The Old Forest scenario - timing question

By afteryule, in Rules questions & answers

Am I resolving this right?

I am on quest 2B of the scenario; Long Trailer is in the staging area, Deep Gulley (worth 2 victory points) is the active location, and there are 3 victory points on locations in the victory display. I can make enough progress to clear the active location. Question: does Long Trailer trigger before quest 2B?

1. Quest successfully

2. Place progress tokens

3. Remove Deep Gulley from play and place it in the victory display

4. Trigger and resolve Long Trailer ( Forced : after the active location leaves play as an explored location, Long Trailer makes an immediate attack against the first player)

5. Trigger and resolve quest 2B ( Forced : after placing progress tokens as the result of question successfully, if victory points on locations in the victory display are equal or greater than 5 times the number of players, advance to stage 3A)

6. Advance to 3A

Edited by afteryule

I suppose you would do quest advancement first.

Normally, you would always do quest advancement first. In this case, the advancement happens only as the result of a Forced effect, which opens things up for murkier timing issues.

Here, your Forced effect triggers are not actually identical.

Long Trailer triggers after the active location leaves play.

Quest 2B triggers after you place progress -- that would necessarily happen before the location has left play, so this trigger's qualifying event would occur first.

Interesting. I assumed (I know, not always the best thing to do) that the intent of Quest 2B is that you can explore the active location to place it in the victory display before checking the trigger condition of 2B. (Meaning you can get to 3A as soon as there are enough victory points rather than having to quest through 2B for another round). If this is true, wouldn't Long Trailer trigger first?

I'm a little confused at some of the rulings in the faq. Section 1.18 states that a location is discarded immediately when it has enough progress on it (which would trigger 'leaving play' for Long Trailer). However, later on in the faq (p. 17) it states that when you have enough progress to explore the active location and advance to the next stage, you do quest advancement before triggering responses (or, I'm guessing, forced effects) on the active location.

While this latter ruling is not identical to my situation, it makes me think that I should resolve 'placing progress' before I resolve the 'leaving play' of the active location even though the active location has already left play. If this is true, then I would advance to a random 2B despite having 5 victory points in the victory display (and after that Long Trailer would trigger).

I believe I have played it the same way that you are suggesting: you can advance to the next stage of the quest as soon as you have enough victory points (you don't have to wait another round). And that is probably the intent of the scenario design. However, looking more closely, I am not sure it should work that way, from a rules standpoint.

Here is a copy and paste from another thread about the process of placing progress, broken down:

  1. Calculate that you have quested successfully.
    1a. Forced, then Responses to questing successfully.
  2. Place progress tokens on the Active Location.
  3. Active Location leaves play, if appropriate.
  4. Place progress tokens on the Quest.
  5. Advance the quest.
    5a. When revealed abilities on the next quest card.
    5b. Flip the next quest card.
    5c. When revealed abilities on the other side of the next quest card.
  6. Forced, then Responses to clearing the Quest.
  7. Forced, then Responses to clearing the Active Location (or it leaving play).

That list has evolved through a series of informal discussions as well as official rulings, through rules queries to the designers.

Quest card 2b says "after placing progress." I wish it said "after placing progress HERE" or "on the quest," but it doesn't. So, placing progress on the active location IS a trigger for 2B. This means that the trigger for 2B is step 2. At the time of the trigger, you don't have enough victory points to advance. So, you would have to wait another round.

Having looked at that, I still think the intention is that you should advance. So I would just pretend the quest card said "after placing progress HERE." Then the trigger is step 4, at which point you DO have enough victory points, because the active location has left play.

That very nice list was written by Authraw and the thread is here .

Thanks, that is a great reference!

Edited by afteryule