I'm just starting Flies and Spiders, and have drawn a Crazy Cob as my first setup card. It says on revealed it attacks the character with the most poison.

Does this attack get dealt a shadow card as normal?

Since no characters are poisoned, does it even attack? I guess it does, but I just pick a character of my choice.

From the FAQ:: Section (1.28): Enemy attacks outside of the combat phase
If an enemy attacks outside of the combat phase, it is still dealt a shadow card at the beginning of the attack. Then follow the 4 steps under Phase 6 “Combat” in the rules. There is an action window after each step. Any shadow cards dealt to the attacking enemy are discarded after the attack resolves.

Apologies for a bit of a thread hijack, but I think it's valid to say that, in the vast majority of the cases, shadow cards are dealt for attacks regardless of how/when they are triggered.

I was thinking it might be useful to enumerate the cases when you *don't* deal a shadow card...

1. You run out of encounter deck (and it's not the Quest phase).

2. The encounter card effect specifically says not to.

I believe there are also various multiplayer cases when enemies (that have already attacked) change who they're engaged with during the Combat phase. Are there other relevant situations?

The encounter deck doesn't recycle for shadow cards?

26 minutes ago, Edheliad said:

The encounter deck doesn't recycle for shadow cards?

From the Core rules, p. 18:

If the encounter deck runs out of cards, any enemies that have not been dealt shadow cards are not dealt shadow cards this round. An empty encounter deck only resets during the quest phase.

I've always just recycled the encounter deck whenever it emptied. Restricting it to specific phases seems unnecessarily complicated and far too kind for this game.

Not the only rule I've realised I've been playing harder this week.

To answer the OP's other question, yes he will still attack if no one is poisoned. All characters have 0 poison and are tied for having the "most" poison, so you can pick who he attacks.

On 6/28/2017 at 0:34 PM, sappidus said:

Apologies for a bit of a thread hijack, but I think it's valid to say that, in the vast majority of the cases, shadow cards are dealt for attacks regardless of how/when they are triggered.

I was thinking it might be useful to enumerate the cases when you *don't* deal a shadow card...

1. You run out of encounter deck (and it's not the Quest phase).

2. The encounter card effect specifically says not to.

I believe there are also various multiplayer cases when enemies (that have already attacked) change who they're engaged with during the Combat phase. Are there other relevant situations?

Pretty sure that there were cases in Blood of Gondor where Caleb ruled that enemies who attacked during an ambush after the beginning of the combat phase (and after shadow cards had already been dealt to engaged attackers at the beginning of the phase) would not be dealt a shadow card.

Not sure if that has since been overturned?