not really.

Toughness, Loyal, Fast, Invulenrable/Invulnerability, Heroic, Villainous and a few else are Keywords. Abilities, triggered or passive are another kind of characteristic (checked both in the current rulings and in the FAQ). Using an ability blanking effect to remove keyword(s) is like using Deflect Harm to stop a Sacrificial Offerings.

I sort of kind of almost like The Thing, however.

On the article mistake: actually I can see how considering a target character a character with some other stats could be interpreted as: "the old char is no more, the new one has only the (new) stats and inherits nothing from the old one".

Then again, if the "char called deep one" is a new char and inherits nothing from the previous one, a few questions arise:

1) What is the "character now called Deep One" cost? Undefined => 0

2) What is the "c.n.c.D.O" Faction? Undefined doesn't mean neutral so I guess that is pretty much a hole in the rules.

It looks like it is an heck of confusingly bad written card.

"9. Keyword: Keywords are found at the top of a card’s text effect, in bold type. Examples include Heroic, Willpower, and Fast. The presence of a keyword indicates that the card has one of the special abilities described later in these rules."

Thus Keywords are short placeholders for larger static/passive abilities.

Woopsie.

About inheritances:

does the creature called Deep One inherit Faction, Cost, Subtypes / Title, Transiency from the original card?

Is there any rulings on called referring to the subtype?

Carioz said:

They inherit nothing, but 'are concidered' characters with the specified characteristics. So, they are factionless (and thus neutral.)

So, essentially they all become the card:

Deep One - Neutral - cost 0
Character - CCA Skill 1
No subtypes, No text.

Although the 'printed' version remains the same as the original card. Which will probably prevent uniques from doubling.

While I do agree the card makes the character in play non-factioned (which could mean they are neutral, but I would have to check relevant rulings before being sure -I seem to recall the ruling going: "neutral cards have no faction", which would not make "cards with no faction are neutral" true-), I think a bit of clarification on the loss of factions would make the whole thing clearer. For example do Wishes and Encounters and Mutables inherit faction? I was under the understanding they did.

I am threading on the rules question section a bit here:

How do "considerations" (the deeponeificator) and "countings" (polar something) interact with each other and icon losses and gain for the final sum. We have extensive rules on icon addition and removal order, but no example on how "consider this having CCA" interacts with loses C (as considering is neither a gain nor a loss, just a change)?

BTW, the Deeponeificator seem to have potential, I am just trying to figure out how it works.

Edit:

****, question galore. How would Deeponeificator interact with an hypotetical skill 3 character having "-this-'s text cannot be blanked or treated as if it were blank"?

Carioz said:

These are some valid concerns. Hmmmm... Maybe the resulting 'Deep Ones' are mostly like 'mutables' in that perspective. And thus still inherit faction.

I am threading on the rules question section a bit here:

Carioz said:

Conciderations work like "Treat As" like Forgotten Isle does. Counting just work in specific situations, like calculating struggle succes.

I remember from somewhere that a 'fixed change' would be dealt with first, then modifiers, then limitations.

Carioz said:

Generally, yeah, the changes to the base character are quite useful.

Carioz said:

I would say these modifications aren't concidered blanking, which makes it very useful. To illustrate this; Cards that remove keywords (partially blanking a card) won't be stopped by an 'unblankable' character. Since it's not actually blanking, but extensive modifications, the 'no blanking' clause doesn't work.

Wow, the art on the latest version of Julia Brown may be the most disturbing yet !!

Great article, Marius. Hope we get more teasers.

Chick

I am having a hard time with the ruling that this card blanks out the characters Keywords.

1st off, although Keywords may have abilities attached to them they are not abilities they are Keywords. What is the ability of Heroic? It's not an ability it's a limiter. I don't know if there is terminology for this in CoC, but I know LotR used to call these Loaded Keywords (keywords with abilities) and Unloaded Keywords. It is probably not referred to in this way in CoC, but the same principle stands.

