Connections - Any Phase: Charlie may gain Allies that have been returned to the box.

He still has to meet the conditions to gain an ally that has been returned to the box, right?

I would guess he can't just pluck an ally into his fold as soon as the ally leaves town due to terror level or whatever but friends argue that the way it's written he can just grab them immediately.

While I agree that it was not worded as well as it could have been I would agree with your interpretation over your friends. Gaining an ally every time the terror track rises is somewhat broken and in conflict with his other power which is to prevent the terror track from rising. I am not aware of an official ruling on this however.

Shaggy said:

Yeah, he has to meet the condition, and the allies that have been returned to the box mean from the 11 initial allies chosen at the beginning of the game.

Avi,

I agree on the first part (that you must of course fulfill the conditions to gaining the ally), but is the second part true? Strictly speaking, assuming you're playing with all the other expansions, the 23 allies that are not among the 11 are considered to have been 'returned to the box' too, no?

As gaining allies have been rare for me so far (unless it's Jacqueline, Leo or Lola in the game, in which case I'll try to get them to locations where there are specific ally encounters), I allowed Charlie to take from any of the 34, when he fulfill the conditions.

Jumesyn said:

No, those allies are simply not in the game. Kane does not have access to those allies—he only has access to the 11 chosen for the game. His ability simply states that the ally being "returned to the box" doesn't preclude his ability to acquire the ally. Is it a strong ability? No. In fact, it is counteracted by his other, more important ability: Settle Down.

If the other 23 allies were "returned to the box," then Glaaki would awaken during setup.

Q: Charlie Kane’s Connections - How does this work?
A: Choose the 11 starting Allies; Charlie can gain any of those 11 Allies that get returned to the box. These allies are gained through the normal methods of gaining allies (Ma's boarding house, certain encounters and so forth).

I house ruled long ago that Charlie can gain any of the 34 allies, otherwise his ability is useless and have horrible synergy with his second ability. It's not like that house rules makes him overpowered in any standards.

The dunwich & Kingsport rulebooks respectively at page 4 & 5 states : Although five news allies are included in this expansion, only 11 total allies should be used in each game. When preparing the ally deck, shuffle it and deal out 11 cards face up, returning the others to the box.

Although I do play like Tibs & Avi, rules or Charlie are not clear about what really is "returned to the box" ...

It deserves a FAQ entry for sure.

Have to agree that Kane's second ability is a little too weak the way it was written (when you play it properly that is, No he doen't get an army of allies or free allies and no having Basil Elton does not mean he can cancel the AO attack every single turn).

NOTE: Talking about House rules from here. Any posts about how I'm wrong will be ignored since I acknowledge that.

However since ally encounters are rare enough as they are (especially the CotDP encounters) we play the "all ally variant" anyway where all allys from all sets are included at the beggining. Then as allies are discarded we discard extra allies (though for purposes of say Galekki this counts as losing only one). For example if we were playing with Kingsport and CotDP we would start with 29 allies. We would discard 3 at a time the first 7 times and 2 at a time the last 4 times. Usually we don't get this much bookkeeping as the terror level doesn't rise that fast. For Ma's we get to draw 11 - terror level allies and pick from those so you usually get a wider selection than you would normally but you don't know for sure which allies will be available before you go.

As for Kane he always has access to all the allies that started in the game and when he goes to Ma's he can pick any ally he wants. The only place where this might pose an issue is when we play with Dunwich since Professor Rice is such a game breaking Ally always having acces to him is very strong but otherwise most of the other allies don't have such a great impact on the game that this is very important.

Dietch said:

I'm pretty sure Tibs was quoting from the Proto-FAQ (which is the same reason why I said what I said, sorry, I'm kindof busy these days and somewhat short in speeches— I'll have a bit more time in a couple weeks).

@allstar64

House rules are wrong! La la la! Blah blah blah!

...

I'm sorry ;') I couldn't resist.

I would house rule AH in a heartbeat (and I am) but I would never house rule a euro game (like Ticket to Ride). Because, you know, euro games actually gets playtested...

kroen said:

I dont agree on this, one of my most hated euro games from my childhood was Ludo. I would in fact house rule it to add a tech tree, diffrent units, combat rules and a card driven system for events. Then I would house rule the house rules that caused problems with diffrent setups and player numbers. Then unless total gaming nirvana was accomplished with all the added complexity and dynamics, I would house rule it to fix it while adding interesting new layers of complexity and components. At worst I would have to house rule that, but at least I wouldnt be playing "#$"#$ Ludo.

Hmm... Dietch you're right, but they probably meant, "placed back into the box and are not in the game" instead of the game-mechanic term "return to the box." Though the quote I supplied above should officially solve any Charlie problems without ambiguity.

I do agree with tibs on this and I am sure it will be fixed in a future FAQ. "Returned to the box" is meant to prevent a card from not being "discarded" to the back of its deck (out of the draw sequence but still there). Since allies often have a "search for ally in the deck" condition the ability makes sense in that context. The problem with the allies deck is that for the most part the game needs them out of the deck for terror to make sense.

The ability is meant as a way for the investigator to lure allies back to town, not to give you inceasing options depending on how many expansions you happen to own or how many custom allies you happen to have created.

My take is that if the ally wasnt there in the first place, it wont be due to that ability. The "return to box" condition is cancelled for allies that actually where in play.