This came up in a game between myself and my girlfriend. I was playing Shubb-Niggurath and she was playing Hastur. I had Dark Contagion on two of her characters and was about to pull an awesome power-play!!

Here is the Dark Contagion Text:

dark contagion
--------------
Type : Support
Cost : 1
Subtype : Attachment. Curse.
Game Text : Attach to a character. Response: After a [shub-Niggurath] character you control is wounded, wound attached character.

So, I guess part 1 of my question is around my interpretation of the card. I picture Dark Contagion as a kind of bomb that I attach to the characters that goes off when one of my Shubb characters gets wounded. Since each copy of the card has the same text, my question is do they share the same trigger? If one of my characters gets wounded, do all the Dark Contagions activate (do all the bombs go off)? Or do I need one wound per dark contagion? If the later, then how would we decide which Dark Contagion activates?

Part 2 of my question has to do with timing. I had committed to stories and she was playing defense. One of my characters is wounded in the combat struggle. Does that mean that the Dark Contagions activate instantly? I ask because it is a "Response" and not a "Disrupt" on the card, but waiting until the end of the story phase to have all the Dark Contagions go off seemed strange to me (I don't know why, it just did.) So, generally, do responses activate during the story phase even though actions are not allowed once the stories start resolving?

Thanks for reading and to any responses,

HappyDD

Well, the first part is yes. Each card can respond to a single character wound.

The second part, if I understand the timing rules correctly, is that the response can only happen after all the struggles and success test are made.

TheProfessor has it right in both cases.

A special note about the combat. During the resolution of the story, you cannot trigger the effect. However, once all the stories resolve, each player has an option to respond to events that occurred during the combat starting with the active player. And as such, providing the card is still in play, you're good to trigger it's effects now.

Big thanks to Kallisti and the Professor! I think the gf's excuse for one wound not triggering both cards was that she would be the one of the receiving end, otherwise she'd have been all about it.

So triggering any action in the story phase is a no-no? I don't want to split hairs here, but the only thing that got me was the card doesn't say "Action: Response: [text]" it just says "Response: [text]". So I guess the interpretation is that there is no difference between these two possible card texts?

If you check out the rule book, you will see Response defined:

A Response is an action that can only be played if the circumstances described in its text are met.

So, a Response is a type of action.

And for the timing, if you check out the rule book where they have the blocks that show what can happen when, you see in green that you resolve every struggle, then in a white box after that "Response to struggles and success results may be played."

The story resolution happens without actions. Only in the white boxes can you do stuff (except Disrupts)

Thanks Professor,

I was checking that out last night and, while I completely understand and agree with everything you say, it just seemed awkward originally.

I guess I figure that the story phase "happens quickly" in a real time sense. Like, if I think of the game mechanic in real time, then readying exhausted characters probably takes a day or two, but the combat struggle takes minutes. In this attempt to rationalize why my Dark Contagion wouldn't immediately wound if one of my characters are wounded in a combat struggle I thought "maybe it takes some time to work." In the other phases, the Dark Contagion just works because we are talking bigger lengths of time in those phases, so maybe it takes effect hours later in real time. I dunno. I am just trying to justify WHY actions couldn't happen in the story in terms other than "Those are the rules, chump!"

Anyway, thanks for answering my obvious questions. Thread complete.

HappyDD