2nd, there are 2 cards in the LCG format that blank Keywords and blank abilities, The Antartic Yeti and Called by Azathoth. Yeti says "Treat that character as if its printed text box were blank." CbA says "Treat attached character as if its printed text box were blank."

Notice how neither card mentions ability? They reference the entire text box and that is why keywords and abilities are blanked. If keywords are abilities, why doesn't Yeti say "Treat that character as if its printed abilities were blank?"

Eye of the Deep does no such thing. It just says that they have no abilities. They should keep their keywords. If the Eye of the Deep said that their text box is blanked and replaced by..... then it would work. Consistancy in wording should have been used if it works according to the ruling and IMHO needs errattaed to make it work the way it was designed or the ruling needs changed to follow the text of the card. The card does not accurately do what it says it does.

I take it to mean that they do keep their keywords, however those keywords cannot trigger any abilities. As pointed out, "Heroic" and "Villanous" are interesting in that they don't trigger abilities, so I guess they stay.

I am also of the opinion that faction stays - I don't see why it would go away?

TheProfessor said:

The problem with this is that Eye of the Deep says that the characters have no abilities. Keywords were said to be included because Keywords have abilities. So Logically that arguement says Keywords = Abilities.

Now if K = A logically, then all instances of K must = A for the statement to be true.

You agree that Heroic and Villianous aren't abilities and would not be affected by Eye of the Deep. So not all instances of K = A, and therefore the statement K = A is false. Keywords do not equal Abilities. Keywords should not be affected by Eye of the Deep.

Slightly off topic, but Toughness is not an ability either. It is a statistic. It's just an odd way to mark HP for a character. If toughness is an ability, so is Skill and so are each struggle icon and the cost of the card.

RE: faction inheritance.

Maybe I am reading too much into the card but the reiteration of character ("Those characters are considered skill 1 characters ") is either a redundant choice of words (i.e. the card could have been easilly worded: "Those characters are considered having skill 1, CCA, no abilities and being titled "deep one" ") or it must mean something -if it doesn't, why include it?-.

The way I read it, and I, as usual, could be very wrong, is that the chosen characters are now considered another character. Since there are no rulings in the FAQ on such trasformations and previous examples are a bit off -Wishes and Encounters use the "put into play" mechanic while Mutables use "become" and they need to explicit the fact that such cards transofrm into character because they are of different type-, I do not know if the new "deep one" character inherits anything from the previous one. My gut feeling would be: "it doesn't inherit anything", but that's just a coin toss, because there is no relevant ruling on such cases.

If the new char inherit nothing, it has no faction. Now, this would open another can of worms: the rules explicitly say "Cards with a grey border and no specific resource symbol are neutral. Neutral cards do not belong to any faction.".

WARNING EXTREME NITPICKING AHEAD, AVOID READING IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE SOME POOR RULESET BEING STRETCHED BY A RULES LAWYER

The "deep one" has neither a grey border nor it lacks a resource faction, so it doesn't qualify for the sufficient condition to be neutrals. On the other hand it qualifies for the necessary condition (having no faction), but that alone isn't enough to grant it the neutral faction. So, rules-as-written, it is simply factionless.

Of course if the redundant "characters" means nothing (and that's what I am inclined to think, given how lax has been the WB era templating), just read the card "Those characters are considered having skill 1, CCA, no abilities and being titled "deep one" and ignore the problem.

RE: Keywords inheritance

If the Deeponeificator means "Those characters are considered having skill 1, CCA, no abilities and being titled "deep one", then all targeted characters lose their keywords, as keywords are abilities (thanks to Marius for having pointed that out where in the manual it says that they are) and the card makes you consider characters as having no abilities. In this interpretation, Subtypes and Faction stay the same with the char.

If the Deeponeificator means "Those characters are now new characters", well, the no abilities clause still works, and the "deep one" loses all abilities, keywords included.

Any way, keywords are lost.

I got this official ruling:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Being "called" Deep One does not change the card's Subtype, nor does it change the card's Title. Essentially, it adds a second title to the card that is meaningless with regard to game play (at least within the current card pool). (Kind of like a sub-title.) So if Dark Druid gets hit with Eye of the Deep, its title is still Dark Druid, but it is also called "Deep One."

