Sometimes we know that just because something isn't explicitly laid out in rules, it's pretty clear what is allowed and not allowed. I figured this might make for some fun laughs but also dig a little deeper into our understanding of the language of the game and point out some important key details.

I'll get us started.

1. If you are playing in Saga mode, and you promote a unique ally to hero using sword thaine or prince imrahils ability, can you add that hero to your pool without incurring the +1 threat penalty?

2. Is the quest phase the only time the encounter deck gets reset unless explicitly told to reset the encounter deck by a card?

3. Does master ironsmith allow you to play guarded cards without guarding? What if the card was guarded, attached, unattached and discarded somehow, and then master ironsmiths ability triggers and you choose the guarded card?

Any other game-breaking questions and situations are welcome!

1. I like the idea, but I don't think having a hero in play at the end of the game allows you to add their name to the list of heroes you are using. There isn't a mechanic to do it. You can only add names per campaign rules between quests, at which point you're doing so by selecting cards from the card pool, not from an active game. 😕

2. Yep! If that deck runs out in the combat phase, you get some attacks from enemies without shadow cards. It's nice.

3. Unfortunately we've had rulings recently which clarify that there isn't a way to 'cheat' guarded cards into play. The dwarf card 'Well-Equipped' allows you to attach a card to a dwarf in play. I guess what happens is that the card will enter play attached to the dwarf (?) but then you'll have to get a guarded card, remove your attachment from the dwarf, and attach it to the guard.

1) I don't think you can add that hero. Worse yet, the fallen hero penalty depends on a hero being in the discard, so if you had Prince Imrahil [hero] in the discard play and then played Prince Imrahil ally, Imrahil would still be a fallen hero despite a hero Imrahil still being in play. (Full disclosure -- I've decided to ignore the fallen hero penalty for the self-discarding Caldara, rather than having to Fortune-or-Fate her in every quest).

2) Don't player cards that interact with the encounter deck force a reshuffle if necessary? For example, if the encounter deck was empty during the planning phase, I don't think you can play Guarded player cards with impunity.

3) Master Ironsmith covers the resource cost, but not the Guarded cost.

1 minute ago, dalestephenson said:

2) Don't player cards that interact with the encounter deck force a reshuffle if necessary? For example, if the encounter deck was empty during the planning phase, I don't think you can play Guarded player cards with impunity.

Thats what I figured. For example, during roam across rhovanion, we ran out of cards while dealing shadow cards, and we were engaged with urdug while his horn was attached. It prompted to discard the top of the encounter deck when he attacks and adds the threat of the discarded card to his attack.

I think the rule should stand (as far as I can see) that the encounter deck is not auto reset ONLY when dealing shadow cards. Again, not an explicit rule but then otherwise there seems to be breaking the spirit of the game.

Like I said,I think we all know the answers to these questions but they're fun to ask anyway. 🙃

4 hours ago, GrandSpleen said:

3. Unfortunately we've had rulings recently which clarify that there isn't a way to 'cheat' guarded cards into play. The dwarf card 'Well-Equipped' allows you to attach a card to a dwarf in play. I guess what happens is that the card will enter play attached to the dwarf (?) but then you'll have to get a guarded card, remove your attachment from the dwarf, and attach it to the guard.

On 12/6/2018 at 11:24 PM, GrandSpleen said:

Also here is the reply about Sting and an encounter deck with no enemies. Prepare to be pleased :

In most cases, when you are instructed to discard cards from the encounter deck until you discard the appropriate card, you will reshuffle and continue discarding until you find that card. If you go through the entire deck, and there is no viable target in the deck at all, then you resolve the card to the best of your ability. In the case of Sting, you would immediately take control of it.

Cheers,

Caleb

Well, as long as there is no viable card for guarding in the deck, you will get it for fre.

With Urdug you would get a free round (no reshuffle). As you said in your original post, you only need to shuffle the encounter deck outside of the quest phase of a card effect explicitly tells you to do so. The Guarded X keyword explicitly tells you to do so. Urdug’s horn doesn’t.

On 12/14/2018 at 5:30 PM, GrandSpleen said:

With Urdug you would get a free round (no reshuffle). As you said in your original post, you only need to shuffle the encounter deck outside of the quest phase of a card effect explicitly tells you to do so. The Guarded X keyword explicitly tells you to do so. Urdug’s horn doesn’t.

What if a travel cost prompts to "discard until..." or to "reveal an encounter card"? Are these ignored as well?

