Envisioner's Miscellaneous Thread (was More Assorted Rules Questions)

I seem to need to do this a lot, so I think i'll just make my own thread for any and all such inquiries from now on.

1.  Can you destroy Maintenance Level by having each player shuffle their discards into their deck if one player has no cards in their discard pile (and shuffles all 0 of them into his deck)?

1. Yes, there is still a discard pile even if it contains 0 cards

2.  Can an Incapacitated Hero perform a "skip the rest of your turn to do X" action, for the sake of an Environment clause or the like?

3.  When Haka dies, do cards that were under Savage Mana at the time go back into the appropriate Trash?

2. Yes they can.

3. Yes they do.

4.  In case it matters, what's the exact timing on resolving the actions listed on both sides of a villain character card?  Let's say I'm playing against Grand Warlord Voss on Advanced, and he's on his Super-Warrior form side.  First you check to see if there multiple minions in play; if so, he flips to Conquering Alien form.  Since he's no longer on his Super-Warrior form, he doesn't deal damage or play a villain card, right?  Conversely, if there were somehow 10 minions in play at the start of Super-Warrior's turn, he'd flip to Conqueror form, then immediately score an Overrun victory?  If there were somehow both 0 and 2 minions in play, despite this being obviously impossible, would he just keep flipping himself back and forth as he unsuccessfully tries to get to the end of his card without hitting a trigger?

4. Correct, since he has flipped, once he gets to his end of turn phase he will no longer do anything that was on his previous side.

That is is a bit of an odd question, But yes he would constantly flip.

It obviously doesn't apply to Voss in reality, but I was trying to establish a precedent in case I run into confusing scenarios with a future villain I haven't seen.

5.  If Absolute Zero has been rendered immune to damage, can he deal himself cold damage for the purpose of Null-Point Calibration Unit, which says "When AZ would take damage, he regains that many HP instead"?  In other words, does the immunity stop you from actually taking damage, or does it stop damage from being dealt to you in the first place?

He can't take damage, therefore the Unit can't replace the damage with healing.

6.  If damage can't be dealt, can you still activate Mere's or Living Conflagration's power to draw a card?  The text doesn't indicate that the two are connected in any way.

Yes, you can still use those powers, you just ignore the part about dealing damage.

The same is true of Wraith's Stun Bolt and Nightmist's Investigation (and probably some other stuff I forgot). If an action is dependent on your needing to do damage (or discard a card, or whatever), the phrase "If you do..." is usually there (eg Unity destroying equipment to put out bots). If you need to have taken damage, you'll see something like "If you take damage this way..." (eg the Adept's Polyphoric Flare).

As a follow-up to this…

I know incap heroes can skip their turns and etc…but there are cards that allow heroes to discard or overturn cards to get rid of themselves (lots of enviroments do this), do incap characters count for discard/overturn?  Based on the fact that incap heroes have turns and still contribute to H, but not cards in play, I would guess that the conditions have not been met, so that card would not destroy itself, and that heroes would have to use normal destruction effects to get rid of those cards instead of the conditions on that card that allows self-destruct.  Pillars of Hercules (Ruins of Atlantis) is one of those cards I'm thinking, but I'm sure there's others, like Blighted Streets (Rook City environment) and others I can't recall at this time.

Pillars of Hercules is a "skip your turn" card, so I don't think is an example like you're looking for.  Blighted Streets says " At the end of each hero's turn, if that hero dealt no damage this turn, their player may discard 2 cards to destroy this card."  An incapacitated hero has no cards in hand, so cannot fulfill this.  (Nor could a hero with only one card in hand at the end of their turn.)  I forget which card, but one of them allows you to discard your hand to get rid of the card.  For that one, I would allow a hero with no cards in hand to discard their (empty) hand, but I would not allow an incapacitated hero to do it; I'm not sure I can justify that well.

An incap hero not only has no cards in their hand, but they cease to have a hand at all. At least that is how I would phrase it.

And dpt, you can't choose to discard your hand if you have no hand to begin with, so a active hero with 0 cards in hand can not choose that option.

