Several questions

By Rajam, in Rules questions & answers

1) What happens if I reveal Call of the Ring and all Nazgûl enemies are already in play? Can I whiff and find cero Nazgûl enemies, or if that's the case then I'm forced to exhaust the One Ring and reveal an encounter card?

"When Revealed: The first player must choose: either search the encounter deck, discard pile, and victory display for a Nazgul enemy and add it to the staging area, or exhaust The One Ring and reveal the top card of the encounter deck."

2) What happens if I optionally engage an enemy and I use Roheryn to attack that enemy asap, but the enemy has a forced effect when engaged? For example, Haradrim Soldier , who makes an immediate attack when engaged. Which effect resolves first?

"Response: After you optionally engage an enemy, exhaust Roheryn and attached hero to declare attached hero as an attacker (and resolve its attack) against that enemy."

"Forced: After Haradrim Soldier engages you, it makes an immediate attack."

3) With Peace, and Thought , can I exhaust heroes from other players to draw 5 cards?

"Refresh Action: Exhaust 2 heroes to draw 5 cards."

4) I still can't understand side quests' rules completely:

- If I'm right, a side quest can only be chosen as the current quest only at the beginning of the questing phase, and remains so until the end of that quest phase, after which the main quest "comes back" to be the current quest. Yet, the effects of side quests are always active regardless of whether side quests are the current quest or not (as long as these side quests are in the staging area, of course). Am I correct so far?

- My main question regarding side quests is: what happens with the main quest when a side quest becomes the current quest? Do the effects of the main quest remain active (despite not being the current quest) during that period, or should they be ignored? I specially got confused playing Helm's Deep, because of the Defense keyword. What happens here, and in general?

Edited by Rajam

1) In that scenario you would have to exhaust the One Ring and reveal another encounter card. You've got to choose the effect that can be fully resolved if possible. In this case the language "a Nazgul enemy" means that you must be able to find one. If there are none in the deck, you can't choose that effect. If it said "each Nazgul enemy," or "all Nazgul enemies," you would be able to choose that effect and it would just miss, because the number 0 is included in the concept "each" and "all" in our game rules.

2) I think it would work like this: you engage the Haradrim, and his Forced effect takes precedence. So you begin to resolve the attack. Then, during that attack resolution, this is now your opportunity to use Roheryn's Response effect. You use that effect, and fully resolve Aragorn's attack before proceeding with the Haradrim's attack (or, if the Haradrim dies, the attack is effectively negated).

3) You have to use your own heroes. You always have to pay with your own resources (meaning cards, resource tokens, characters to exhaust) when paying the "cost" of a card. In this case "Exhaust 2 heroes" is the card's cost.

4) As long as the quest card is in play, all its effects are active. This is true regardless of whether it is a side quest or a main quest. But! The key concept here is "main quest" and "current quest." Take a look at the rules for Helm's Deep. The Defense keyword only matters if it is printed on the "current quest." If you use select a side quest as the "current quest," the Defense keyword printed on the main quest will be irrelevant. It is in play and active, but the rules for that particular keyword only matter if the current quest has the Defense keyword, be it a side quest or a main quest.

1) I'm not sure, but I think there was a past ruling which said that having discovered one of your options was impossible to fulfil you would have to do the other - maybe someone else can remember when that came up?

2) How I would interpret it: Forced comes before Response, so the immediate attack from the enemy starts first. So you deal the enemy a shadow card ready to resolve the attack. But the Forced is resolved by simply starting the attack, going through the remaining steps of enemy attack resolution is just something you have to do afterwards, so once you've technically started the attack, dealt a shadow card and essentially declared you are resolving this enemy's attack, you are also at the point when you can trigger Roheryn. If your attack with Roheryn destroys the enemy, then as the attacking enemy is no longer in play, the rest of its attack doesn't resolve. It's like if you played Quick Strike to kill an enemy in the middle of resolving its attack.

3) No. Exhausting the heroes is a cost for the effect of drawing 5 cards, and you cannot pay costs with cards you do not control.

4) Passive/Forced effects on quest cards are always active whether or not the quest is active. Probably Responses as well, if those ever come up. Keywords however are different, they are specific to when you are questing to that particular quest (Except Sailing I guess, you still need to make a Sailing test even if you're doing a side-quest as far as I know). If you do a side-quest on Helm's Deep, that side-quest does not have the Defense keyword and so you quest normally, raising threat if unsuccessful and making progress if successful. If you do a side-quest while on stage 1 of Siege of Cair Andros, the side-quest does not have the Siege keyword so you quest with your willpower instead of your defence, and so on.

