Unholy Ritual

Play this card at the start of you turn. Choose one of your monster groups and draw Overlord cards equal to the number of figures from that group on the map. Choose and keep 2 cards and discard the rest. Each monster in that group performs 1 less action during this turn.

Played The Overlord Revealed recently, one of the monster groups was Kobolds. OL had 8 on the map before their portal closed and they were more or less out of the way down the red corridor. He had 2 Unholy Rituals in his hand and 2 other cards, which led to the following Unholy Combo. He was at the end of his deck, played UR, which brought about shuffling the deck of 11 cards. Looked at 8. Kept 2. Discarded 6. 5 left, played UR again on Kobolds. Drew 8 after shuffling the discard, grabbed another UR as one of his 2 choices. Player UR on Kobolds again, didn't get a UR that time, so the combo stopped. (He did it again the next 2 turns, similar to that, playing 3 UR on Kobolds each time).

Can you play UR twice (or more) on the same monster group, since they aren't being targeted?

Can you play it even when there are no more actions to lose for that group?

When drawing, you just keep perpetually shuffling so you can draw enough, right? I.e. 4 cards in draw stack, 4 in discard, just draw them all?

This seemed legitimate, we just simply weren't in a position to mess with Kobolds and help reduce his card draw. It was a sick strategy and quickly turned the quest around and kept all the heroes perpetually dead.

2 hours ago, NewKevlar said:

Can you play UR twice (or more) on the same monster group, since they aren't being targeted?

By rules an OL card can't be played twice with the same trigger. More over (cf p39 "Trigger" on the CRRG) " effects may be triggered only once by the other effect per timing instance". So these type of loops are not possible !

So from my point of view here the trigger is "Play this card at the start of you turn." so no two card like that at the start of the turn !
Not even on different monster groups ...

14 minutes ago, Felin said:

By rules an OL card can't be played twice with the same trigger. More over (cf p39 "Trigger" on the CRRG) " effects may be triggered only once by the other effect per timing instance". So these type of loops are not possible !

Correct me if I am wrong, but this doesn't seem like a situation of an infinite loop, nor an effect triggering another effect, at least not like the Word of Misery example in the CRRG. The carddraw cards themselves (Bloodlust and Unholy Ritual) already got nerfed so you can only keep 2, presumably to limit this kind of thing from happening, among other potential imbalances. He may have had a little luck, and with a little more luck, he would have gotten all 15 cards in his hand. Especially if he had 12 Kobolds on the board. It is really only broken with Kobolds, maybe Reanimates is unbalanced slightly, but the point is, it seems like he found some strong synergy between Kobolds and Unholy Ritual on that particular quest. It wasn't unbeatable at first, we just didn't make the connection until it was too late. As for the other rules...

The CRRG says, "Two Overlord cards with the same name cannot be played on the same target in response to the same triggering condition. " (bold is in original text)

I thought of this rule when it first happened, and this was the specific line we referenced. Since there is no target, we all felt there was nothing in this ruling to disallow playing two Unholy Rituals. If there is another ruling somewhere else, perhaps that would clarify things. If there is some stretch where you could say the Kobolds were all being targeted, then there doesn't seem to be anything prohibiting using Unholy Ritual on a second monster group at the start of the turn. That not being the issue at hand, I don't know that it is going to help clarify this specific question. If this rule applies to cards that do not target a figure, then this rule is worded very poorly in my opinion.

We never seemed to have these kind of issues in 1st edition when the OL couldn't draw his entire deck into his hand.

First of all :

1 hour ago, NewKevlar said:

If this rule applies to cards that do not target a figure, then this rule is worded very poorly in my opinion.

I totally agree with you, unfortunatelly it will not be the first rule to be 'worded very poorly' ! For proof the need of a CRRG that' closes to 100 pages, where as FFG FAQ & Errata file is 11 pages ?!!

Then from my understanding and experience (but I could be wrong !), Unholy Ritual, has no target so I take the rule becomes " Two Overlord cards with the same name cannot be played in response to the same triggering condition."
So for me it can't be played twice in the same turn !

But even if I'm wrong by playing it on the Kobolds the group becomes the 'target' (by the way English is not my native language but the target in this rule is not to mix up with 'the target of an attack' I think it two different things here the target can be anything not mandatorily a figurine, it can be a card, or a specific action, etc) and so even in this case this card can't be played twice on the same group, but indeed can then be played on another group, till his number of groups if the OL his lucky to draw this card every time... don't forget in this case all monsters from all 'used' groups will be like 'stunned'

For me there is only those two possibilities !

But I agree Unholy Ritual with Kobolds could be strong , as it could help OL to go take the two specific cards he may need, and if Kobolds are far from danger and could go to their maximum it's even better.

I think that Unholy Ritual may be played multiple times at the start of the turn. This has been confirmed by FFG for other cards with "at the start of turn" triggering condition, e.g. for Dark Charm. Otherwise the Plot card Bribery would not make much sense.

However due to the restriction cited above "Two Overlord cards with the same name cannot be played on the same target in response to the same triggering condition. " Unholy Ritual could not be played on the Kobold group again. Maybe I have to replace the word "target" here to avoid future confusion.

1 hour ago, Sadgit said:

This has been confirmed by FFG for other cards with "at the start of turn" triggering condition, e.g. for Dark Charm. Otherwise the Plot card Bribery would not make much sense.

I agree but unlike Unholy Ritual where triggering condition is "Play this card at the start of you turn ",
Dark Charm triggering condition is : "Play this card on a hero at the start of your turn."

Why I think more likely that the card can only played once...
Of course if we consider "[...] Choose one of your monster groups [...]" as part of the triggering condition and not as the effect of the card ... I agree it can be played multiple times on different groups...

... but in this case what about Word of Misery : "Play this card at the start of your turn. During this turn, each time a hero suffers any [Heart], he also suffers 1 [Fatigue] in addition to the [Heart] suffered." ?
Let's say OL has all cards in hand, he plays Word of Misery then Dark Charm and kills one hero, the card he draws his Word of Misery ...
Would you say he can play it twice ? what will be the effect ?

Same questions could then arrise with other similar cards (Virulent Infection, Endless Supply, Treacherous Shadows, ...)
(When I see Endless Supply.. I think that paired with Unholy Ritual they make a good duo.. and if you can play them more than once ... )

Playing Word of Misery twice is impossible as it is discarded only at the end of the turn it is played. For cards that do not have a defined target I just found this uFAQ:

Question:

Quote

The rules say you can't play the same overlord card on the same target in response to the same triggering condition.

I am not sure how this applies to the following overlord cards. Is it possible for the overlord to play these cards multiple times?
-schemes
-diabolic power
-unholy ritual: I assume yes, if you choose another monster group

Answer:

Quote

You are correct, Unholy Ritual is a bit clearer than the others, you may play it on different groups during a single turn.

For cards that do not have a clear, definite target, think of them as having a "general" target. Therefore, since the target is "general", if the card has the same name and trigger, it cannot be played. So Schemes and Diabolic Power cannot be played twice during the same turn.

Thanks for playing,

Nathan Hajek
Creative Content Developer
Fantasy Flight Games

I will include the following bullet in the CRRG:

Two Overlord cards with the same name

• that do not have a clear, definite target cannot be played in response to the same triggering condition (e.g. such as "play this card at the start of your turn").
• that do have a defined target (hero, monster, monster group, etc.) cannot be played on the same target in response to the same triggering condition. Each individual space a figure enters and each individual attack a figure performs is considered to be an individual triggering condition.

Thank you for talking through this and finding that response from Nathan. This cleared my questions up perfectly.