Think of it like Ra's ongoing that gets a +1 damage for every villain ongoing in play (I forget the name). If there are 0 villain ongoings in play and Ra has his staff, you can't use that power to deal 0+1=1 damage (as that 0 signifies that there is no damage to modify with the staff in the first place).

Think of it like Ra's ongoing that gets a +1 damage for every villain ongoing in play (I forget the name). If there are 0 villain ongoings in play and Ra has his staff, you can't use that power to deal 0+1=1 damage (as that 0 signifies that there is no damage to modify with the staff in the first place).

Well, that's not the same thing.  +1 damage x (number of villain ongoings) is multiplying by zero, so the outcome is zero.  If it were additive like in your example, 0+1 would still = 1.

If you have a hand of 0 cards, you still have a hand, so you could discard your hand to get rid of cards like Toxic Seaweed.

Also if Ra has Staff of Ra, but no Villain Ongoings and chooses to use Drawn to the Flame, it will do 1 damage to all non-hero targets.

Each of these have been confirmed, I wasn't able to find out where, but Pydro seems to be good at popping up with links.

Edit: Discarding hand https://greaterthangames.com/comment/12928#comment-12928

Edit 2: 0+1=1 https://sentinelsofthemultiverse.com/comment/9479#comment-9479

Ok, so it looks like I have been corrected on the discarding hand thing.

About Drawn to the Flame though, I was almost certain that it was confirmed that you could not produce damage with it without at least one villain ongoing.

I remember seeing both of these rulings, but I won’t be able to search until later today.

It's ok Pydro, I got you.

https://greaterthangames.com/comment/9479#comment-9479

I stand corrected on both previous counts. 

Edit: Ronway seems to have beat me to the link

I'll have to look for the card when I get home.  It wasn't Pillars or Blighted apparently.

I understand having 0 cards in hand means I can still discard cards, I just discard 0 of them.

What I'm trying to figure out is if a card required all players to discard a card from hand to self-destruct, if an incap hero is part of that requirement or not.  From what I'm reading, it seems like an incap hero has no hand, so that hero is not considered for "all players must do this, so then can happen" effects.

Let me create a fictional card, because I can't think of my examples until I get home.

"Hands Up! Or Else!" fictional environment card - Each hero must discard 1 card.  If each hero does not, play the top card of the villain deck.  At end of the enviroment turn, this card is destroyed.

I hope this clarifies my question better.  An incap hero cannot meet the condition of this card because the hero does not have a hand.  So does the effect happen because an incap cannot fulfill the requirements, or does the incap hero get a pass because they have no hand?  It sounds like the latter because the incap hero has no cards in order to fulfill the condition.

Awesome.  I thought that was how that worked.  Do we know if the same happens with Nemesis damage?  Like, if a villain deals zero damage to all hero targets, does the villain deal one damage to a nemesis?

This card, as worded, would also play the villain card if there were any hero that had no cards in hand. I think they're careful about such wording, but I also don't have the cards in front of me.

Here is my take, since an Incapped hero removes every one of their cards from the game, aside from the Character Card, I have always not applied anything revolving around cards to them.

Lets take Phosphorescent Chamber, at the start of the environment, every player may discard a card to destroy it. Considering the incapped hero no longer has a deck, than they would no longer need to discard to get rid of it. I also would not let them discard their "hand" for cards like Toxic Seaweed for the same reason.

This is of course my opinion on the matter and how I will play it unless the big wigs say something differently.

I'm not seeing how or why the +1 damage for nemesis would be any different.

Maybe the card I was thinking of was Phosphorescent Chamber, because that's why I worded my fictional card like I did, because I was looking for something similar.

I agree with you on Toxic Seaweed with an incapped hero.  That's why I asked what I asked, because it seemed to be that heroes had all the benefits for being incapped, but no disadvantage (other than losing a hero whose cards are worth more than it's KOed powers).  As long as everything was on a level playing field.  So an incapped hero has no hand, so he cannot qualify to discard.

Perhaps I need to re-read the incapped hero part more on in the booklet, but it seems like the incapped hero gets his turn and 3 "powers"? (doesn't say powers I don't think) to use.

