Does anyone know of a reason that would preclude me from playing blood rage on a monster that is only on board because rise again was used on it previous turn? Togive some details i had an ettin that had 3 health left so played blood rage on it to get two last attacks. I then used rise again on it. after a short debate the heroes agreed this was a valid move. When the next turn rolled around i attacked with the ettin and played blood rage on him again. My heroes argued that this was not a valid move because this creature had already been defeated. They also argued tthat the unitt is removed at endd of turn so that took place before i could play the card, until i pointed out that that i get final say in timing disputes. Honestly i think theyre just mad i got 6 attacks in 2 turns with him, but we agreed to try to see if we could get a consensus from the forums.

I don't see anything explicitly preventing what you did. You need to have all 3 cards in your hand, so it's not like you can do this every turn of every encounter. The heroes have some "killer combos" as well. Of course if you are steamrolling the heroes in a particular game & drawing every card in your deck, it seems like overkill to thrash them with this as well -- although I guess you could call it "putting them out of their misery."

On a somewhat related note, if the Overlord is dragging out an encounter that he is in a position to win (in order to beat up the heroes and draw more cards for the 2nd encounter), can the heroes choose to forfeit -- and end the encounter immediately -- or do they just have to take their lumps?

Actually between 2 unholy rituals and diabolic power I am pretty well able to get this combination of cards fairly often. This was not a case of me steamrolling and abusing card draws, but rather going into encounter 2 with both unholy rituals which I used early on to finish out my deck and then used diabolic power to get a holy ritual in my hand. This was actually a strategy that I used fairly early on in the 2nd encounter, so it was needed.

As for your question, nothing "prevents" the OL from drawing things out in this way, except maybe the idea of sportsmanship. In football you don't call timeouts when up by 4 tds just so you can run the score up more. Personally I would not do this because losing is bad enough, much less having to deal with some ****** who is making sure to not just win, but absolutely destroy you whether the scenario is still fun or not at that point. Yes it's strategic, but it is not in the spirit of the game or sportsmanship. Usually once an encounter has what looks to be a fairly clear-cut winner we start the negotiations to end it early. Usually it goes something like this," Hey bud, look, you're gonna win this thing in the next 2-3 turns. I'm not gonna catch up with you so how about we just agree that you draw 2 cards and each of my heroes takes 2 dmg so we can just move on." After this usually an agreement of some sort is made so we don't waste our time on meaningless turns.

I just think it's about timing.
The rules say that a monster can't be the target of two spells in the same turn (You can't cast Frenzy on an Ettin twice in the same turn) so I'm wondering, when was 'Rise Again' played and when was 'Blood Rage' played?

Consider this: The end of your turn you play Blood Rage, your Ettin (let's call him Spencer) takes his attacks and is killed. You have played a spell on Spencer so you can't play Rise Again on him until your next turn. When that turn rolls around, you play Rise Again, get control of him but you can't play Blood Rage because you've already used a spell on Spencer. In effect, you would need three turns to play three spells on one Monster. In this case, Spencer.

Does that sound right to other, more versed players?

without looking at rules i was pretty sure that it just said you could not play the same spell twice for the same activating circumstance

You're right, sorry. Here's the wording.

"Two Overlord cards with the same name cannot be played on the same target in response to the same triggering condition."

Have at it man, Spencer Lives!!

Nexx said:

Right, you couldn't play two Blood Rages on Mr. Ettin on the same turn, even leaving out the issue of the double defeat. In the example, Blood Rage is played on two consecutive turns, with Rise Again delaying the first defeat until the end of the next turn.

Page 18: "Timing conflicts may arise when two or more players wish to use an ability with the same triggering condition. In these situations, the current player (the player who is currently taking his turn) decides the order in which the abilities are resolved."

The timing rule lets the Overlord decide on the order of abilities between "two or more players". Since the OL played both cards, it does not explicitly cover this case. You could either extend this rule & let the OL decide, argue that the cards are resolved in the order played (FIFO) & that RA removes it from the board before the 2nd BR can be played and take effect, or wait for a FAQ from FFG to explain the order of "end of turn" effects.

Triu said:

I see the conflict between a card thrown by the OL (trying to resolve) and the OL itself (trying to play a card before that resolution) both in the end of OL's turn. I think the OL should decide following the spirit of the golden rule you pointed out, but agree it's not crystal clear. Isn't there any way to ask to FFG staff this issue and get an official response?

Triu said:

There's nothing in the rules about forfeiting, and the Overlord obviously wants to keep playing to draw as many cards as he can, so he's not going to just accept your surrender and move on.

That said, this reeks of the old 1E tactic of hiding in dungeons to prevent the OL from buying upgrades during the 1E Advanced Campaign. I think it's generally poor design if a game encourages tactics that deliberately draw out the gameplay - a flaw that Descent can't seem to get away from despite the best efforts of the good people over at FFG.

The more I hear about this "hoarding cards to stock up for E2" tactic, the more I want to impose a house rule limiting the Overlord's hand size. And I say this knowing full well that I'm usually the OL in our group, mind you. It's just a stupid cheesy tactic.