We had a fight about this one. Barbarian's power says you take your opponent's hand, pick some cards, and discard the rest. Does this "take" action trigger a rift detonation? We eventually decided no, but I can't find an official ruling.

There's no official ruling yet, but here's how I see it: simply taking the cards and having a look at them does not make rifts blow up. The wording isn't the best ("take your opponent's hand and look at it"), but only the cards that you choose to keep actually enter your possession; the rest are discarded normally.

I agree with Toomai. If the Rift would just get discarded, it doesn't blow up.

Turns out I just wrote a Rift Dissertation over on BGG:

Here's my best guess on how these things are supposed to work, in general :

A Rift detonates if

• it comes from another player and
• you receive it to keep and
• you are specifically "taking" the card or it was your action that caused you to receive it.

A Rift does not detonate if

• it doesn't come from another player or
• you don't keep it or
• it wasn't your "fault" that it came into your possession and nothing defined that you were "taking" it.

Unfortunately, Rifts force us to get more specific about the meaning of words such as take , give , collect , receive , etc. and to align those words with the concepts of voluntary and involuntary .

If an effect says you are taking a card, then of course you are taking a card. But sometimes you are still taking a card even if that specific word isn't used. For example, compensation is always understood to be taking cards; thus, even though it's not always your intention to play a Negotiate or to gain compensation, you are still taking compensation nonetheless.

As another example, when Trader trades hands with Macron, to make sense out of Rifts we have to apply the following terminology:

• Trader is taking Macron's hand (detonate).
• Trader is giving his hand to Macron.
• Macron is receiving Trader's hand (don't detonate).
• Macron is losing his hand to Trader.

This terminology derives from the understanding that Trader's part is voluntary and Macron's part is in voluntary, helping us to align the outcome to the intended effect of Rifts.

To summarize, if the text explicitly uses a form of the word "take" then somebody is taking a card. If the text doesn't say "take", then we need to look at whether the action is voluntary or involuntary to determine if the action should be considered "taking".

Now for some specific examples based on the above interpretations:

Rifts do not detonate...

• When touched via Wild Vulch if you discard rather than keep them.

• When acquired via Wild Chronos or Super Mite (you took them from the discard pile, not from a player). [Although in the case of Super Mite, exactly where you took them from is debatable!]

• When forced to be discarded via Wild Hate .

• When collected via compensation if you use Wild Barbarian to discard them.

• When given to you by Philanthropist , Wild Ethic , or Wild Trader .

• When received because of Trader giving you his hand.

Rifts do detonate...

• When collected as compensation , even if you had no choice in card selection because you had to take every card in the player's hand (you are still taking compensation).

• When taken by Mutant , Wild Mutant , Wild Trader , or Barbarian ( Wild Barbarian does not apply in these cases).

• When acquired by Trader taking another player's hand.

Rifts get messy ...

• When randomized during an exchange such as by you using Wild Oracle .
  — None detonate for your opponent (you are explicitly "giving" cards to him and it wasn't his voluntary action).
  — If you "take" (per the card text) any Rifts of a value that you didn't have before, those particular Rifts all detonate.
  — If you end up with more Rifts of a particular value than you had before (i.e., receiving both Rift 4s after you started with only one of them), the extra one detonates.
  — If each player started with one of the Rift 4s and both players ended with one of them, you just assume that they did not trade hands since there's no way to prove otherwise (short of sticking a Post-It on one of the cards ahead of time, which would require the opponent to disclose information about his hand and would be ridiculous ).

I had initially tried to simplify that last case, but the simplification was just as bad as or worse than doing it by the book; so now I'm back to the letter of the law (as best I can understand it).

Just a Bill, what do you think about getting a Rift as part of a deal? We had that come up the last time we played, and we had the Rift detonate.

I don't think that'd cause it to detonate. Best we can tell, the intent with Rifts is to punish someone who chooses to forcibly take a Rewards card from somebody else's hand. It's not an offensive weapon at all.