They are not "Powers". They are abilitites and you can activate one per turn.

Hmmm … that's not my take on that situation. I think of the the attack being turned into healing before the immunity stops anything.

I know this has been discussed before. Has it been ruled? Anyone got a link?

Just to clarify, a player with an incapacitated hero can activate one incapacitated ability on their turn.

Well we got a con ruling that the ruling that redirection can't trigger on zero damage.  Ruling number 9 here: https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/answers-to-debated-questions-3871  If we extrapolate that to everything that triggers when damage would be dealt then things like Null Point Calibration Unit or Punish the Weak require a non-zero amount of HP that would have actually been lost for them to trigger.  I'm not a fan of that idea though.

Regardless of that ruling though, I had always assumed that when Null Point Calibration Unit says he heals "that amount" it is the amount he would have actually lost.  In the rare event that something is boosting all HP recovery and he was taking zero cold damage, I might have allowed 1 HP recovery, but the ruling on redirection seems to shut down even that.

AZ can't be immune to damage and heal with nullpoint. His whole schtick is damaging himself to convert to extra damage. Can't convert nonexistent damage. 

Read the card.  "If AZ would take damage, he heals that many HP instead."  It's completely possible to interpret this wording as "the act of damage-dealing is replaced completely by an act of hp-recovery, therefore immunity to damage is never applied".  It can be read either way, depending on exactly when the immunity "steps in".  If it blocks the damage while it "leaves" the source, then AZ can't heal.  If it stops the damage as it "arrives" at the target, then by that time it's already stopped being damage because of NPCU, and so the immunity doesn't stop it.

I'm citing the previous ruling on Mere as precedent.  You can perform the action of dealing damage to something that can't actually receive it.  Therefore, it makes sense to say that the immunity to damage "intercepts" the damage at some point after it's initiated by the source.

Meanwhile, from a flavor perspective, AZ's suit is built entirely to contain his cold energies.  As long as he's got the right module installed, it makes no sense to say that he's not capable of adjusting his suit's internal temperature, just because the Storm is preventing combat between heroes and villains.

I thought I had seen it ruled that if you are immune, then you WOULDN'T  take damage and therefore could not heal instead. Searching for that ruling though...

I figured as much.  I was just making sure.

A fair bit of discussion about it here: https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/three-questions-from-my-latest-session-3291

My opinion looks to be in the minority, but Belteshazzar, at least, saw it the way I do.

You also have this post from broccoli. Not sure what to make of it:

https://greaterthangames.com/comment/13629#comment-13629

By that interpetation, wouldn't this mean +damage effects are ignored too?  Say Obsidian Field is in play for +1 damage and AZ takes 1 point of cold damage.  OF would increase that to 2, since it increases all damage by 1.  However, AZ isn't dealt damage but instead healed and so like immunity, the damage increase would be ignored resulting in just 1 point of healing.

Immunity is its own unique thing so far, as is AZ's Null point.  I would assume immunity to cold damage would stop him from healing, but I would not think Meteor Storm would stop it.

I've tried to treat this game like a ccg with all the triggers and timings, but I'm getting more and more towards treating it like Diplomacy, where you sometimes have to just keep things in mind and see the ways it could go before you can figure out which way it does go.

If AZ can't take damage he can still recover HP, but a specific immunity to cold I would say would stop him from healing because he heals from cold.  If you want to see a general immunity as multiple cases of specific immunity then you would say he is immune to cold and therefore couldn't heal from it.

I tend to think general immunity just stops HP from being reduced, where elemental specific immunity shuts down that element.

This is all my way of dealing with it, nothing official.

I don't know if I'd go this far, but I do think there is a lot of over-thinking on how SotM works. If intention is clear, treat it as intended. (I supposed some would say the intention is not clear in this situation, but I just don't see the issue. )

No offense, but this honestly doesn't make any sense to me.  How/why would there be a difference if he's immune to cold damage and if he's immune to all damage? In either case, he can't take the damage. (Whether he heals or not is the rest of the conversation, of course… )

AZ would not take damage if he was immune to said damage. I did read the card. Thanks.

