Hi all,

A legality question here. At the end-of-the-end of Dol Guldur, the way was clear and we only needed 3 or 4 progress tokens to finish the quest. My partner's threat was at 49 and she was holding all the cards, so this was it. All questable characters and heroes committed to the quest, and it looked like a sure thing. 2-player game, so 2 cards come up. First is a location, no problem. Second is ... Ungoliant's Spawn. The "when revealed" effect floors our questing capability.

Now, at this point we are allowed to play event cards, am I correct? This is where our success hinges. My partner played a Dwarven Tomb, searched her discard pile for a A Test of Will, paid for and played it to cancel the "when revealed" effect, putting us well over the maximum necessary, and we were out of there.

Was that permissable? I don't see anything about a limitation on the number of cards you can play, or whether you have to wait to use a card after you grab it with Dwarven Tomb.

As a side note, this quest also had a beautiful moment where 2 Cavern Guardians and an Orc Guard were engaged with my partner. Both guardians had 1 point of damage on them, courtesy of Thalin in the previous questing phase. Along comes Legolas with Rain of Arrows and, hey presto! No more baddies.

GS

Yes, that is all fine and dandy. You can play events AT THE END of the reveal step of the questing phase, before calculation... tomb to dig up Test is a sweet combo that everyone should keep up there sleeve.. it is temping to use tomb a lot,, it takes patience to hold it,, it is one of those cards that will save you form death and win you the game every time you cast it.

I really don't know if that is legal. Does the game follow normal CCG style effect resolution with a stack? Because Tomb is resolved independent from the when played effect, and then playing the card pulled out separate would be resolving too late as the when revealed effect already resolved

PanzerKraken said:

there is no stack in this game

That just seems to make things more complicated than anything in a CCG style game. So you can cancel an effect that clearly finished resolving when it was played? It just feels extremely wierd to be able to resolve an ability, play a card and resolve it, and then play another in response to a card that resolved 2 effects ago to cancel it? Seems very late to cancel a card effect at this point.

Playing card games for almost 2 decades now, and that just doesn't sound or feel right at all.

This game has no stack; assuming it does will just get you into trouble.

That being said, I don't think this play was legal. A Test of Will is a response, specifically, a response to "a card that was just revealed from the encounter deck." By the time you have a chance to play actions to and drop your dwarven tomb, your window to play the response has already past.

Bohemond said:

Your completely correct, I often get this wrong, and in fact only discovered this error recently when I worked out that Elenore can only cancel a a single when revealed effect per quest phase, as using UC to untap her is at action speed, so she can only untap at the end of the reveal step.. witch is after the cards resolve. So for example, canceling a treachery and drawing a 2nd one, you can not untap and cancel the new one and draw a 3rd. I only just got this worked out like a few weeks ago so it seams this rule still has not really sunk in... I miss a stack.. just makes so much more sens and easier to learn timings

Argh, now that I hear this, it does make sense.

I am free to play events after cards are revealed but I can only trigger a response like ToW immediately after the "when revealed" comes up. So if I choose to play Dwarven Tomb, I'm essentially passing on the chance to trigger any response to the "when revealed" effect, yes? And further, when the "when revealed" effect came up, ToW was sitting in the DECK and not in my hand, so it would be invalid to suggest that this "when revealed" could be used to trigger the response on ToW.

What I COULD have done was play Dwarven Tomb before the quest cards were revealed, and had ToW in my hand just in case. "When revealed" was the only thing that could have disrupted my win at that point, so I should have foreseen it.

*sigh*... that "win" will always have an asterisk next to it now, since we essentially discontinued play before the game came to any sort of resolution (also known as a forfeit!!) But I will not tell my wife. I will take this knowledge to the grave!

Also, I'm a card game novice. What is a "stack?"

Thanks for the discussion guys.

GS

this dosn't make sense... this timing issue is so confusing as the rules are just so muddy and badly written...

If all this crap is true. then how can you cast Test of Will at all to cancel a when revealed.. I mean it is a EVENT, so why can you cast that and not the TOMB?

booored said:

Because Dwraven Tomb has the word "Action:" but Test of Will has the word "Response:"

This seams correct. So events themselves are at response speed... but the event is limited by the keyword on the card... for example... Valiant Sac, is a response speed event, while astonishing speed is a action...

So basically there is no such things as "event" speed.. as they key off action / response?

booored said:

Yeah, that's one way to think of it. The timing structure for "action" events is entirely different from that of "response" events. The real key is the fact that responses can only be triggered immediately after their specified trigger occurs. If you play an "action" card after revealing encounter cards, you are necessarily doing so in the action window after the staging step (per the timing chart in the rules). In the OP's example, as soon as Dwarven Tomb is played, the players have essentially declined the option to respond to the Spawn's "when revealed" effect.

The real lesson here, as the OP noted, is to play your Dwarven Tomb and retrieve your cancel effect earlier--before you reveal encounter cards Frustrating, maybe, but a good learning experience.