Let's say my threat is 45, I only have 2 heroes, and I play Vanish from Sight in the combat phase, so my threat is now treated as 20. Then I play O Elbereth! Gilthonial! on an enemy attacking me that has an engagement cost of say 25. Would I then move my threat dial down to 25 to match the enemy? That seems legit right?

I am willing to take bets that an official answer would look something like:

"While ´Vanish From Sight´ allows you to treat your threat as though it is 20, your actual threat is still higher and thus will not reset to match the engagement cost of the enemy in such an instance. Hope you are enjoying Flight of the Stormcaller /Caleb"

Alternatively the answer might be that you treat your threat as 25 for the rest of the phase.

Now this is not to say that I cannot see where you´re coming from with this path of logical deduction and certainly not that you aren´t technically correct. But that interpretation is just way too overpowered and the devs will simply tone it down accordingly. As well they should because it would invalidate a lot of other cards, which is not in anyone´s interest.

It just seems if you take the interpretation that your threat would be treated as 25 for the rest of the phase, then what happens when someone passes you a Wandering Took? Or what happens when you use Boromir's readying ability? Do those only increase your "virtual" threat too and not your actual threat? It seems like it would be far more overpowered to take that interpretation, especially with player doomed cards. And to me it seems like you need to rule one way or the other, or it's inconsistent.

I don't like this card...if I had to burn one of my cards, this would be the first. It's just so confusing.

It's hard because "You are considered to be in Secrecy until the end of the phase" doesn't cover the cards that let you return the Events to hand if your threat is 20 or less.

It's hard because "You are considered to be in Secrecy until the end of the phase" doesn't cover the cards that let you return the Events to hand if your threat is 20 or less.

Vanish From Sight reads:

"Play only if you control 2 or fewer heroes. Action: Until the end of the phase, if your threat is higher than 20, treat your threat as if it is 20."

So I would definitely say events like Courage Awakened would return to your hand.

It's hard because "You are considered to be in Secrecy until the end of the phase" doesn't cover the cards that let you return the Events to hand if your threat is 20 or less.

Vanish From Sight reads:

"Play only if you control 2 or fewer heroes. Action: Until the end of the phase, if your threat is higher than 20, treat your threat as if it is 20."

So I would definitely say events like Courage Awakened would return to your hand.

I think Kakita was implying that they could re-write the card to say something about "Until the end of the phase, reduce the cost of Secrecy cards by their Secrecy value if your threat is above 20 and you have 2 or fewer heroes" to fix the card, but as he said "it is hard" because the reason they cannot do that is because it wouldn't help you play those events like Courage Awakened if it were rewritten as such.

It's hard because "You are considered to be in Secrecy until the end of the phase" doesn't cover the cards that let you return the Events to hand if your threat is 20 or less.

Vanish From Sight reads:

"Play only if you control 2 or fewer heroes. Action: Until the end of the phase, if your threat is higher than 20, treat your threat as if it is 20."

So I would definitely say events like Courage Awakened would return to your hand.

I think Kakita was implying that they could re-write the card to say something about "Until the end of the phase, reduce the cost of Secrecy cards by their Secrecy value if your threat is above 20 and you have 2 or fewer heroes" to fix the card, but as he said "it is hard" because the reason they cannot do that is because it wouldn't help you play those events like Courage Awakened if it were rewritten as such.

Just so.

Vanish from sight keeps your threat perpetually at 20. It says that you treat your threat as 20 if it is ever over that. So, if you raise it to 25 it is then treated as 20 immediately. The only question is what happens when the effect is done. At that point your threat returns to the real level, whatever that is. Since your threat was never actually 20, just treated as though it was, it was never actually 25. I would say it just returns to the threat level it was prior to using Vanish, but the card doesn't say that, so who knows.

My two cents: anything that checks threat finds that it is "20", anything that alters threat, alters the real threat, not the apparent threat.

In the case of Elbereth, the first condition checks "If your threat is lower than that enemy's engagement cost" and so would qualify for any enemy with >20 threat, and the second part is "set your threat equal to the engagement cost of the enemy", so that works too. You'd end with your threat equal to the engagement cost.