Look at the Nightmist ruling for Amulet of Elder Gods. Her redirection says "when she would be dealt damage", you may redirect it. We have an official ruling saying if Nightmist is immune to damage, she can not trigger the redirection on amulet.

How is this not directly applicable here? The "would be dealt damage" is obviously considered after immunity for Nightmist. And so it is for AZ as well and anything else that triggers on "would be dealt damage". 

Edit: To link this with other thread discussions, this also brings us back to why all damage modifications (yes, immunity is an effect that modifies damage dealt) are considered before any conditional effects that trigger upon damage dealt (after HP loss) or damage that would have been dealt (before HP loss). 

Edit 2: I am curious though. Can anyone make an argument for why these two identical triggers of "would be dealt damage" for AZ and Nightmist should/would be treated differently instead of the same? Don't you run the risk of consistency issues?

How is this not directly applicable here? The "would be dealt damage" is obviously considered after immunity for Nightmist. And so it is for AZ as well and anything else that triggers on "would be dealt damage". 

That would also apply to AZ if you apply the same terms.  There is no reason not to.

phantaskippy wrote:

I've tried to treat this game like a ccg with all the triggers and timings, but I'm getting more and more towards treating it like Diplomacy, where you sometimes have to just keep things in mind and see the ways it could go before you can figure out which way it does go.

 

I don't know if I'd go this far, but I do think there is a lot of over-thinking on how SotM works. If intention is clear, treat it as intended. (I supposed some would say the intention is not clear in this situation, but I just don't see the issue.  :confused: )

I think it is because we are trying to apply a strict order to something that wasn't designed to be played that way.  Maybe a different perspective would help.

But by saying you cannot deal 0 damage, you have already conceded that you took into account the immunity while figuring out if Amulet of the Elder Gods triggers. And low and behold, it does not trigger. 

The reason why you can't redirect 0 damage is because 0 damage does not trigger redirection effects (which all use the "would be dealt" wording). It has nothing to do with redirection in and of itself.

I agree with you that trying to apply strict order to things is a bad idea that leads us to more trouble than its worth.  But the argument that a damage immune target "would be dealt damage" , any way you try and slice it, is absolutley absurd to me.

Technically Divince Sacrifice and Wrest the Mind do not use that wording.  Yet the ruling does not call out Nightmist directly, it just says you cannot redirect zero damage.

So if you now apply this to any triggers for something that would happen, does that mean that Haka with Twist the Ether can't use his base power to damage the TCF Stalwart (immune to melee damage)?  Twist the Ether triggers when its target would deal damage, yet it seems to me it should be able to change his damage type here, even though the target was immune to the original.

This is a bit of an ax to grind for me because I argued against the idea that immunity stopped redirection, specifically because I did not like the idea of extending that logic to all other 'would deal/be dealt' triggers.  Though paradoxically I do think immunity should effectively shut down NPCU because "that many HPs" is zero.

p.s. I'm pretty sure phantaskippy was agreeing with you, he was just quibbling over the idea that there is any specific timing to resolving immunity.

I would also be inclined to agree that Twist the Ether should be able to help Haka in that situation.  Thats a good counter example.

Maybe the case can be made that "would be dealt damage" triggers are not dependent on HP being lost in the same way "damage dealt" triggers are. That seems to support the argument I called "absurd" above, but at least it sort of defines the difference between the two triggers and keeps the Trigger/Effect relationship intact. Given that view, TtE would be able to help Haka hit TCF. It would also probably mean that Amulet does in fact trigger its effect but is unable to redirect the instance of damage that would ultimatley be 0. So for AZ, that means that NullPoint would in fact trigger, but since he "heals for that amount", and the amount will be 0, just like the redirected amount of damage for Nightmist was 0, AZ would heal for 0 points.

Maybe the case can be made that "would be dealt damage" triggers are not dependent on HP being lost in the same way "damage dealt" triggers are. That seems to support the argument I called "absurd" above, but at least it sort of defines the difference between the two triggers and keeps the Trigger/Effect relationship intact. Given that view, TtE would be able to help Haka hit TCF. It would also probably mean that Amulet does in fact trigger its effect but is unable to redirect the instance of damage that would ultimatley be 0. So for AZ, that means that NullPoint would in fact trigger, but since he "heals for that amount", and the amount will be 0, just like the redirected amount of damage for Nightmist was 0, AZ would heal for 0 points.

