been perusing the Seekers of Knowledge card pool for the last month or so, and apart from the obvious need for Richard Pike to change his Action type, there are a couple of things that have set me to pondering, and was wondering what your take on them might be:

1 ) if Lucas Tetlow attempts to take control of a Support which he is not legal to play, what happens ? for example, attempting control of Lodge Defences with no Locations of his own, or Prize Pistol with no Agency to attach it to. when does the action become illegal ? is it a case of simply cannot, or if after paying would it fizzle and relegate the card to discard ?

2 ) probably a bit more self explanatory but would like some feedback on is the question of Ipiutak copying the effects of something like Unbound. say the opponent discards 2 cards to destroy a 2 Skill Character, could it then be used to destroy one of their 2 Skill Characters (exactly) ?

3 ) lets say you control Roald Ellsworth (who has a wound token) and Brette Wulffson. if Brette is returned to hand / destroyed, does Roald INSTANTLY die or does Brette leave first and allow Roald to Disrupt both the Explorers leaving play ?

4 ) and the BIG one, as this was played against me and i wasn't too sure on the ruling. that being Expert Testimony, and whether it can be used to 'commit' an exhausted Character into a story ?

that is all for now, but some more may arise as the old brain clicks over the inter-connectivity.

oh. and another 2 questions:

1 ) if one uses a Binding on Brood of Yig, are the changed icons still regarded as 'printed' ?, because although it's changed, the icon could still be regarded as being physically present on the card, if you know what i mean.

2 ) if Peter Clover reveals a card that is Cost X, is this counted as a zero ? i know that Skill is thus regarded, but not sure about Cost.

cheers !!

COCLCG said:

1) If you couldn't legally play the card you cannot use the ability.

2) Yup, that's my understanding. The effect doesn't appear to require you to pay for the copied effect, so for variable cost effects, you'd be limited to what your opponent paid for.

3) I'd say you can trigger the effect twice, first before Brette leaves play, then before Roald is destroyed and discarded.

4) Nope, that shouldn't work. Imho, it would have to say something similar to 'put the chosen character to the story committed' if that was the intention.

COCLCG said:

2) Yep, X = 0. Doesn't matter if it's a cost or skill:

(2.11) “X” (The Letter “X”)
Unless specified by a preceding card,
card effect, or granted player choice,
the letter “X” is always equal to zero.

I agree to the outcome of jhaelen's answers on each point except for question 4). I've written my thoughts on the other points also, perhaps they're of interest.

1) A little bit of another reasoning as jhaelen, but I'd agree that the opponent's support is not discarded or anything else abnormal. I think Tetlow's effect can be triggered (the condition is met, and no "cannot" is hindering you), but the effect completely fizzles. You can't "put it into play as if you played it from your hand" if you don't have X when the support says "attach to X". Because "attach to X" is a requirement necessary to play the card that must be met (FAQ 1.3). So nothing happens after triggering Tetlow's effect, it fizzles.

2) Costs are not part of an effect. They're paid during the initiation step of an action (#1.e in my beloved action window timing structure ;-)), and not during the execution of the effect (#3).
So after your opponent has paid the cost, X is set to 2 in the effect during initiation, and you copy the whole effect including that number, in the responses step (#6).

3) Agree to jhaelen. I think they leave play together in #3 of the action window of the effect that destroys Brette. (Brette's effect is one of the "on/off"-type passives. When she leaves play, Thoughness+1 is removed instantly.) Since this is already known during the disrupt slot (#2), you may trigger Roald's disrupt twice.

4) Here I disagree. From the FAQ:

Cats of Ulthar, and any card that comes
into play committed, or otherwise
commits to a story outside of the
commit characters window of the
Story Phase does so without having to
exhaust unless another effect forces it
to do so.

Since they don't have to exhaust, I think it is not necessary for a character to be ready to be committed via Expert Testimony.

5) Also agree. The new icons of Brood of Yig are definitely not printed, so they can't be removed via Binding (I once asked Damon if Guardian Pillar's icons can be removed via Binding - no, they can't, the pillar is a "virtual character". I'd say those changed icons of the Brood are also virtual or temporary or something, but not printed.)

6) Nothing more to add to jhaelen's answer ;-)

Some other question about 1)
Can you change the "target" of an attachment card with this guy? When opponent plays infernal posession do you only protect yourself by changing control of attachment or can you choose opponents character to be posessed instead?

