Hi guys,

I keep having trouble with the Disrupts, so here's one case:

• Drunken Hallucinations: Action: Drive a character you control insane to put into play from your hand a Monster character…
• Charles Dexter Ward, Unfortunate Fool: Disrupt: If Charles Dexter Ward would go insane, choose another character instead. That character goes insane, if able.

Can I play DH, choose Charles, drive somebody else instead and still put a Monster in play? Or does the Disrupt cancel the second part? I think it doesn't, because they occurr simultaneously (no "If/Then" clause) but I'd like to make sure.

Thanks!

Disrupt is a replacement, so it doesnt cancel but changes the effect. Normally i'd say it works, but my problem is "to" that indicates cost. I dont know is it legal to replace cost with other effect. [Here i'd say no, but im not sure…]

If you didnt pay the cost normally the effect would not work, i dont know what happens when you try to replace cost with other effect. FAQ says the effect doest occur when replaced so i'd argue you didnt pay the cost so no effect. Interesting, and nice if it works.

i'm 90% sure that you can do that. the disrupt window opens after you target charles dexter, and then returns into the action window to complete the rest of the effect.

there's another sneaky one you can use targeting c.d.w with a small price to pay, wounding and causing insanity to the opponent for cost 1.

of course some disrupts cancel the entire action (power drain etc), whereas others only parts of the action. it does get tricky though and i'm sure you're not the only one who gets tripped up, especially with cards that say THEN, because if the first part is cancelled, then the second also doesn't take effect.

i do believe this is not the case in the question though, as the insanity still occurs, just to a different person.

Zephyr is correct. driving a character you control insane is a cost, if you did not drive a character you control insane you did not pay the cost. A disrupt halts the resolution of an effect, in this case driving Ward insane and replaces that with another effect. When the disrupt is resolved we go back to the original effect and discover we have failed to pay the cost of the effect since we did not drive a character we control insane. The effect does not resolve since its cost was not paid.

good work penfold. no wonder danger mouse keeps you around.

put like that then no it wouldn't work, though pretty sure a small price to pay does??

Notice Small Price to PAy is not worded as a cost. It instead uses a "then" statement, which means the first part of the effect, choosing a character to go insane must successfully resolve before the second part wounding a character, can be done. The effect makes the character you choose to go insane, but there is an interesting thing going on here wording wise, making the character go insane is not what the then statement is looking at, it is looking at you choosing one character to go insane. So once the choice is made you could disrupt it with Charles Dexter Ward make someone else go insane, and then because you successfully chose a character to go insane the then effect of wounding a character is resolved.

excellent. its one of my favourite and sneaky combos. a 1 cost devolution !!!

Does the character selected by the disrupt still go insane?

If you trigger disrupt yeah, he goes insane.

But thinking about this cost thing on other ocassion. I'm not that sure you can even trigger disrupt when paying cost. Disrupt should disrupt some kind of effect. Cost is payed before the effect… Anyone knows better?

PS And devolution seems like an really awfoul card… for 3 you can kill one insane guy owner picks… design fail.

.Zephyr. said:

Devolution

Action: Choose an opponent's character. That opponent must choose and exhaust another character he or she controls. Then, wound the character with the lower skill.

Ok so you play devolution. You choose my characer. I choose (and fail to exhaust my insane character but it doesnt matter, like in Gollonacs case), then you wound character with lower skill, but insane guy has 0 so unless you chose someone with 0 skill you have to wound him. Effectively for 3 you kill one insane guy I choose.

Great indeed, even with no insane its still not that great. Can be ok'ish if there are only strong guys on table, so there is noone useless to choose and exhoust/kill and whoever gets wounded is worth it… ideally if table is really small you can exhoust a really scary thing and kill other scary thing… but seems really hard to pull of.

Sometimes there is no insane character. Given that this is a Hastur card you can look at it two ways.

1. It's likely that there is an insane guy, therefore it sucks

2. If my opponent is running a lot of characters that can't go insane (which is common) then cards which actually capitalize on their inability to go insane could be worth having.

I don't think it's a top shelf card, but situationally it could be useful and it's the sort of effect that Hastur has very little of. Probably a bit better if you're running mono, for instance in a special event or something.

Disrupts will disrupt whatever they are addressing. So driving a character insane to pay a cost is still something the game recognizes as being able to be disrupted by a card which specifically interrupts a character being made insane.

The timing chart is not every possible permutation of every card, it is meant as a standard guideline to show how timing works in general. The card text will still indicate which part of the chart is being effected or disrupted etc.

The FAQ could probably explain that a bit better. I'm not sure without a complicated flow chart that it is possible to get every possible place an effect can be triggered, initiated, or resolved.

I really liked this timing table… it looked like an attempt to create some general framework for really complicated effects, i guess its only a general way stuff works with a lot of exceptions. (maybe not that many, but still there are a few cards that seem to ignore it) I need to relay on it less in more exotic interactions… i hoped this is what you make such charts for - to make more complicated interactions manageable by having a clear set of rules and designing with those rules in mind…

When you design whatever you think is nice at the moment without general structure, a flowchart will get horribly complicated and probably there still are some exceptions for more exotic cards. I dont mind extending this timing structure a bit, but having cards and interactions that do not fit it and no comments about their timing is quite confusing for me. Couldnt they be somehow worded difrently to fit timing structure, or maybe some extension of it, becouse with no general guide you need per interaction rulings and with big card pool its a nightmare. As long as there are not many interactions its manageable, but new cards do appear.

Understanding limitations of this structure does make some of my problems irrelevant, the problem is when some exotic timing card appears it might create even more timing questions. Hmm guess so far its quite ok, despite some stuff like Parlor or Kaleidoscope of Calyptra, but it gets cleared eventually, so Im blowing it out of proportion.

About Delopution OT

I can see it being usefull sometimes, but still cant see me putting it in any deck. For 3 Infernal obsession is so much better. If mono you need more reliable ways with dealing with T/willpower and with other fraction there are so many cheaper and less situational cards. My main problem is that nice card idea is really hurt by details regarding targetting to the point of being really weak really expensive card.

.Zephyr. said:

Totally agree here. I do like the timing structure very much, too. I still think it had been intended to be comprehensive and deal with every possible situation. It's just not finished yet ;-)

I think the IMO nicest and easiest solution would be to add a disrupt window in substep 1.e of the timing structure, where the costs are paid. Similar to the roman numbers I to V in step 5, when resolving forced responses. I'll send a rules question to FFG about whether costs can be disrupted (I'm very sure that they can) and suggesting if they perhaps want to add a disrupt window in 1.e.
Zephyr, I'll also aks FFG if they want to include some info about when to resolve passive effects depending on their temporal keyword (like "before", "after", "when", "while"….) similar to this here . We both have had our problems with passives, and I suppose most people learning this game will at some point ask themselves how to correctly deal with passives. So such a thing could be helpful, IMO. Perhaps FFG also thinks it would be beneficial for players and includes it… we'll see.