This is where I think it will probably go.  He can turn it into healing, but the damage is already 0.

So if Phosphorescent Chamber was out and AZ was immune to damage, he could still heal himself one right?  The cold damage would turn into healing of 0, then be increased by one.

At this point I really think someone ought to pester the red-badge trio for an official ruling.

They really want to, I know that for certain. >G is extreamly busy with trying to get Vengeance and GSF ready, and all of this is on top of the most insaine business time of year for them with all of the conventions. They will get around to all of these rulings when they have time to give clear and well thought out answers. Imagine the Solar Flare ruling exchange with Christopher recently multiplied by the countless number of rule debates and crazy fringe examples. It will take a considerible amount of time. And honestly, as far as time managment goes, I would much rather see Veangence and GSF on the higher priority list.

My initial reaction is to say that it still would not result in healing. But I also was under the impression that Drawn to the Flame couldn't deal any damage without at least one villain ongoing in play, and I was corrected on that count.

It would seem to me, given how Drawn to the Flame handles 0 damage, that Phosphorescent Chamber would handle 0 healing the same way and indeed increase it by 1. 

While I do want to see new product as much as the next guy, I do feel that working these rulings out will help create a better product and it might help reduce the number of conflicts that would otherwise arise on Vengeance and especially on GSF. I would hate for the new game to be plagued with the type of debates that are happening on SotM now because of unclear or bilious wording. 

Thats what Playtesters are for. Unclear wordings are challenged quite often. From what I have seen so far, the language on the cards is much clearer on how effects should play out, especially for some of the funkier effects that have not been seen before (or seen before but applied in a unique way). 

Now, I guess that won't solve debates such as the timing (or lack therof) of damage modifiers, but the application of new and old effects are in a more solid place in my opinion.

Uhm... I would count Twist the Ether different than Nullpoint or whatever the Nightmist card is.  The reason is that Nullpoint says "would be dealt damage" and Twist the Ether says "would deal damage."  They are on opposite sides of damage action.  Any target (including targets immune to damage) is a valid target for a source to deal damage, but a target which is immune to damage cannot be dealt damage.  Twist the Ether reacts to Haka dealing damage, not the target being dealt damage.  This is what I believe to be true anyway.

I think this is a very good point. Maybe my initial stance that the Amulet and Nullpoint never trigger in the first place is still valid after all. If they in fact do not trigger, then Phosphoresent Chamber would not change the healing fr om 0 to 1 since the healing was never triggered in the first place. 

The way I see the trigger of "If [Target] would be dealt damage, then do X" is this: Would the target be dealt damage (aka. losing HP, as it has been defined in-game) assuming this Trigger was not in play to interupt? If so, do X instead.

Does anyone take issue with that? How would you phrase it differently? It seems rather straight forward to me that this is how to interpret that specific trigger, which really is the basis of my original stance here. I am pretty certain that the only reason it was not worded the way I presented it has everything to do with the physical space for text on the card.

I think it is kind of splitting hairs to say that the source would deal damage, but damage would not be dealt.  I'm pretty sure it is just economy of wording.  Twist the Ether triggers on a specific damage source, so the source is the subject of the clause.  NPCU triggers on a specific damage target, so the target is the subject of the clause.

Whenever I open this thread, the tab displays:

That definitely puts things into perspective.

Well it's true that any tabletop-gaming rules question forum inevitably becomes a morass....

I forgot about this thread when I posted the one about Surprise Shopping Trip; if the moderators have the ability to merge that one in, go ahead, and I'll adjust my numbering to include it.  For now, I'll move on to new concerns.

7.  The Scholar deals 1 damage to each of ten non-hero targets which are in play with "Get Out of the Way!".  He then heals that many HP, having only been down 5 in the first place, and has Mortal Form to Energy in play.  Does MFtE automatically deal 10 damage, or does it only deal damage equal to the number of HP that Scholar was able to actually regain, which would be 5 in this case?

