Convoluted stun situation

By Casual_Player, in KeyForge

Hi there! Apparently me and my friend have a thing for falling in messy rulings situations when it comes to this game. This time we were uncertain about how to correctly read and apply the rules about stun and recovering from it. At one point in this game, my friend played Fogbank while he had Barrister Joya in play. Previously, he had played Blinding Light, so a bunch of my creatures were stunned.

In my turn, i decided to call Santum, and i was going to unstun some of them. However my friend told me that i could not, the reason being that these creatures could neither fight (Fogbank) nor reap (Barrister Joya), and therefore i had no way to use them at all, and no way to unstun them. Since i immediatly called that BS, we resorted to the rulebook. But there all we could find there was this:

"Any time a stunned creature could normally be used, it can instead be used by exhausting it to remove its stun status card."

Which still left us kinda mystified. If, as is usually true for most creatures, all a creature can do is reap and fight, and it's prevented from doing both by other effects...it can still be "normally used" to be unstunned?

On one thing, however, we agreed: i had a stunned Deipno Spymaster in play, and i unstunned it on the basis that its Omni ability can be used always. However since my game was doomed anyway if i could not unstun them creatures (of course, he had a legacy Witch of the Eye to play Fogbank again the next turn), i gave up.

So, it is true that, in such situation, creatures can't be unstunned? And i was right i could unstun the Deipno by using its Omni ability in a Sanctum turn?

Thank you for your hepl guys!


Edited by Casual_Player

The first sentence in the rules for stun say, " While a creature is stunned, it cannot fight, reap, or use action or omni abilities." Using a creature to remove its stun token is not using the creature to fight or reap, it's using the creature to un-stun. As FFG noted in Crucible Cast 11, essentially the stun token gives the creature a new ability, and that new ability allows you to exhaust the creature and remove the stun token.

In your case, even though your opponent had played effects that would not allow you to fight or reap, you would still be able to use the creature to remove its stun token.

There, i knew that freaking swindler was trying once again to play me for a fool. Maybe i should find another friend. Then again he kinda told me before that game that his deck got a special combo. He didn't know that it's not working the way he thought. Still, how lucky one must be to get a LEGACY Witch of the eye?

However i was apparently wrong about the Deipno. I watched that video and the guy asked exatly about that, and the FFG guy answered that you can't unstun it due to his Omni ability. Yet it's funny that the only ability that allow you to use a creature in every turn...prevents you from using it in no turn but its house one when it comes to unstun it. Wish those rules were written a little more clearly.

Anyway thanks a lot :D.

Edited by Casual_Player