I have Maul as one of my Nemesis villains and I'm about to play Luxury Cruise and it says no Mercenary units in the Open Groups.

Can I play Maul or not?

Thanks in advance.

I'd rule on the no side, "cannot" always overrides "can"

Yes I understand even though the Nemeses starter card "Powerful Foe" says you can

You cannot choose Maul to your open groups, but you can add him after choosing open groups using Powerful Foes or Leave Them to Me .

In the same way if Open Groups: 0, you can still add to your hand of open groups.

Thanks for the responses guys. We played last night and ruled that he could not be played. I lost, but it was a blowout so I don't think Maul would've made a difference. ?

That's actually a pretty interesting question.

I'd say strictly that @a1bert 's interpretation is correct, but the way you played it probably keeps the original intent of that rule intact.

The intent of Powerful Foes is to be able to use your villains - a lot of the other class cards in the deck depend on villains, so not being able to take one that e.g. has matching traits would simply not be either fair or good for the balance of the campaign.

(The missions having these affiliation restrictions seemingly have them for thematic reasons. Meeting the same villains throughout the campaign is not breaking that goal.)

1 hour ago, a1bert said:

The intent of Powerful Foes is to be able to use your villains - a lot of the other class cards in the deck depend on villains, so not being able to take one that e.g. has matching traits would simply not be either fair or good for the balance of the campaign.

M'kay, teriffic. And the intent of having villains is being able to use them, regardless of if you have Powerful Foes or not.

The intent of this rule in Luxury Cruise is to restrict from using Merc cards.

Again, strictly you are right, and you can't fault an Imp player from going that route because it's well within the rules, but if you want to play with the Imp-only theme that the mission sets up, then there is the other route as well.

13 hours ago, a1bert said:

You cannot choose Maul to your open groups, but you can add him after choosing open groups using Powerful Foes or Leave Them to Me .

In the same way if Open Groups: 0, you can still add to your hand of open groups.

I’m glad I stumbled on this. I realized that with Leave Them to Me you essentially get both villains added to your hand after open groups are chosen. That is really nice benefit, I didn’t read Leave Them to Me carefully enough so I was always adding either my merc or imperial villain and leaving the other guy home

So, using the Imperial Villain you had selected for Nemesis was out of the question?