8.  Ambuscade reveals a Trap and shuffles it into his deck.  Assuming that you closed your eyes and made an honest attempt at shuffling often enough to thoroughly lose track of the face-up Trap card, what happens if you open your eyes and find the Trap on top of the deck?  Does it resolve instantly, or should you assume the deck needs a few more shuffles?

If he did not heal that amount, he doesn't deal the damage. If he is already at full health, those abilities don't do anything.

There is always a chance that you end up with the same card on top even in a fully randomized deck. If you shuffled it well and it ends up on top, I wouldn't say you need to keep shuffling.

More questions that arise from 'Cade's poorly-thought-out Trap Card mechanic.

9.  Does the Trap spring instantly the moment you reveal it beneath a flipped-up card while resolving Armed and Dangerous or a similar effect?

10.  When you resolve a "play the top card of the Villain deck" effect and reveal a Trap, do you resolve the Trap before you begin resolving any of the effects of the the card  you were playing?  Likewise, with Sudden Shopping Trip, do you perform any part of the effect of the card that you put into play, or do you first deal the damage from SST, and then play the card?

9. Yes you would resolve the effects.

10. The Trap would take place before the card that was played.

10b. SST would certainly take place before a one-shot is played, however there is a current mystery as to what happens when a card like Gene-Bound Guard is played, as it doesn't make sense for him to take damage when he is played, thus needing a ruling if "Ongoing effects" are priority over effects like SST.

I don't see why 10b would confuse in that particular case.  He's put into play, so he's in play and so is his effect; SST triggers and deals 1 damage to him, which he reduces to 0.  If something has somehow rendered all damage irreducible, he'd take damage; otherwise he wouldn't.

Edit:  This seems relevant:

Yes it does, as soon as that card hits the table it is now a target, so it is free to be hit or healed, even though it was the card that triggered it.

When you reveal a card from the villain deck and find the face up trap card underneath, you resolve the trap immediately, then continue resolving whatever made you reveal (like Run and Gun).

Playing a card is slightly more ambiguous.  While I would normally be tempted to say pulling the card from the deck and putting it into play are a single action, this causes a problem if you had a face down trap on top of a face up trap.  So in the interests of resolving that, I would say you pull the top card from the deck and resolve any face up trap(s) if necessary, then proceed with playing the card you pulled.

Indeed.  A perspective which displays more ass is always worth looking into.  (I posted this not realizing that I had already made a joke on the "more ass…" thing.  Frankly the first one was better.)

Moving right along, a couple new questions:

11.  Unlike other Bounty cards in Chrono-Ranger's deck, "The Ultimate Target" says nothing about it destroying itself when the target leaves play.  Was this deliberate or is it just an omission?

12.  In a similar vein, Kismet's various Jinxes are placed "in front of" a hero, but they say nothing about leaving play when that character is incapacitated.  Do they indeed remain in play regardless of what happens to their target?  This makes a pretty big difference in terms of the extra damage she deals when she has the Talisman.

If they don't say otherwise, they remain in play even if their 'target' is incapacitated or leaves play.  As to whether it is 'deliberate' is hard to define here, because it is actually card space which lead to the decision.  They did not just forget to put it on, though, and the fact that your 'Ultimate Target' could not be reassigned without using an effect to destroy it was a known feature of the card when it was written this way.

I agree with this assesment. When you reveal the top card of a deck and a faceup trap is on top, the trap would be the newest consecutive triggered effect and would take priority when resolving. 

I would agree as well, the trap would be resolved before the card you just picked up would be played, because it triggers on being the top card of the deck, the instant it was it would attempt to trigger.  

If you wanted to view the act of playing the top card of the villain deck as a single, uninterruptible action then the card would enter play and then be interrupted for the trap to resolve, either way it would still resolve before the card that was on top of it.

If the face up trap was the third card of the villain deck and Dark Visionary used turmoil on the villain deck she would reveal the top two, and the trap would be on top of the villain deck face-up, so it would trigger.  If the trap was the second card things would be interesting.

