Need some precisions :

I wasn't able to found Marius notices which present those story cards, so I ask here :

May you explain further Frozen in Times :

GAMETEXT : Each player must discard 2 cards from his deck for each resource attached to one of his domains, or destroy that resource.

Does it means you must do this for each ressources in play ? For a single domain ? For every domain ?

I need to have more informations, everything's welcome !

Judging from the text it's just two cards for every resource attached to a single domain chosen by the owning player.

However, it's a really weak effect if that's the correct interpretation. Most of the time it means you'll just have to discard two cards.

I asked this same question awhile ago and recieved conflicting answers. Look at the thread and let me know what you think. It's on page 3 of rules discussion and it's titled "4 excellent questions". Scroll down through it and read the responses. I still can't beleive I haven't heard more about this. It's in the core set and it's a story card. Everyone uses it. I guess it must only be confusing to you and I.

i think its confusing in its poor word choice. until an errata we play it as written. the person who wins the story decides if they set it off. then each player decides which option they wanna do if the winner decides to set it off.

my question is what happens if i pick a domanin with no resources? can i pick it? overzealous initiate could be handy.

as its written its such a weak story effect. i choose my lowest domain and discard 2 cards..... or possibly i choose my 0 domain....

maybe if you had something resourced you want in your discard this could be useful. but is it worth discarding a bunch of cards to get one card in your discard????

i think the words 'one of his' needs to be replaced with 'his largest'

PearlJamaholic said:

I'm a little dazzle by this one.

What's the interest for a player to activate this effet ? He'll use his lowest domain, so will do his opponent, no ? Which means discarding 2 or 4 cards ... So, what's the interest ??

I've ruled once that the card means you'll got to discard 2 card for each ressource you own or send the ressource to the grave. But it makes no sense, as it said "One of your doamins" and only one .... It's not "every domains"... But the effect seemed weeker than any other one, so I'll get onto my choice.

Marius and Chris, What do you think of this one ???

Lots of story cards have effects that aren't ment to give the "winning" player an advantage
And the others gives an advantage only depending on the situation ...

The thing is, discarding card from the hand is quite a powerfull effect, card advantage will get you a long way in CoC (not as long the way as in some other CCG but still) especialy since there is almost no drawing effects.

So, as written, the story card basicaly says : "You and your opponent chose either to give the other large card advantage or you play with one fewer domain"
So, like most stories, it's increadibly powerfull if your deck is based on playing with 2 domains OR playing with 1 cost cards and mono or bi-faction.

I tend to need every 3 domains with at least 2 ressources in most of my deck, and when i play my investigation rush deck, i activate this story each time and it really slow down my opponent ...

This card doesn't need fixing : )
If you affect every domain, you'll slow the game too much and give critter deck another story to win the game,
If winning player choose both domain, it became an auto-win story, pretty much, case you'll lose all your hand and half ressources on your biggest domain and he'll lose 2 ressources max ... no story must give advantage to 1 player regardless of the game situation


But it's true, wording can be confusing : )

heu sensei, it's not discard from your hand, it's discard cards from your deck !

sensei yaourt said:

thats why i think it should be the domain with the most resources. if you win it and set it off it actually has a big effect on both players. they can either reduce their biggest domain to nothing or lose roughly 6+ cards or some combination of the two. rather than a character reset like rotting away or through the gates, this would be like a resource reset.

My bad, never red the story like it was written .... but the things stay the same with discarding from the top of the deck : )

Could be the biggest domain then, as it isn't as usefull for rush decks, but then it'll be quite powerfull for eastwood estated based decks ...
Dunno, i'll have to make tests ...

This card was confusing for me too, and it took forever for it to click for me due to bad word choice, but it works like this: The winner activates the text of the story card, then each player chooses one of his domains (could be the one with a lot of resources or none). Then, for each resource attached you make a choice: Destroy that resource or shave two cards from your deck. Continue this for each resource attached to the chosen domain, until you have accounted for each resource that was on the domain.

For example: I choose my domain with (SHUB)(CTHU)(AGEN) attached. I now make a decision for (SHUB), lose it or shave two. I decide to lose it. I now have (CTHU)(AGEN). I now make my choice for (CTHU), I decide to shave two. I now have (CTHU)(AGEN). I now make my final choice, this time for (AGEN). I decide to lose it. After all is said and done my domain is left with (CTHU) and four brand new cards in the trash.

Hope that helps.