This does give the possibility of massive threat decreases, possibly even larger than LoAragorn. But so what? A massive decrease would require a high threat, two heroes, two cards in hand, a low-but-over-20 engagement enemy, and to take an attack from said enemy before banishing him. If a player is willing to jump through all those hoops, why not reward him for it? Personally, I'm heartened to think that there's a circumstance where a coaster like Elbereth is actually worth putting in somebody's deck somewhere. My favorite kind of card is a card that makes past cards suddenly worth playing.

With that said, I'll now sit back and wait for the errata that either turns Elbereth back into a coaster, or nerfs the very interesting, very useful Vanish to make 2-hero decks less playable again.

Did we ever get an official ruling on this? It seems legit to me.

All checks out imo.

I will submit an official question now!

Caleb said it's perfectly legal! Can't wait for more of that 2 hero support this cycle.

Caleb said it's perfectly legal! Can't wait for more of that 2 hero support this cycle.

So that means it is perfectly legal to reduce every other players' threat to 0 with Song of Earendil, Wandering Took, and Vanish from Sight. Or do you still threat out once your real threat is 50+ even though you are "treating it as 20"? Then just reset your threat with Aragorn.

Donkler, if you could, are you able to post the question you sent in and the response you got back word for word? I'm interested in knowing if Caleb provided any additional insight as to the logic behind the ruling (if it was given) to know if it does indeed apply to the Song of Earendil, Wandering Took combination.

Edit: As I understand it, it seems that checks to your threat value reference the "20" value and modifications to your threat affect the value on your threat dial.

Not much else to gain from the actual emails I'm afraid:

Me:
Rules Question:
I have a question about Vanish from Sight and O Elbereth! Gilthonial!. Let's say my threat is 45, I only have 2 heroes, and I play Vanish from Sight in the combat phase, so my threat is now treated as 20. Then I play O Elbereth! Gilthonial! on an enemy attacking me that has an engagement cost of 25. Would I then move my threat dial down to 25 to match the enemy?

Caleb:
Great question. You would indeed set your threat to 25 in the situation you describe.

I'm asking the followup questions now.

Donkler, if you could, are you able to post the question you sent in and the response you got back word for word? I'm interested in knowing if Caleb provided any additional insight as to the logic behind the ruling (if it was given) to know if it does indeed apply to the Song of Earendil, Wandering Took combination.

I suspect we'll soon see an errata that prevents you from voluntarily raising your threat beyond its limit (much like how you can't "assign" damage to a character beyond what's needed to defeat them).

Donkler, if you could, are you able to post the question you sent in and the response you got back word for word? I'm interested in knowing if Caleb provided any additional insight as to the logic behind the ruling (if it was given) to know if it does indeed apply to the Song of Earendil, Wandering Took combination.

I suspect we'll soon see an errata that prevents you from voluntarily raising your threat beyond its limit (much like how you can't "assign" damage to a character beyond what's needed to defeat them).

Sadly, it doesn't really fix the abuse. You can still reduce every other player's threat to <10 in a 4 player game.

Donkler, if you could, are you able to post the question you sent in and the response you got back word for word? I'm interested in knowing if Caleb provided any additional insight as to the logic behind the ruling (if it was given) to know if it does indeed apply to the Song of Earendil, Wandering Took combination.

I suspect we'll soon see an errata that prevents you from voluntarily raising your threat beyond its limit (much like how you can't "assign" damage to a character beyond what's needed to defeat them).

Sadly, it doesn't really fix the abuse. You can still reduce every other player's threat to <10 in a 4 player game.

But if you're not going over 50 you don't need Vanish from Sight to do it any more, right? At that point it's just Wandering Took + Song of Earendil causing the issue.

Donkler, if you could, are you able to post the question you sent in and the response you got back word for word? I'm interested in knowing if Caleb provided any additional insight as to the logic behind the ruling (if it was given) to know if it does indeed apply to the Song of Earendil, Wandering Took combination.

I suspect we'll soon see an errata that prevents you from voluntarily raising your threat beyond its limit (much like how you can't "assign" damage to a character beyond what's needed to defeat them).

Sadly, it doesn't really fix the abuse. You can still reduce every other player's threat to <10 in a 4 player game.

But if you're not going over 50 you don't need Vanish from Sight to do it any more, right? At that point it's just Wandering Took + Song of Earendil causing the issue.

