Situation: Three player game, Journey Down the Anduin, Thalin (one of the heroes on the table).

Games progresses along, going through the encounter deck and deal with the Eastern Crows as they come up. Deck gets down to three cards, which are the crows. Staging portion of the quest begins, first crow hits the table, surge kicks off, then Thalin's response kicks off killing the crow, shuffles back into the deck. Then we deal with the next crow because of the surge then go through the same sequence.

We didn't know what to do, so we shuffled the discards back into the deck. My question is, does Thalin's effect take precedence over the surge effect, or is it the other way. Or, does surge kick off on each crow, then resolve Thalin's response, thus killing all the crows, which are shuffled back into the deck, which would be just those three cards, ending the potential of a loop?

Thalin's ability destroys the crow before surge can finalize... so they die.. no surge. Also they are not "defeated" in combat.. so they do not get shuffled back into the encounter deck

Thanks for the info.

What ?

They do get shuffled back into the encounter deck. Their forced effect doesn't need to be proced in "combat". Defeat require to be dealt enought damage, that's what Thalin does.

From rulebook :

Any time one of these cards has 0 hit points, it is
immediately defeated.

They don't get surge, that's from the faq.

Yeah:

1. Thalin kills crows

2. Crows are returned to the encounter deck and it is shuffled

3. Surge effect doesnt trigger.

PD: if you have 3 last cards and all they are crows... good luck. Not leave Thalin to quest each round! You will win sure.

no they don't go back in the deck as they are not defeated . This was confirmed multiple times by the designer.

Thalins ability removes the card form play even before it is "revealed" .. even before keywords trigger.. it is the same as discarding it from he top of the encounter deck...

booored maybe you are remembering that "discarded" and "defeated" are different (i.e., you can't trigger Landroval if Borormir uses his self-discarding action because he wasn't "defeated")

But official replies from Nate, along with the game manual, that "defeated" means a character leaving play as a result of damage tokens being placed on it.

" Defeated and destroyed both refer to a character or enemy receiving damage that reduces its hit points to zero, and then being placed in the appropriate discard pile."

origin thread is here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/7608788#7608788

edit: if "defeated" referred only to damage from combat, Landroval couldn't save heroes who die from Treachery card effects either.

as for the infinite loop, boored is right: the cards will not Surge when Thalin defeats them, so even if you shuffle them back into the encounter deck, there is no loop.

he doesn't get dmg tokens. the card never even enters play, witch is why the keywords do not trigger.... it is exactly the same as if you discard it off the top of the encounter deck.

Look, nothing but respect... Sometimes you say smart things Mr. booored, but sometimes you say things like "he doesn't get damage tokens" and "he doesn't even enter play."

*facepalm*

just cause you can not understand it doesn't mean it isn't true.

The cards never enter play.. this is why the keywords do not resolve, and ALSO why the response text is never able to activate.

I also though that cards revealed where not in play before reaching the staging area, but they are :

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/96276-ring-and-witch-king/

The enemy is killed before its "when revealed" effect complete because thalin is a passive (that what the faq say if I remember right).

to booored : I have seen enough ruling made up on the fly to stop asking myself if they made sense...

yeah, it's a question of resolution order, not of whether or not the card is in play. Of course you cannot damage a card that has not entered play, and of course you cannot damage a card without putting damage tokens on it (in the 'rules' sense... use dice or whatever, but tokens were placed in spirit).

Card gets revealed, then order of resolution would be: 1) reveal card, 2) Thalin's damage, 3) resolve keywords including setting up the next card with Surge, 4) resolve When Revealed, 5) add the card to the staging area, and 6) resolve the card that was Surged. So if the original card is destroyed by Thalin's damage, the rest doesn't trigger. But the original card was certainly 'in play.'

One question. If crows had the 'hidden' keyword. The player must do a hidden check?

No, Thalin's damage comes before any keywords. The crows would be destroyed before any keywords could trigger.

Ok, thanks.

order of resolution would be: 1) reveal card, 2) Thalin's damage, 3) resolve keywords including setting up the next card with Surge, 4) resolve When Revealed, 5) add the card to the staging area, and 6) resolve the card that was Surged. So if the original card is destroyed by Thalin's damage, the rest doesn't trigger. But the original card was certainly 'in play.'

No... revealing a card is when the keywords trigger.

it is DRAW card... Thalin dmg, reveal, keywords, when revealed....

I have been playing it the way Booored describes based on the wording from the FAQ that Thalin´s ability comes before any other effects (I deliberately avoided quoting it because this is the ´feeling´ I had after reading the FAQ).

But I must admit that even though I still believe this to be the correct approach, I cannot seem to find any hard evidence either way in the FAQ. If any of you have read such please refer me to it. Until then this is all conjecture to me.

order of resolution would be: 1) reveal card, 2) Thalin's damage, 3) resolve keywords including setting up the next card with Surge, 4) resolve When Revealed, 5) add the card to the staging area, and 6) resolve the card that was Surged. So if the original card is destroyed by Thalin's damage, the rest doesn't trigger. But the original card was certainly 'in play.'

No... revealing a card is when the keywords trigger.

it is DRAW card... Thalin dmg, reveal, keywords, when revealed....

There is no definition in the rulebook for it, but I would prefere "draw" than using "reveal" which is too close to "when revealed". The rulebook use mainly "reveal" though...

I have been playing it the way Booored describes based on the wording from the FAQ that Thalin´s ability comes before any other effects (I deliberately avoided quoting it because this is the ´feeling´ I had after reading the FAQ).

But I must admit that even though I still believe this to be the correct approach, I cannot seem to find any hard evidence either way in the FAQ. If any of you have read such please refer me to it. Until then this is all conjecture to me.

We said it's in the faq... just look it up :

Thalin CORE 6

When an enemy card is revealed from the encounter

deck, Thalin’s ability resolves before any keyword or

“When Revealed” card effects on the encounter card.

@Alogos

And that would be the exact quote which I directly state that I deliberately did not use.

Anyways that quote says nothing about forced effects or really much at all about the main question as to whether the crows forced effect will be activated.

As I said: to me this is merely conjecture

it is conjecture.. but one works with common sense and logic and the other doesn't

ahah, didn't read the text I quoted... I was so sure it was written here... my bad !

Strange.... where was it... ah!

Should I have quote that text instead? seems better :

(1.37) Timing of effect resolution
When resolving multiple effects with a shared
condition, players should use this order of resolution:
passive abilities first, Forced effects second, Response
actions third. When determining the order of effect
resolution among abilities within those categories,
players should first resolve abilities that use the word
“when” and then resolve abilities with the word “after”.

So which type of effect is Thalin´s ability?

Passive? Because then eastern crows will not activate their forced effect.

Or is it unique? It does after all have a separate area in the FAQ, which states nothing about it being passive. Though this may, in all fairness have something to do with the fact that passive wasn´t really defined in the early days of the game (but that is more conjecture).

If it is unique then it follows that eastern crows has been in play (as per the witch-king ruling) and thus that it´s forced effect will activate.

Quoting Timing of effect resolution doesn´t do much, so long as Thalin´s ability itself is not clearly defined.

EDIT: I personally believe Thalin´s effect is a passive ability.

It is passive... passive is anything in text without a bold keyword. Also in the rulebook (not so sure, it's been a while).

But why should it prevents the crows from procing their Forced effect ? The forced effect proc when the crows dies, not when revealed...

And thus we are back to square one: it is all conjecture