About Cold-drake:

"Cannot have attachments or take non-combat damage.

Cold-Drake gets +1 and +1 for each Dragon Sign in the victory display.

Forced: After Cold-Drake is dealt a shadow card with no shadow effect, the defending character cannot ready until the end of the round. "

Does the Forced effect trigger if you discard the shadow card (with something like Armored Destrier, for example)? Does it trigger if you cancel the shadow effect (With A Burning Brand, for example)?

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Some encounter cards say: "During a certain phase, return this card to the staging area and do X". If the card was already in the staging area, do you still have to trigger X?

Example:

Stage 2B in 'The King's Quest' quest reads:

"Fire-drake cannot leave the staging area or take damage. "

Meanwhile, The Fire-drake has the next forced effect:

"Forced: After the active location is explored, Fire-drake returns to the staging area and makes an immediate attack against each player in turn order."

So, if I explore the active location and the Fire-drake is already in the staging area, does it still immediately attack each player in turn order?

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In the 'Lost in Mirkwood' quest, is it possible to put the objective-locations (like this one ) back into the staging area after traveling to them, with Thrór's Map? ( "Attach to a hero.

Travel Action: Exhaust Thrór's Map to choose a location in the staging area. Make that location the active location. (If there is another active location, return it to the staging area." )

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If the active location and the current quest have a forced effect when cleared, which forced effect do you trigger first when clearing both that location and that quest at the same time?

Cold-drake: if you discard the shadow effect before it is flipped over, the drake's Forced effect will not fire. If you do flip it over but cancel the effect, the drake's Forced effect will still fire.

Returning to the staging area: you would still have to do the effect. If it said: "Fire-drake returns to the staging area. Then, it makes an attack... "you would not have to do it. This is because the word "then" requires the previous sentence/clause to have been completed successfully, or else the "then" clause will not trigger. If the Fire-drake's case, it is worded as "and," so it will trigger regardless of whether or not the previous effect was successfully resolved. A higher profile example of this, with a developer ruling, is the Sam hero. (it doesn't use the word "and," it just writes his effects -- readying and getting a stat boost -- as 2 separate sentences. Because the word "then" is not used, you can resolve the stat boosts even if Sam did not ready )

So in short yes, Fire-drake will attack if it was already in the staging area.

In Lost in Mirkwood, you can't return the objective location to the staging area with Thror's Map during stages 1, 2, and 3. This is because you have the Searching for a Way Out objective in the staging area. Its text makes those locations immune to player card effects (as well as any card guarding one). On stage 4 you end up removing Searching for a Way Out from the game, and at that point you can use any card effect on the objective locations, such as Thror's Map.

The 'active location' and 'current quest' resolution order has reversed itself. We used to have a ruling stating you would advance the quest, resolve the next quest stage, then resolve the previously cleared active location. However, that was recognized as counter-intuitive and we have a ruling reversal on that. So, clear the active location and quest, resolve the active location's forced effect if it has one, then go on and advance to the next stage of the quest and resolve its effects. Here is the ruling:

1 hour ago, GrandSpleen said:

Cold-drake: if you discard the shadow effect before it is flipped over, the drake's Forced effect will not fire. If you do flip it over but cancel the effect, the drake's Forced effect will still fire.

Thanks for your responses. About Cold-drake and A Burning Brand: Do you still have to check if the shadow card dealt to Cold-drake had a shadow effect (even if you're canceling it with A Burning Brand), or because you're canceling the shadow effect, the forced effect on Cold-drake will always trigger?

Burning Brand/Hasty Stroke etc cancels a shadow effect, but it doesn't make it so you were dealt a shadow card with *no* effect, which is what Cold-Drake triggers on. I think it would only trigger if the actual shadow card had no shadow effect on it.

Thanks to Grandspleen for saving me starting a new thread.

In The Temple of Doom, I had Hall of Horrors as the active location on one stage I was about to complete (" X is 1 more than the number of quest stages in the victory display. Forced: When Hall of Horrors leaves play, each player deals X damage to a character he controls "). The question in my mind was whether X included the quest that I was completing when placing progress - in old money, yes, but in new money no!