What happens in "Call of the Ring" if you can't fully satisfy either option -- the Ring is already exhausted and the Nazgul are all in play. Since you can't completely fulfill either, I would think that selecting the first option and doing as much as you can (i.e. searching for a Nazgul) would be acceptable.

PocketWraith and I are basically clones of one another, I think.

If you can't fully resolve either of those options in Call of the Ring, I personally would play it as if you should select the second option (Exhaust ring and reveal a card). Why? Because you can at least partially resolve that one (reveal a card). The first effect can't be resolved at all (unless you credit the "Search" part, which you might from a mechanical stand point-- but I wouldn't from a player preference standpoint).

19 hours ago, PocketWraith said:

2) How I would interpret it: Forced comes before Response, so the immediate attack from the enemy starts first. So you deal the enemy a shadow card ready to resolve the attack. But the Forced is resolved by simply starting the attack, going through the remaining steps of enemy attack resolution is just something you have to do afterwards....

Hm is that right? I agree that you would have an action window after dealing the shadowcard where you could Quick-Strike the enemy and thus avoid it's attack if you can kill him BUT Roheryn is a Response which you can not initiate. You would have to wait until the forced-effect of the Haradrim Soldier is fully resolved.

So the real question is: "Is initializing the attack and dealing a shadow card the "end" of the forced-effect from the Haradrim Soldier or is the "end" of the forced-effect reached when you have fully resolved the attack?

39 minutes ago, Crabble said:

Hm is that right? I agree that you would have an action window after dealing the shadowcard where you could Quick-Strike the enemy and thus avoid it's attack if you can kill him BUT Roheryn is a Response which you can not initiate. You would have to wait until the forced-effect of the Haradrim Soldier is fully resolved.

So the real question is: "Is initializing the attack and dealing a shadow card the "end" of the forced-effect from the Haradrim Soldier or is the "end" of the forced-effect reached when you have fully resolved the attack?

Initialising the attack is enough. There's a precedent in enemies which make immediate attacks when revealed but have the Peril keyword - since Peril prohibits other players from taking actions while the card's staging is being resolved, if that lasted until the end of the attack it wouldn't be possible for them to make a Sentinel defence. But we have had a ruling saying that such attacks can be defended by other players' Sentinels, which as I recall specifically said that the effect is finished once the attack is initiated.

Of course attacks are complicated since they contain multiple action windows, but a good rule of thumb for Responses is that if you pass an action window then you've missed your chance to trigger them because the game has moved on. In this instance, if you potentially take a whole load of actions during the attack, then you're no longer at the point "after you optionally engage an enemy" when you can trigger Roheryn, are you?

I though so too because Roheryn was designed to prevent enemy attacks but still that situation could go either way so I send in the rule question describing and linking this thread here and Caleb responded:

Quote

When you optionally engage a Haradrim Soldier as a player that controls a character with Roheryn equipped you must, per FAQ, resolve the Forced-Effect of the Soldier before you resolve the Response of Roheryn. So what happens?

a) The Forced-Effect of the Haradrim Soldier is fully resolved when you have initiated the attack, dealt a shadowcard and would choose a defender. At that moment you could trigger Roheryns response and (with enough attackpower) kill the attacking enemy.

b) The Forced-Effect of the Haradrim Soldier is fully resolved when the complete attack is done (dealing a shadowcard, declaring defender, reveal shadowcard, assign damage) and after that you have the option to trigger Roheryns Response.

Option a) could potentially avoid a full attack of that soldier while option b) would potentially kill the defending character. Thanks for your help!

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Hi Crabble,
In the situation you describe, you would resolve it as follows:
- The Haradrim Soldier engages you triggering its Forced effect.
- Deal the Haradrim Soldier a shadow card.
- You may now trigger Roheryn’s Response effect to interrupt the Haradrim Soldier’s attack with an attack of your own.
- If the attack destroys the Haradrim Soldier, then its attack is canceled because the attacking enemy is not there anymore.
- If the attack does not destroy the Haradrim Soldier, then continue to resolve its attack once yours has resolved.
Note that you can also achieve this type of outcome by playing Quick Strike during an action window of an enemy’s attack, or by putting Gandalf into play with Sneak Attack and dealing 4 damage to the Haradrim Soldier.
Cheers,
Caleb

So there you have it :)