I just played a fantastic game of AH over the weekend, but I ran into a situation that has never occurred to me before.

We were using Mandy Thompson, and I managed to trigger her Personal Story success. The result is that a location on the board with a gate is chose and the location is sealed and the gate removed.

My dilemma is that when this triggered, the mystic environment that prevents investigators from sealing gates ("No One Can Help You Now") happened to be in play.

We played that the gate was sealed anyway using the logic that personal stories did not exist at the time the of the writing of the Mythos card and that Mandy's story and the name of the card imply that with success the investigators are breaking the rules of the prophecy that foresee unescapable doom. The name of the story card, as example, is "Breaking the Chain." Additionally, the pass condition requires 5 gate bounces off of sealed locations (which is not all that easy to do...and if you managed that, what's the harm in another seal?)

Is there an official ruling or errata that suggests personal stories supercede other effects or anything opposing our ruling?

Soakman,

that's an interesting situation. I'd have ruled the other way, tho, basically because the Mythos card's wording uses the expression " cannot ". In many cases, in other FFG games, such a keyword is used to indicate an effect that cannot be overcome by other effect, i.e., it's absolute. Additionally, thematically I like the idea that Mythos are stronger than Mandy's power.

If we look at the wording on Mandy's PS, the sensation I have grows stronger: the card clearly says "close and seal a gate of your choice"; No one can help you nwo says gates can be closed, but not sealed, so that in the end, Mandy's PS would have allowed (in my reading, at least) to close any gate on the board, but not to seal it.

Just my two cents

Julia, I also thought this may be the case. But it was one of those situations where I wondered if the original card design was limited by a lack of foresight regarding added mechanics included in later expansions.

Thanks for your two cents. I will probably lean toward that result should I encounter this again (looks like Tibs and another also back your thoughts so we will call it consensus.)

One further question: Was it ever established whether or not Mandy receives the gate trophy from the closed/sealed gate? I can't remember, but I though there was some strange wording that suggests that trophies are always collected unless it is said specifically that they are NOT collected.

And finally... the forum spam that is occuring right now is ridiculous. there are now 20-ish pages of spam threads. Did anyone contact a mod about them yet?

The 20 pages of Korean spam (not as delicious as you might think ) is gone!

As for keeping the trophy, the closest reference I can find is this FAQ entry:

Encounters that Close Gates
Some encounters or other card effects state that a gate closes or that the investigator may close a gate if they wish. In such cases, the gate marker is not taken as a trophy, but is instead placed on the bottom of the gate marker stack. This gate cannot be sealed, even if the current player has an Elder Sign, sufficient Clue tokens to seal it, or both.

Mandy's not specifically addressed by this FAQ, but other effects closing / sealing gates are. So, I'd say she does not keep the trophy (you can read it also this way: one trophy = 1 blessing or 2 clues; a free seal AND a blessing sounds a little too rewarding for me)

As for the spam... dunno. But it's really irritating. Especially because some of us subscribed to the forum to receive notifications of new threads and automatically had their email spammed to death in this way. It's fun, now it's almost two years since I started testing games for FFG, and my email is still considered "spam" by their filters, while real spammers are actually able to reach their servers and assault on a daily basis their structure)

Thanks again Julia. I also think that a seal and a gate trophy would be a little too powerful, and I was personally hoping she wouldn't keep the trophy, but I couldn't find any references that would suggest otherwise.

I don't usually use Mandy and I think this playthrough was the first time I'd ever seen her Personal Story. Who'd know I'd have so many questions, lol.

Yup, some cards are tricky and the game is so immense that actually it's impossible to keep track of everything. And indeed, passing Mandy's PS is not something that happens so often (I guess it happened only once to me so far)

As for the spam... dunno. But it's really irritating. Especially because some of us subscribed to the forum to receive notifications of new threads and automatically had their email spammed to death in this way. It's fun, now it's almost two years since I started testing games for FFG, and my email is still considered "spam" by their filters, while real spammers are actually able to reach their servers and assault on a daily basis their structure)

Clearly, you need to send your emails in Korean.

As for the spam... dunno. But it's really irritating. Especially because some of us subscribed to the forum to receive notifications of new threads and automatically had their email spammed to death in this way. It's fun, now it's almost two years since I started testing games for FFG, and my email is still considered "spam" by their filters, while real spammers are actually able to reach their servers and assault on a daily basis their structure)

Clearly, you need to send your emails in Korean.

*laughter* sounds like a good solution

Julia's two cents is really worth about a buck fifty.