Archwraith666 said:

thats how i think most people play it but its so weak for a story effect. last game i played i had a 4th domain with 0 resources. i won this story and set it off. why not? it had no effect on me, and minimal effect on the other player. most story effects are very powerful. destory all characters skill x, discard all success tokens, search your deck for any card, all characters come back insane, etc.

then there is this...discard 2 cards from the top of you deck. i bet 85%-90% this story is set off that is the outcome. in the league highlander-ish format those two cards is something. but in normal format 2 cards is really nothing. there is no reason to go after this story. even if your opponent wins it youre not worried if they will set it off or not.

this is by far the weakest story effect this game has seen. which is why i think its poor wording is a typo.

I don't think it's a typo (just bad grammar) and I don't think it's weak. I guess if you do happen to have an extra domain it's effectiveness would be cut down, but I never do and most people I play against don't bother either. Come to think of it... we hardly ever activate story powers. Just the one that puts a success token on any story where you have two or less (I forget it's name), and Sleepwalkers ever get activated alot.

Archwraith666 said:

I don't really agree with you on this point.

In Poitiers, we try to use the power of story in an offensive way. I was playing a week ago against a CCG/Yog deck, with my Miska league deck, and I have so many difficulty to get points I should have scream for some !

I managed to get some charcters on "Dreamwalker" and"the Other Path", while we both have a story won and two points on each stories. He did'nt understand why I spend big character to won the other path, while sending just tiny people, which were easy to block, in front of Dreamwalkers.

He finally noticed that I decided to resolve the other path first, using it's effect to own the last 5th point that gaves me my last story.

This is how it goes with the new story pack ! Really effective and cutting like a knief. Maybe one or two story aren't that big, but most of them are really nice.

Basically .... how do you manage to have 0 ressources on a new domain if you don't get torched (by torch the joint) ? Except for new cards i'm not aware of (still haven't had the chance to get my hands on AP ... somehow it seems there is a wide shortage whenever i ask to FFG french distributor, retail store and US imports ...) all cards that create a new domain (that is eldrich nexus and overzealous initiate) give you 1 ressource to start with

The only way you can have a new domain without ressources is your opponent to activate ancient apogrypha while you have no character in your discard pile ... that won't happen a lot, will it ... so i guess you can't really say "frozen in time is weak" cause of that : )

overzealous doesnt give you a resource, just a domain.

PearlJamaholic said:

In the current adventure league there's also a faction ability that will grant you an additional domain without resources.

That's all I can think of, right now.

Bleeeeeeeh, one day i'll learn to read card right ....

so you can have a domain with 0 ressources from the story, but it'll be an anecdotic case (lots of conditions)

or if you sacrificed an overzealous initiate and frozen in time triggers before you put a ressource on it ... i don't think it'll happen a lot either, cause if you sacrifice the initiate to gain a domain without wanting to put ressources on it, you'll probably won't have sacrificed it in the first place ...
True, there are some case you might do that ... one of them being : your opponent is about to complete frozen in times and you want to shield yourself from it ...
There are also some pretty anectodic cases (blind summiting the initiate ...)

And servant from out of time, do you guys play this card a lot ? i tend not to play it cause Yog-Sothoth is kinda costy faction, imho, and i don't think the char is worth the cost of destroying a ressource.

Well now it's true there is 1 card that pretty much screw the story ...

servant is great for getting something in your discard pile that you resourced. and since yog is pretty good at pulling things from the discard, it makes those setup phases alittle easier sometimes.

but with overzealous it can be used for when you win. if you know youre gonna win the story sac him then set the story off. at the very least the othe player must discard two cards and on your next turn you get to add a resource if you want. there is no draw back for you to trigger the story other than sac'ing a creature that gives you a domain. look at the one byakhee, 4 cost sac it to discard 3 cards from an opponent. you get kinda the same effect if you sac overzealous and trigger the story. except you can a domain and its only 2 cost. but its far more situtational than the byakhee.....just saying.

i still think frozen in time has a very weak effect, haha.

jhaelen said:

Wow. I misread that card. My other player and I discarded 2 cards for each resource we wanted to keep on ALL domains. It seemed the theme for how Call of Cthulhu has always played. IMO of course. But re-reading it now, not as scary .

Should anyone edit the text Marius did for this card, as presentation ?? I can't find it anymore ... May there is a path of interpretation I did'nt understand ...as the card seems now really weak !