Since no two actions are truly simultaneous I would argue that when the top two cards are revealed they are revealed one at a time, and that the top card would be revealed first, at which point the second card being a face-up trap would be face-up on top of the deck and would trigger.  As for how to then resolve Turmoil is a good question.

You could argue that it was revealed, and on of the top two cards, and so after it resolved Turmoil would put it either on top of the deck or the bottom.

I would tend to think that once the face-up trap was resolved Turmoil would reveal the next card and the face-up trap would not take part in Turmoil's effect.

That might make a good rules question though, if it hasn't already been answered.

https://greaterthangames.com/comment/9973#comment-9973

That ruling just covers the fact that revealing cards sets off traps, not the actual timing of revealing multiple cards and resolving the trap.

However, I'm quite certain that Rabit is correct.  You reveal the cards one at a time, and after each one resolve the face up traps before revealing the next card.  (So the face up trap will never count as one of the revealed cards).

Thanks, it's awesome how fast people find those rulings.

Uhm... So, what if you are reveiling cards from the top, but before all can be reveiled, a trap is set off, incapacitating the character that was reveiling the cards?  Do the cards go back on top in any order? In the order they were in? Discarded? Does the reveiling card run to completion simply so that the cards can be removed from their "reveiled" status?

That's a good question, cards obviously can't just stay revealed, but any other action would require directions to complete.  I would guess they would go back on the deck in the order they were revealed, but that is just a guess.

13.  The Matriarch's card "Horrid Cacophony" says simply "Deal X sonic damage to each hero target" (I forget how much the X is).  Does that mean the damage does not come from The Matriarch, nor from the card itself, but just from...nowhere?

Christopher said in this thread: https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/whats-dealing-damage that Horrid Cacophony damage is supposed to come from the Matriarche.

Urgh.  I was afraid of that; that means Huginn and Munnin will add 2 to it.  I thought it was sort of fitting that the damage was coming from an infinite number of nonspecific birds rather than from their mistress's direct action.  Damn, but she's tough.  Seriously, what was it with the villains in Rook City?

Yeah, Rook City is kind of "the nasty expansion". But I think it was meant that way. It's guns and dirty streets as opposed to the mystical, magical, and more primal stuff of Infernal Relics (and what with me being a Fantasy person, guess which theme I like best? ;)). Still, given the right set-up, any of the Rook City villains can be fairly easy to beat (of course, it may require some amount of luck...kind of to be expected in a card game though ;)).

Now she's difficult? What happened to she was easy? The environment made you lose? What happened to her damage being so insignificant that it is easy to avoid?

Envisioner is learning, Ronway. Give him a chance to catch up and get in the games to better understand all the decks.

I'm just curious what happened that would cause such a flip of an opinion. If I personally were to have an easy time against a villain for the first game, then had a second game that was difficult, I don't think my opinion would switch so drastically. A third game probably still wouldn't change my opinion. Especially if my first game I would use the words "doesn't do incredible damage" "killed without difficulty" to describe several of the cards in a villain deck. That's if I would rank a villain after just a few games, I certainly give it quite a few more before deciding it.

Which makes it kind of silly that a teenage girl with a magic mask is deadlier than nine resurrected Egyptian gods, and that the crime boss of one city is feared more than the primordial incarnation of nature's destructive wrath.

1.  My first statement was based on a month-old memory of that first game.  My new assessment is based on a game from two nights ago.

2.  My first game against Matty was my third game ever, so I was less experienced.  I probably overlooked the damage bonuses from Huginn and Muninn…and in this new one, since part of my objective was to discover whether she was tougher than I thought, I may have overvalued them (it's entirely possible I was adding the bonus to all damage dealt by the birds, rather than only to damage from Matty personally).  I'm still learning how to juggle all the numbers of the game in my head, and hardly a single game goes by without my screwing up the math badly at least once.

3.  The environment was very definitely a factor, but in the first game, I think I had missed that Carrion Fields never damages the highest-HP player, and I may not have noticed that Matty's damage can be avoided by ditching cards in play.  It's entirely possible that if I'd played that first game out instead of assuming that I'd lost when the birds all went boom, I might actually have found that one hero survived for a while.  If that had happened, the slow grinding death of that sole survivor, or even their slow grinding victory, would have actually made the game seem more difficult than when its defeat was "obviously" a foregone conclusion.  Semblance is like that.

