Hi guys,

I'm new to the game, and just had a question. What is the point or advantage fo winning an arcane struggle? I understand that it allows you to ready an exausted character, but what does that really buy you? Do some characters have special abilities that can only be used when the card is not exausted? (and to use the ability you must exaust them)

Thanks,

John

yes, lots of characters have exhausting as part of its ability cost. but the main reason is if you win arcane on the offensive you get a charcter back that you can block with on the defense, you pick any character commited to that story you won arcane in. so usually you pick your best defensive guy in the group. but there are other reasons to pick other characters, but thats the basics.

Can you explain what you mean by "defend? Defend against what?

johnnyr said:

If you untap a character because you won an arcane struggle, you then have that character (along with any you didn't use) to defend against your opponent trying to complete a story in his go.

I guess I still don't understand, because you do untap him, but the rules say he is still commited to the same story. How does that help?

I don't see the point either!Yes there are some characters which you can create a combo but nothing too quick or too special.It would be some other effect not this!!!

Here's the flow.

Lets say you and your opponent each have three characters in play and you untap yours at the beginning of your turn. Then you commit all three to a story. Your opponent also commits his three characters. You go through the struggles. Somebody wins terror, somebody wins combat, and now you have the arcane struggle.

If you DO NOT win the arcane struggle all of your characters remain tapped when they are uncommitted from the story. Then on your opponent's turn he untaps all of his characters, commits them to stories on his turn and you have zero characters to oppose them. He wins unopposed at each story while you sit there sucking on your teeth feeling powerless and sad.

On the other hand, if you DO win the arcane struggle, then you can untap your best character. When your characters are uncommitted from the story two will still be tapped, and the one you untapped will be untapped. Then on your opponent's turn he untaps all of his characters, and commits them to stories. You have your best character available to commit against him at a story, in this case, because you won the arcane struggle.

Can I make it any clearer? I doubt it.

How have you guys been playing? Have you been untapping your characters on your opponent's turns?

Chick

Tap and untap aren't really good words to use when expalining to a beginner, because they're made up in this card game. Exhaust and ready (un-exhaust) are the words you should use for rulification. Otherwise the above instructions stand.

Agree, Shoes, I'll be more careful with my terminology in future.

Chick

johnnyr said:

Let's go over a few turns:

Your turn:

- You ready your characters, refresh your domains. You draw 2 cards, then you may resource a card on your domains. During your operations phase you play a few characters. For this example, let's assume you have 3 characters when you go into the story phase.

You choose to commit al 3 characters, each to a different story. To commit them, you must exhaust them. One of them has arcane. Since I'm not committing anything right now, you win all struggles you have at least one icon for, so you win arcane. Your arcane character is no ready, and committed. After resolving we both can play some more actions, but we don't. The characters get uncommitted, and the story phase and the turn ends.

My turn:

Now I get to ready my characters, refresh my domains. -But since it's my turn, you don't get to ready your cards, nor refresh your domains. It's my turn, so I only get to ready things. I commit my character during the story phase. Since you won arcane though, you have one ready character. So, you can send him to the story I committed to, to try to stop me from getting more succes tokens. Again you win the arcane struggle, ready your character. after resolving the stories, taking after story actions, my story phase ends.

Your turn:

You get to resfresh/and ready, since it's your turn, but I don't. Your Arcane character was already ready, but since you won arcane, and I didn't, I didn't get to ready my character. All my characters are exhausted. So, when your story phase comes, it's easy pickings.

-------------------

So, that's why Arcane can be helpful.

- Players normally get to ready characters only on their own refresh phase, not on the refresh phase of others.

- Also, ready/exhausted and committed/uncommited are independent of each other. Yes, you must be able to exhaust a character to commit, but once he's committed, making him ready doesn't uncommit him.

Wow....Thanks guys! You completley cleared it up for me. I missed the step where characters are uncommited at the end of the story phase. Thanks again! Sometimes you just have to have an example of play to really "get it".

Thank you!

Nice example, Marius, superior to mine. I guess I COULD have made it clearer, since Marius proceeded to do so.

Chick

chicklewis said:

Well, your example mentioned uncommitting too, so it must have been the whole of both our answers that cleared this one up.