Ancient Barrow

X (threat) is 1 plus the number of facedown cards under this location. Forced: After Ancient Barrow enters play, each player places an ally he controls facedown under this location. When Ancient Barrow leaves play as an explored location, return each ally under this location to its owner's hand.

Rules Insert

Creating a Staging Area When a player is instructed to create his own staging area, he sets aside an area in front of himself to serve as his own separate staging area. Players continue to resolve each phase of the game in turn order, starting with the first player, but the resolution of each phase occurs as if only the player or players that share any given staging area are present in the game. Players cannot affect players or cards that do not share a common staging area. The players as a group still cannot have more than 1 copy of a unique card in play. During the encounter phase, players only reveal 1 card per player that shares their staging area. Encounter card effects are limited to players and cards at that stage. Effects that reference 'each player' only affect each player at that staging area.

Assume all players were on the same stage when Ancient Barrow entered play (and each player had an ally to sacrifice to the Ancient Barrow).

What happens when Ancient Barrow is explored and not all players are on the same stage?

1. The players not on the same stage as Ancient Barrow do not get the card back into their hand because encounter card effects are limited to players and cards at that stage. If so, what happens to their card (does it go to their discard pile?)

2. The players not on the same stage as Ancient Barrow do get the card back into their hand because it does not use some variation of 'each player' in the last sentence of the Ancient Barrow text.

3. Other.

Hmm, good question. Ancient barrow doesn't say "each player", so I'm not sure the bolded sentence would apply. I think because Ancient Barrow says "return ... to it's owner's hand" means it would still return the ally. But I'm definitely not 100% sure about this.

I asked Caleb.

Q: Assume all players were on the same stage when Ancient Barrow entered play (and each player had an ally to sacrifice to the Ancient Barrow). What happens when Ancient Barrow is explored and not all players are on the same stage?

Caleb: If Ancient Barrow is explored while you are at a different stage, you still get your ally back.