Victoria Glasser & similar "coming into play" situations

By Jeff Lewis, in CoC Rules Discussion

Victoria Glasser has a forced response that says: After Victoria Glasser comes into play choose a character. That character goes insane. It does not say if able. So if she comes into play with only characters who have either willpower or a terror icon can she choose one of them or can she not come into play. And if so how do you handle that situation. Basically could someone sort of clear up all the fuzziness surrounding this situation. The rules state that a character with a terror icon cannot even be selected to go insane, so on and so forth.

You are correct that characters with either terror icon(s) or willpower cannot go insane.

So you play Victoria as your action in your operations phase, assuming there are no Disrupts, then the Forced Response kicks in and you look for a character to apply the insanity effect to. If there are no eligible targets (as they all have terror or willpower) then nothing else happens. Note though, as it is Forced Response, if the only character that is eligible to go insane is your own, you have to send them insane, it is not optional as it would be if it had been a Response.

Hope this helps.

Nomad said:

Note though, as it is Forced Response, if the only character that is eligible to go insane is your own, you have to send them insane, it is not optional as it would be if it had been a Response.

The chosen character doesn't have to be eligible. There is a subtly difference between "choose a character to go insane" and "choose a character. That character goes insane."

If there is some effect active that removes all willpower and terror, and you're the only one who has a character (and yes, Victoria herself counts) then you have to pick one of your own, since it's a forced response.

Thanks, you guys are awesome.

Marius wrote:

"The chosen character doesn't have to be eligible. There is a subtly difference between "choose a character to go insane" and "choose a character. That character goes insane."

If there is some effect active that removes all willpower and terror, and you're the only one who has a character (and yes, Victoria herself counts) then you have to pick one of your own, since it's a forced response."

Ah yes, this goes to the (v1.8) Eligible Targets section of the FAQ. For some reason I can never quite seem to get my head around that one...

OK, so just to be clear (and to see if I do really get it now) lets suppose the active player plays Victoria and already has in play a character with no terror icons or willpower, lets say a Patron of the Arts, for example. The inactive player has no characters in play.

The active player would not have to choose the Patron to go insane because Victoria's Forced Response does not specify that the target has to be eligible to go insane. He could choose Victoria herself to be the target of her own Forced Response, the effect would fizzle and both the Patron and Victoria would be unscathed. Had Victoria's Forced Response read "choose a character to go insane" the active player would have to choose the Patron as this was the only target that actually could go insane.

Phew! Am I right now or still confused?

Correct! That's how it works.

Don't you think that's strange too keep such wordy nitpicking as we are starting a new area of the game ?? Trying to explain all those silly " you can - you can't" on such points is hard and painfull during demos ...These card might have get a little errata, to be present in the core set .

Thanks for your help Marius!