The travel effect you're thinking of is probably worded something like "Forced: After <this location> becomes the active location, discard cards until..." In that case, you would discard until the deck is empty, but don't reshuffle. (that technically would not be considered a travel effect either, since it does not have the bold text 'Travel:'). If the card says "Travel: Discard cards until..." I think you would have to discard cards until the deck is empty. Then, if you did not find the right type of card, you couldn't travel there, since you did not successfully pay the travel cost.

If the cost is worded "Travel: Reveal an encounter card," then you cannot travel there while the encounter deck is empty. You would need to successfully pay the cost of the card before physically moving the location card into the active location slot in your playing area. But it's going to be rare when you have an empty encounter deck during the travel phase, since the quest phase immediately precedes it and, if the deck got emptied at that time, you would have reshuffled it.

You can't partially pay a cost. So the "Travel: Discard cards until..." situation is very odd. If are facing the situation where you can't, in fact, paying the cost work you are supposed to roll it back until before to try to pay the cost. It is as odd to get back the cards in a reformed encounter deck (in the same order? reshuffled?) but feel closer to the rules.

The effect that instruct to reveal an encounter cards, or discard until you find a card X have an implicit instruction to shuffle the encounter deck if it is empty until recently I'm right? I guess we will get back to this situation who feel way more adequate.

Another interesting one came up. Let me first ask a question one way and then give you a strategy I had in mind:

Suppose many actions trigger that stack progress on a single location IN THE STAGING AREA. (So, maybe in a 4 player game, there are 12 northern trackers that more than clear a location). Excess progress is discarded correct?

Okay, if so, can you use Backtrack to remove ALL disadvantageous progress from a quest card (provided that theres no keyword)? Such as Hrogars hill, if it were progress instead of damage?

You can remove progress tokens with backtrack. The rules doesn't care about if those progress are or not advantageous.

I also think that you can remove way more tokens than you can put on the location (so removing 30 progress tokens is possible).

2 hours ago, Rouxxor said:

You can remove progress tokens with backtrack. The rules doesn't care about if those progress are or not advantageous.

I also think that you can remove way more tokens than you can put on the location (so removing 30 progress tokens is possible).

Are you sure? Player actions/responses don't trigger simultaneously. I think once a location has enough progress to be explored it is discarded passively before more player card effects could be triggered.

29 minutes ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

Are you sure? Player actions/responses don't trigger simultaneously. I think once a location has enough progress to be explored it is discarded passively before more player card effects could be triggered.

On one hand I think that since theoretically all characters are commited to the quest simultaneously all the responses that trigger when a character is commited to the quest should came in play basically at the same time (even though between each instance there is time for the activation of Forced effects and passive abilities; see below)

On the other hand I am also of your advice regarding the fact that when a location has enough token to be explored is discarded as though by a passive ability (which if I am not mistaken take precedence over Forced effects and Responses).

3 hours ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

Are you sure? Player actions/responses don't trigger simultaneously. I think once a location has enough progress to be explored it is discarded passively before more player card effects could be triggered.

You are right. But this is still coherent with my ruling. You choose the X when playing the card, removing X progress from the quest, then you try to put X on the location, it has enough and get discarded but the excess progress aren't put back on the quest.

Alone -> All trigger happen one after the other. You should trigger one, resolve it and then only then you can choose to trigger another.

59 minutes ago, Rouxxor said:

Alone -> All trigger happen one after the other. You should trigger one, resolve it and then only then you can choose to trigger another.

Yeah that's basically what I wanted to say, but also in my opinion since the triggering events are simultaneous I don't think there should be time to have any effect not at Response or faster level come into play between each Northern Trackers Responses.

I wasn't sure if you tell how this SHOULD be done, how you effectively play, or how you understand the rules.

So yeah, by the rules they don't happen simultaneous. One happen after the other. So many forced, passive effects or other response can take place before. Location cleared are one of those passive effects, forced effects when place tokens are another one. And finally response when a location is cleared are also another one. As the game is design since there is no stack, not enough delayed mechanic there is no other way.

We can deplore that making every effects happen one after the other make the game slower, and don't help us to have a better sensation of being in the universe but they just are a necessity for deal with the many interactions in the game. 99% of the time you can play without it but the 1% is enough for making them essential.

8 hours ago, Rouxxor said:

I wasn't sure if you tell how this SHOULD be done, how you effectively play, or how you understand the rules.

So yeah, by the rules they don't happen simultaneous

Basically I found that sometimes that "you commit all characters to the quest simultaneously" can create more discrepancies than if we commited them one at a time.

I don't really have an opinion about that. It is to me one of the few ruling clear enough now. I recall having to change multiple times how I have to deal with theodred resources because we wasn't sure how it work but he have been years that we know we can't give it to players who play after us. So I'm fine with sending every active player character, trigger their effects one by one, then do the same for 2nd players...