True, indeed! Song of Earendil + Wandering Took is so broken already Vanish from Sight may just make it that much more broken. But maybe they will say you cannot use it to go over 50 as discussed, although I'm not really sure if that fixes all the design issues that may arise later because of the card.

Donkler, if you could, are you able to post the question you sent in and the response you got back word for word? I'm interested in knowing if Caleb provided any additional insight as to the logic behind the ruling (if it was given) to know if it does indeed apply to the Song of Earendil, Wandering Took combination.

I suspect we'll soon see an errata that prevents you from voluntarily raising your threat beyond its limit (much like how you can't "assign" damage to a character beyond what's needed to defeat them).

Sadly, it doesn't really fix the abuse. You can still reduce every other player's threat to <10 in a 4 player game.

If the Loragon player can't increase his real threat to 50+, then he can only do Song of Earendil/WanderingTook until he gets to 49 threat, which seems insufficient to reduce 3 other players threat to <10. If you had 4 players with 27 threat each, Loragon's 22 spare threat could reduce each other player by about 7 each. It's only if the new card allows the threat to go above 50 that the combo allows infinite threat reduction for the other players, once set up.

So there's four options:

1) Have the new card not affect threat elimination.

2) Put a limit on Song of Earendil

3) Put a limit on Wandering Took

4) Accept that a hero and a three card combo can drive other player's threat to zero.

Donkler, if you could, are you able to post the question you sent in and the response you got back word for word? I'm interested in knowing if Caleb provided any additional insight as to the logic behind the ruling (if it was given) to know if it does indeed apply to the Song of Earendil, Wandering Took combination.

I suspect we'll soon see an errata that prevents you from voluntarily raising your threat beyond its limit (much like how you can't "assign" damage to a character beyond what's needed to defeat them).

Sadly, it doesn't really fix the abuse. You can still reduce every other player's threat to <10 in a 4 player game.

If the Loragon player can't increase his real threat to 50+, then he can only do Song of Earendil/WanderingTook until he gets to 49 threat, which seems insufficient to reduce 3 other players threat to <10. If you had 4 players with 27 threat each, Loragon's 22 spare threat could reduce each other player by about 7 each. It's only if the new card allows the threat to go above 50 that the combo allows infinite threat reduction for the other players, once set up.

So there's four options:

1) Have the new card not affect threat elimination.

2) Put a limit on Song of Earendil

3) Put a limit on Wandering Took

4) Accept that a hero and a three card combo can drive other player's threat to zero.

You could start with <27 threat as the Lore Aragorn deck, though. Then you increase to 49, reduce to starting threat, and go all the way back to 49 again. It doesn't matter that you threat out soon thereafter because now the other players just win. But regardless, this is a bit of a deviation from the original question regarding Vanish from Sight combining with an already somewhat problematic combination.

I cannot imagine option 4 being healthy for the game, but I think one of the other 3 may be incoming. Three card combos are really easy to come by now-a-days.

Here is what Caleb responded with to some followup questions. He mentions the combo specifically, so probably will be some errata soon!

From Me:

Does Vanish from Sight keep you from being eliminated due to reaching 50 threat?

If you use Vanish from Sight in the Refresh phase can you use Lore Aragorn's ability to reset your dial to your starting threat level? If so, does your starting threat level have to be < 20 since his ability specifically says "reduce"?

From Caleb:

Vanish from Sight will prevent you from being eliminated when your actual threat climbs over 20, but only until the end of the phase.

If you play Vanish from Sight in the refresh phase, you can still use Aragorn’s ability, but only if your starting threat was less than 20 because it says “reduce.” If your starting threat was higher than 20, then you cannot “reduce” your threat by increasing it.

The real problem with the Wandering Took, Light of Earendil, Vanish from Sight + Loreagorn combo is the limitless Action on Wandering Took. I expect that Wandering Took will receive an errata to limit its Action to “once per phase” to prevent such abuses.

That's interesting. So it seems you can't use any threat reduction abilities (unless it results in your threat dial going below 20) while Vanish from Sight is active.

Edit: Actually that prevents the whole Wandering Took/Vanish from Sight problem altogether. You cannot pass a player Wandering Took while Vanish from Sight is active because it would reduce your threat (but unlikely below 20).