As I understand the sequence of events, from the start of the first icon struggle on the first story to the end of the last struggle on the last icon of the third story is considered one long event resolution … all reactions and responses (except forced responses and disrupts) wait until all that is done.

What about cards that have "Response: If you win a story struggle by more than 2 icons ….". Do these wait until all the struggles are done? or do they trigger right away. As I recall, some only make sense if they happen then and there (removing characters from stories, removing icons from characters at stories ).

What is the right way to play this?

From the FAQ:

(3.2) Resolving Stories

Resolving struggles and determining success at all three story cards happens all within the same “gray box” on the timing flowchart. Thus, no actions or responses can be triggered between one story’s resolution and the beginning of the next story’s resolution. The only effects players can choose to trigger are Disrupts , however Forced Response effects that apply to the situation must trigger automatically.

So, as it says no responses can trigger until all the stories are over.

Just to be sure I understand, the Alternative Historian ( SoK 15) has:

"Action: Discard a card from your hand to choose an icon struggle ?at a story. That struggle does not resolve this phase"

So, this Action would be played in the last Action segment just before we start resolving stories … not during the story resolution phase when we get to the story I want to alter.

Also, do I understand this correctly, that if I discard 4 cards in a row during that Action segment, I could choose all 4 icons at a story not to resolve. Or, to be extreme, I could discard 12 cards from my hand (assuming I had them) and choose each icon at each story and declare that they will not resolve. Is that correct?

BrooklynMike said:

Right, it's a very flexible and powerful ability. The downside is that you need to discard cards to pay for it, but fortunately she's in a faction (Miskatonic) that features a lot of extra card draw so they're the best at powering a card like that.

Interestingly, last night I was playing a Shub deck against my opponent's Miskatonic that used Alternative Historian. She had been canceling a lot of Terror struggles through the game and later on in the game I sacrificed The Three Bells to grab an Alternative Historian of my own (passing up some more "impressive" characters like Whitton Greene) out of my opponent's discard pile and start cancelling his Investigation struggles which were threatening to win a 3rd story for him.

In the action window following the story struggles can you play all responses that triggered during the struggles? I'm thinking of Ghost Hunter and Catacombs Docent.

The only character/event/support effects that are triggered during story resolution are "Forced response" and "disrupt" (some passive abilities might still apply, but passives have wierd timing sometimes).

"Responce:" effects can be triggered after all stories resolve, but before any "Action:" effects are triggered.
See rulebook timing chart:
- Action slot after commiting but before resolution
- Story resolution. No Responce or Action can be triggered here, you must wait till all stories resolve.
- Responces for stuff that happend in step above
- Action slot after story resolution

You can play any number of responces, one at a time, response opportunity going back and forth between both players untill both pass.