@GrandSpleen I'm really interested by our previous rules arguing and I wouldn't loose it because of this one so this is a reminder

15 hours ago, Rouxxor said:

You are right. But this is still coherent with my ruling. You choose the X when playing the card, removing X progress from the quest, then you try to put X on the location, it has enough and get discarded but the excess progress aren't put back on the quest.

Alone -> All trigger happen one after the other. You should trigger one, resolve it and then only then you can choose to trigger another.

Oh, haha! For some reason I thought backtrack removed progress from locations in staging to the quest and that you were saying progress beyond the location's quest points could be moved to the quest card. My bad.

5 hours ago, Alonewolf87 said:

Basically I found that sometimes that "you commit all characters to the quest simultaneously" can create more discrepancies than if we commited them one at a time.

Just because you commit them simultaneously doesn't mean you trigger their responses (like Northern Tracker) simultaneously.

56 minutes ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

Just because you commit them simultaneously doesn't mean you trigger their responses (like Northern Tracker) simultaneously.

I always thought I had to use a Response as soon as possible after the triggering event and if I pass up the opportunity I can't do it later on. Like for example if Player A (which is the first player) commits his characters to the quest amongs which there are some Northern Trackers I have to use their response straight after I send them to the quest, if I pass it up and let Player B commit his characters to the quest, which again can have some Northern Trackers amongst his allies I can't for example activate the Responses from the Northern Trackers of Player A and Player B all one after another in a big block.

7 hours ago, Alonewolf87 said:

Basically I found that sometimes that "you commit all characters to the quest simultaneously" can create more discrepancies than if we commited them one at a time.

Allowing one-by-one character committal represents a buff to characters like Firyal and Longbeard Elder, as now you'd be able to use the info from the scry to tweak who you're going to commit.

Committing one at a time also nerfs things like the core Aragorn-Theodred interaction—if Aragorn has no initial resources, they would not be able to support each other.

Whether these kinds of side effects are OK is to some extent a matter of taste, but the rules, and rulings, have always been quite clear on the designer intent.

2 minutes ago, sappidus said:

Committing one at a time also nerfs things like the core Aragorn-Theodred interaction—if Aragorn has no initial resources, they would not be able to support each other.

Couldnt you commit theodred, trigger, get resource for aragorn, then commit aragorn, then trigger his response? That's kind of how I played it.

6 minutes ago, player3351457 said:

Couldnt  you commit theodred, trigger, get resource for aragorn, then commit aragorn, then trigger his response? That's kind of how I played it.  

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like what you're doing is:

1. Choosing a list of characters you're committing with ahead of time.

2. Iterating through the list, committing each character individually as it comes up, and for each time a Response is relevant, doing it right then.

This is not unreasonable. But, it is not what the rules say to do.

To me, it is somewhat akin to people discarding shadow cards immediately after the enemy attack resolves. They learned the game doing it that way, 99% of the time it doesn't affect anything compared to the Correct Way, so why bother changing? That's anyone's prerogative, but they should know that it does occasionally have a functional effect.

42 minutes ago, sappidus said:

Allowing one-by-one character committal represents a buff to characters like Firyal and Longbeard Elder, as now you'd be able to use the info from the scry to tweak who you're going to commit.

Committing one at a time also nerfs things like the core Aragorn-Theodred interaction—if Aragorn has no initial resources, they would not be able to support each other.

Whether these kinds of side effects are OK is to some extent a matter of taste, but the rules, and rulings, have always been quite clear on the designer intent.

I am not disputing the meaning and intent of the rules (nor do I play differently), simply that even though there are situations where the rules' approach is more balanced and useful, at other times it can cause "issues".

@Rouxxor are you referring to the travel cost question?

The situation I wrote about, “Travel: Discard until...” was hypothetical, I’m not sure if any card exists like that. Maybe one exists which says “Travel: Shuffle the encounter discard pile into the encounter deck and discard until...”. If that happened, and you still couldn’t find the type of card you were lookjng for, I think maybe you would just travel to the location for “free” (other than the “cost” of discarding cards from the deck). That’s opposite from what I said earlier , I’m not that sure about it. But the recent ruling about Sting makes me think that way.

If you play Sting and there is no enemy in the encounter deck, the rules tell you infinitely reshuffle the deck and infinitely discard cards. Caleb rules that you would do the effect as completely as you could: discard til deck is empty, reshuffle, then discard til empty again. At that point you are sure that there is no matching card type. So, you stop reshuffling and attach Sting to your character. So maybe a travel effect worded in this way would work similarly.

I don’t think you would reshuffle the encounter deck for that effect though, since it’s during the travel phase. Only if the card actually tells you to do so.