Carl Sanford explains that the Lodge has need of one of your friends. Discard an ally to take a Silver Lodge Membership. Does this ally "go to the box" or is he placed on the bottom of the 11 card active ally deck? This is important because the Institution, "The Bureau of Investigations" is in play & I need to know if Protective Custody is activated.

I do not have the expansion with the institution, however I would say that 'discard' means to return to the deck.

From memory, the game is specific when it tells you to return something to the box (and thats a queue for someone to prove me wrong!)

Not at all, you're right.

Discard = put the card to the bottom of the specific deck

Return to the box = remove the card from the game

I don't have the Institution right in front of me, but I guess this should answer your questions

Julia said:

Therefore, it won't apply in this case because the Ally is discarded instead.

Esto said:

Yes, you're absolutely right

Here's a question: does anyone here actually treat the Ally deck like a normal deck? You almost never "draw an Ally", it's always "draw a random Ally", so I always assumed that you were supposed to make it entirely random every time you drew (which is to say, you would have just as much chance of drawing a recently discarded Ally, even though in normal circumstances it would be towards the bottom of the deck).

I've always interpreted "draw randomly" to mean "draw the top card of the deck, don't pick and choose (as the boarding house would allow)"

Seconded. I always draw the topmost card, unless otherwise specified

In the original example, I assume it's quite alright to go to Ma's Boarding House to buy back the ally I gave up to Carl Sanford in exchange for the Silver Twilight Lodge Membership?

Esto said:

I suppose you can answer this in two ways depending on your intepretation of the encounter.

Do you think that Carl ended up using the ally for a sacrifice? Or just needed them to run an errand?

So just to muddy the waters…. you could thematically argue to return the ally to the box if you belive your ally met a grisly end whilst in the lodge.

This is what I love about Arkham, sometimes I choose to play encounters in a way that fits in with the spirit of the game rather than taking literal rules interpretations.

Esto said:

Yes sir! Don't feel forced to (even if thematically I like your idea. "Hey buddy. I never dumped you. But I was in need for those informations… so… let's grab a beer, and team up again"), but if the Ally is a good one (especially if he's Professor Rice), it's a good way to break the game, ehm, a good strategy, I meant

Hmm…this might just be a product of my obsession with luck.

Oh, and speaking of which: what does everyone do when you get a card that lets you search through a deck? Do you leave the deck as is? Shuffle the whole thing? Shuffle only the part you looked through? I'm pretty sure there are no rules for this; I tend to go with the third option.

Shuffle everything. And I'm sure, somewhere the answer stands

Hugues said:

Yes, Hugues got it. When you're instructed to search for something specific in a deck, you then have to shuffle the whole deck. On the other hand, when you're instructed to search for a general something (like "the first weapon in the common item deck") you keep on drawing until you meet the requirements, but you don't reshuffle afterwards

Hmm…see, I would think it would be more important to shuffle in the second case, because then you're guaranteed to know what cards are on top of the deck (in the first case, you can search from the bottom). Does this come from the rules?

Walk said:

I'm quoting Tibs, so, kind of. Not so sure where he got this answer (no time for checking right now), but I'm 100% sure of my source

I think the two "shuffle" cases are rules that everyone has agreed upon.

Searching for a named item means you should shuffle afterwards.

Searching for the first of a type, you don't have to shuffle: but search from the top, and put the non-qualifying cards on the bottom. It would, of course, be safest to ALWAYS shuffle, but that takes time and it's generally not necessary to do.

Alright, thanks. I may just end up shuffling in all cases, as I sometimes do, butI must admit that my desire to achieve fairness through shuffling tends to break down somewhat when Ashcan Pete is in possession of a valuable item….

Not so sure about why you should shuffle while playing Ashcan… he's not digging decks for specific items, but just looking at the bottom of the deck

Just a joke. I meant to indicate that there is a certain temptation not to shuffle a deck in its entirety when you're playing with Ashcan and there's a desirable item sitting on the bottom….

Walk said:

Yep. But in fact, you don't have to. Ashcan is allowed to draw from the bottom of a deck (and to look at the bottom as well whenever he wants).He's not going after a specific item, hence, no shuffling required

(as a side note, I won't be able to look at the forum again before saturday, so, in case you answer, don't be offended by my silence!)

Don't worry, I often neglect to check for days at a time even when I'm not occupied. What I meant to communicate was that, if you're playing with Ashcan, there's a particularly good item on the bottom of one of the decks, and you find yourself in a situation (such as the "search for a specific item" encounters) in which you would normally shuffle that deck, there is a certain temptation to temporarily "reinterpret" the rules such that you don't need to shuffle. In other words, if I were playing with Pete, Eltdown Shards was on the bottom of the Unique Items deck, and someone pulled the Curiositie Shoppe encounter that lets you search for an item of your choice, I might suddenly find myself in possession of the idea that one is obliged to shuffle everything but the bottom card….

Walk said:

::laughter:: ok, now I got it :-) thx for the explanation!

Personally, I shuffle in both case because I think that knowing which card are coming up can change the game (like deciding to go shopping or not) and that breaks the suprise effect of the thing.