While playing the Absorbing Man scenario of the campaign, I was surprised by the rule clarification on "placement" and "revealing." Absorbing Man's environments have a surge keyword and the scenario instructs you to discard cards until an environment is discarded then put it into play during setup. It then clarifies that the surge keyword is disregarded in this instance because placing cards is not the same thing as revealing and thus effects that would trigger from revealing do not occur during placement.

This has huge implications and now I wonder whether I've been playing Expert wrong this entire time. Many of the villains have a "When Revealed:" action on their stage II cards, such as Rhino's Breakin' and Takin' or Klaw's Immortal Klaw . According to this clarification, if I'm playing Expert, during setup, the villain's "When revealed:" text would not take effect because it is placement and not "revealing."

Is this correct? This would almost make Expert too easy for many scenarios...

You have been playing correctly. Step 10 of setup in the Rules Reference is explicit that Setup and When Revealed abilities on cards that entered play during setup do resolve.

Surge does not trigger because it is neither of these, it is a keyword that reacts to a card being revealed, and the starting environment for Absorbing Man is discarded and then put into play rather than revealed, bypassing Surge.

Hopefully that makes sense? It isn't the most intuitive but I think it is consistent with the rules.

1 hour ago, Assussanni said:

You have been playing correctly. Step 10 of setup in the Rules Reference is explicit that Setup and When Revealed abilities on cards that entered play during setup do resolve.

Surge does not trigger because it is neither of these, it is a keyword that reacts to a card being revealed, and the starting environment for Absorbing Man is discarded and then put into play rather than revealed, bypassing Surge.

Hopefully that makes sense? It isn't the most intuitive but I think it is consistent with the rules.

Thank you.