Hi there, i was wondering if someone knew the correct interpretation to the "obstructed" rule. Just for clarity sake ill copy the relevant section of the rulebook:

THE EVENT CARD OPTION

After a player has selected one of his orders and revealed it, he may choose to draw an Event card instead of executing the specific ability of that order. That is, when taking this option, the player removes his order token from the board (returning it to his play area) without executing its ability, and instead simply draws an Event card from the Event card deck.

OBSTRUCTED ORDERS

A player may only execute one of his orders if one is available (i.e., visible) on the top of an order stack. If a player cannot execute an order because all his orders on the board are covered up by opponents´ orders, such player is said to be obstructed . when this happens. he draws one Event card (following the rules under "the Event Card Option" on the previous page) and play continues with the player on his left.

My interpretation (wich for some reason is minority in my play table) is that since the player cannot take, show and remove the order (because its obstructed) he should get the event card for free (thus gaining a small advantage for having to wait longer to act).

However it is also possible to understand from this text that he has to choose one of his orders (if he happens to have more than one) and then loose it by exchanging it for an event card, per a somewhat forced use of "THE EVENT CARD OPTION".

Please let me know if there is any oficial source for such interpretation, i know that its mainly a common sense issue, but im losing the war here.

You definately don't lose an order if you are obstructed, you just get a free card and play continues.

Yep. Play continues until ALL players have executed all four orders, or perhaps a player opted to discard one or more order tokens to take an Event Card in lieu of executing that order, in which case it still counts as having "played" that order.

If your order tokens are all blocked until all of your opponents' orders have been played, that just means that you get to execute all of your orders in a row, and you get Event Cards while you wait.

I agree with the others. The order stacks are inviolable. There are no rules (that I'm aware of) which allow you to do anything with orders that are not currently on top of a stack. This includes discarding them because it's your turn. If all your orders are blocked, you take an Event card and wait for one to come up. You still get all 4 of your orders though, once they are available.

When playing as that one Protoss who wins when all three "the End" cards are drawn (I forget his name atm, the one who's not Tassadar =P) I've had great fun purposely getting my orders blocked up so I can draw more event cards and accelerate the end of the game that way.

Aldaris.

Who went from being one of the weakest factions pre-broodwar to a complete powerhouse post broodwar.

Steve-O said:

There is one exception: the Aldaris faction Stage II Leadership Card, "Khala Devotee".

The card states, "Place in you play area. At the end of each Planning Phase, you may choose an order stack. Take the bottom order token from that stack and place it on the top."

Keep in mind that the bottom order token might not be your own. However, that can work to your advantage, because you could theoretically mess up an opponent's order queue by forcing the player to execute that order sooner than planned.