That's a tricky one. Deals already involve some degree of player flexibility in how specific you are about the kinds of cards to be traded, so I'm going to base my answer in part on my recent review of Eon's editions of the old Encounter magazine. I seem to remember Jack Kittredge answering questions about player-defined conditions (such as Seeker's questions, Schizoid's terms, Witch's curses, and deals) by ruling that it depends on how you word it . So here is how I would rule:

• If the deal is "I give you a card and you give me a card", then I'd say we're both safe.
• If the deal is "you take a card from me and I take a card from you", then I'd say we're both at risk.
• If the deal is "you give me a card and then you take a card from me", then I'd say you'd want to be a little more wary of making deals with me in the future. ;-)

In other words, based on my understanding of the original designers' general design intent , I believe the parties to the deal should have the flexibility to craft a deal that either includes or excludes the risk of Rift detonation.

Just_a_Bill said:

Agreed. During a deal if I say "I get to give you X number of cards" it wouldn't blow up. If I say "I'll fan out my hand and you take X number of cards randomly" then it would detonate.

There can be so many variables with this, and Bill breaks down them down nicely in his post ... because of those reasons, our group simply decided that if a Rift comes to you for any reason (other than drawing it from the deck) that it detonates, whether you keep it or not. The term "takes" on the Rift card is where the debate begins ... and we didn't want to have those debates every time a new scenario presented itself.

For example, with the Barbarian ... the unwanted cards are discarded, but .... his alien card says to "Take" your opponent's hand. So would the Rift detonate, I think so, for the Rift says that if another player "takes" the card it blows up but I can also see the argument for the other side of the issue.

So rather than go back and forth on the semantics of Cosmic Encounter, we decided to make it a constant, and then we don't argue about it later.

oatesatm said:

Just as long as you realize that this is a house rule and you are most definitely playing contrary to the rules. The Incursion rulesheet says "if a rift card is taken from a player’s hand ( but not discarded ), ... the rift detonates".

Just_a_Bill said:

I probably was not as clear as I should have been ... I didn't mean to imply that this is the way to play it out with the Barbarian, I was just using it as an example of how some of the wording can lead to debates in our gaming group. I wasn't trying to clarify the rule for other posters, just commenting on why we have chosen to play it as such. So yes, I do realize we play by a house rule ... but it saves us some contention.

Just_a_Bill said:

I think I have to disagree on that one. I doubt that when writing the rift cards, the designers meant to make a distinction like this. Otherwise they would have been more clear: whenever a player takes ( as opposed to being given ) a rift card...

rlbond86 said:

Are you asserting that "taking" and "being given" are the same thing?

Think of it thematically. If someone takes a rift control pod away from you and you didn't want them to, you can just not give them the stabilization codes and it blows up. If you give someone a rift control pod by choice, there's probably a law in the Cosmic Code (the rules that govern interstellar interaction, such as the one that says you can't just draw all the pods you want from the Source) that makes you transfer the stabilization codes as well. If you lose a rift control pod but no one ends up owning it, you can blow it up all you want, but it won't matter.

I played a game earlier today as Philanthropist and started giving out rifts. We decided it was allowed in our game because I give it to someone and then they have to take it, but without using the word "take."

I don't understand ... if you're the Philanthropist, how does spending your power giving away rifts help you?

I think he meant that they played it so that Phil could give out rifts, which then exploded. In that case, giving them out would indeed be a good play. Kinda like being able to play a Plague without the possibility of a Card Zap.

Great thread here as I've been thinking about rifts all day after experiencing the Trader interacting with rifts in the game. My first conclusion was to use the word 'take' to mean 'end up with' the rift card. I thought, if I go out and shoplift some merchandise or pay for the same merchandise...or if someone else put that merchandise in my pocket when I wasn't looking, then when I walk away I am TAKING that merchandise with me.

Now after reading this, I've changed my mind and subscribe more to the 'voluntary/involuntary' play of the rift detonation. Thanks for the nice breakdown Bill!