And 4)
i really think this should be explained/worded more clearly
if he can be commited without standard commit conditions in disrupt timing this effect could couse single character to be commited to two stories at the same time, and im pretty sure its not a good idea (many wierd things might happen then)

maybe exhausted characters can but not if theire commited elsewhere (but i dont see this in the rules)

i think "only unexhausted and uncommited characters" creates less rule problems, so i think ill play it that way, but i really wonder whet was the intention and official ruling on this card

HilariousPete said:

I guess I'll have to have another good look at all affected cards, as Zephyr points out, this might allow for some sneaky moves (which I actually like).

haha. which is exactly why i brought it up!! sneaky moves indeed. especially with someone like Whitton Greene.

jhaelen said:

I hadn't noticed this either. We've always played that to commit you have to be eligible to commit no matter what the timing. This definitely makes a difference to several cards.

.Zephyr. said:

1) I'd say yes, you can change the target. It says "as if you had just played it from hand". If I had just played Infernal Obsession from my own hand, I would have selected a character to attach it to. And of course an opponent's character.

4) I don't think it can be used to commit 1 character to 2 stories at the same time. I would like to cite soemthing general, but the only thing I found is in the Core Set rulebook:
Each character may only be committed to one story.
The bad thing is that this sentence is in the passage about the regular committment slot, so it is not necessary also valid for the "special commitment" due to Expert Testimony. But since I didn't find anything similar to Cats of Ulthar in the FAQ, I would assume this sentence is generally valid.

And I think this is also what FFG had in mind - even on cards like Military Bike or Trent Dixon, FFG used another wording than "also commit to a 2nd (or 3rd) story".

But probably it's best if someone submits a rules question. Would be good to have an offical answer :-)

@jhaelen: Yes, the Cats of Ulthar passage includes a general rule, it shouldn't be hidden somewhere in the specific questions…

There arent that many commit effects in the game, and those that are are very different and troublesome.

I got ruling that re-commit is not even considered commit, so military bike doesnt count IMO.

Jiang Shi can change stories and his wording is totaly different:
Disrupt: Before you resolve a (T) struggle, pay 1 to commit Jiang Shi to that story without exhausting it. If Jiang Shi is already committed to another story, uncommit it.

This IMO suggests that without other rules characters are exhausted when they are commited with effect as normal.

This FAQ fragment is even worse as Cats of ulthar do not commit to a story, they enter play commited to a story and this was an important distinction with black dog and Negotium for example.

Im kinda living it down, but i still dont understand how hard would it be to post a "living FAQ" as a txt file that explains most non obvious ruling problems - those questions will be asked in emails anyways… why not put them online with a comment that only FAQ is official rulings, and this document is valid ruling base, but can contain some errors. It would be so much better than discussing so many cards, sending mails and posting it on forums (or not) where they're kinda hard to find.

.Zephyr. said:

Yes this is my point: FFG is nowhere using an effect or a wording that is allowing a character to commit to 2 stories simultaneously. Although in the end, Jiang Shi has taken part in both stories (assuming the proper resolution order). So why not use a wording that allows him to commit to 2 stories? Because characters can't commit to more than 1 story at the same time, IMO.

.Zephyr. said:

I can also use Jiang Shi to support my interpretation of the rules Jiang Shi's effect is intended to be triggered also while Jiang Shi is committed to another story. Usually, it will be exhausted when its disrupt is triggered (it has an Arcane icon, but the card designers can't assume that this will be won+used to ready Jiang Shi in every case.) Therefore, this effect suggests that characters can be committed to a story even when they are exhausted (if such an effect takes place outside the regular committing-window). Otherwise, Jiang Shi's effect wouldn't be usable in most cases. The "without exhausting it" part of the effect could be just an additional clarification / implementation of the rule hidden in the Cats of Ulthar FAQ fragment, to give players a hint that the effect is also triggerable while Jiang shi is exhausted.

See, everything can be turned in two directions

.Zephyr. said:

But this FAQ fragment talks about entering play committed as well as committing outside the usual committing windows, so the distinction between these two cases is not important here.

But an official ruling would be really good. Has anyone already submitted a rules question? If not, I'd like to do it, but I want to avoid asking FFG/Damon similar questions twice.

Got a fast answer and posted it here . Two very interesting things: Effects are copied with variable costs set to X=0 (in case of e.g. Unbound being copied) and Expert Testimony can't be used to commit a character to the same story again (in order to just add the investigation booster).

Yup, the X=0 thingy is indeed a surprise. Thanks for getting official answers!