Keywords are a sub-category of card abilities, and are washed away by the "no abilities" effect. (On page 5 of the rulebook they are defined as such: "The presence of a keyword indicates that a card has one of the special abilities described later in these rules." Abilities (and keywords) gained through other card effects are also eliminated by the "no abilities" bit.

The skill and icons are changed to those referenced on Eye of the Deep.

Cost and faction affiliation are not referenced and are not altered by this card.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I can live with most of this ruling.

Being "called" Deep One does not change the card's Subtype, nor does it change the card's Title. Essentially, it adds a second title to the card that is meaningless with regard to game play (at least within the current card pool). (Kind of like a sub-title.) So if Dark Druid gets hit with Eye of the Deep, its title is still Dark Druid, but it is also called "Deep One."

This specific part, however, smells badly of developer's fiat. Now, we have a new attribute to consider in a card, it's "call". Randomly introducing new terminology in a game just to avoid modifying a card text is not the best thing possible, but I think I have already said it , around the time AP 4 was published.

Also I see no reference to Sub-types, should we assume they are inherited (as they do not fall in the no ability clause)?

It's "Call" of Cthulhu after all.

There have been previous 'call' cards. Julia and Brotherhood worked on a similar basis. Rubbed Out interacts with it.

I too, would have prefered a 'subtype' kind of solution with it. The only mechanical difference is that name calling doesn't get erased by an Isle.

There are no cards but Deeponeificator that interact with the attribute called: all the example you brought are keyed off either the title or the name of a card.

The real problem with "call" being an attribute sepatated from the name and the title of the card is: it is very confusing.

With this ruling we have named = titled != called.

Rubbed Out does not mass work on "deep one"s, since they are called "deep one" but named or titled whatevers.

If it were called = named = titled I would have not fazed, but adding a new attribute, confusingly similar to other two which can instead be used interchangeably just begs for confusion.

With what the official ruling says regarding card title Rubbed Out wouldn't work.

Title: Rubbed Out

Cost: 5 Cthulhu

Subtype: Disaster

Text: Action : choose and destroy a character or support card. Then, destroy all cards in play with the same name as that card.

The ruling states that the card "adds a second title to the card that is meaningless with regard to game play" but still retains its original title. So if you played Rubbed Out on the Dark Druid that had been "Deep One"d, Rubbed Out would only be looking for other "title" Dark Druid/Deep One's. Not a "title" Clever Zoog/Deep One.

@Dark Young

Actually the interaction between "called" attribute and Rubbed Out is even more confusing: I am trying to understand how it works but it's kinda difficult.

-

Being "called" Deep One does not change the card's Subtype, nor does it change the card's Title. Essentially, it adds a second title to the card that is meaningless with regard to game play (at least within the current card pool). (Kind of like a sub-title.) So if Dark Druid gets hit with Eye of the Deep, its title is still Dark Druid, but it is also called "Deep One."

-

Ok, let's do this with pendantry: Once Dark Druid is Deeponeified, it's title is Dark Druid, it is called Deep One and it's second title is Deep One.

Once You hit him with Rubbed Out, it checks for cards with the same name: I'll assume for the sake of simplicity that name = title.

Now, Dark Druid / Deep One title is both Dark Druid and Deep One. What chars does Rubbed Out look for?

Cards with both Dark Druid and Deep One as their title? Then by extension Dark Druid / Deep One title is no more "Dark Druid" and "Deep One", but Dark Druid / Deep One.

Cards with either Dark Druid or Deep One? Then must one be chosen or does it automatically looks for one, thene the other?

I agree with Carioz, but my thought is falling into the statment "it adds a second title to the card that is meaningless with regard to game play". If it's meaningless I can't imagine that something like Rubbed Out would be able to target it.

Well, either it is "meaningless", or it "adds a second title". Since, in the official ruling, it does both, barring other clarifications, this official ruling seems contradictory.