This is not a game about superheroes, though, it's a world about superhero comic books, and the villains in the dark, gritty expansion are the villains from the dark, gritty comics, who would pose a much greater threat to the heroes than villains in lighter comics.

Hrm.  You have a very accurate point, but one which annoys me.  This kind of "sorting algorhythm of evil" is a huge pet peeve of mine; having the villain become weaker so that Our Heroes can defeat it while being sucky is just bad writing IMO; it completely wrecks my SOD.

14.  When Miss Information plays "Another Reality's Debt", each hero must either discard their hand or destroy all their cards (presumably that means "in play").  If a hero has no cards in play, do they have to discard their hand, or are they unaffected?  Conversely, if they have no hand, must they destroy all their stuff?

EDIT:  I see that this has been discussed before.  There doesn't seem to have been a consensus, and I'm in mid-game here and need to make a ruling, so I'm going to say that since you're being asked to discard "your hand" instead of some number of cards, you can discard a hand of 0 cards and not have to destroy any stuff.  And conversely, I'm going to rule that if you have no cards in play, you can destroy all 0 of them.  (Unlike during that previous discussion, I never even considered the idea that your character card could count as a card in play which you have to destroy.  If that were the case, the card would simply read "each player discards his hand" and there would be no element of choice.)

15.  Police Backup says "Whenever a villain card would make a player discard a card, destroy this card".  If Another Reality's Debt is played, then at least if every hero has a card in play, they are not FORCED to discard any cards (they may CHOOSE to discard cards to avoid destroying stuff in play).  So is Police Backup affected?  What if they actually do choose to discard?  For now I'm ruling "no" on the first case, since my previous guess makes the second irrelevant.

14. You can choose to discard a hand of zero cards (this was specifically ruled on with Toxic Seaweed) and I'm sure you can choose to destroy all your cards if you have none in play.  The thread you linked to was discussing Rule From the Front, which requires you to discard 2 cards or destroy 1.  The specific number of cards means that you must actually have cards in hand to discard or in play to destroy.  But 'Another Reality's Debt' is all cards, so if none are available, then that is all of them.

15. For police backup, if an effect on a villain card causes you to discard a card, then Police Backup is destroyed.  Whether you had some choice to avoid that part of the villain card resolving doesn't matter.

I've since revealed "Threat" to the President, which says "At the end of the villain turn, the player with the most cards in play must destroy 1 of their non-character cards."  The fact that ARD doesn't say "non-character" still strikes me as an oversight, but it's less clear now, knowing that they thought to make the clarification on a different card in the same deck.

The case you're talking about is a little different, since it gives you a choice between discarding (all cards in) your hand or destroying all cards in play, versus Rule from the Front, which gives specific numbers. There was also a discussion about Another Reality's Debt recently, but it was also inconclusive. For what it's worth, I agree with you: you can choose to destroy all 0 of your cards in play if it's played at the beginnig of the game. But I haven't seen a ruling from on high.

(I also agree with the principle of making a rulingon the spot, then figuring out the correct answer later.)

15 .  Police Backup says "Whenever a villain card would make a player discard a card, destroy this card".  If Another Reality's Debt is played, then at least if every hero has a card in play, they are not FORCED to discard any cards (they may CHOOSE to discard cards to avoid destroying stuff in play).  So is Police Backup affected?  What if they actually do choose to discard?  For now I'm ruling "no" on the first case, since my previous guess makes the second irrelevant.
Police Backup is a little weird; I always feel like there should be an "instead" in the text. I'm not sure here, but I think I would play that Police Backup gets destroyed if any players actually do discard cards.

16.  Misplaced Memo says "the non-hero target with the lowest HP is immune to damage".  If Absolute Zero has been the lowest at 13 HP, and another hero is reduced to that same number, can AZ transfer his immunity to the newly-tied hero, or is he forced to keep it until someone besides himself drops to an actually lower number?

How is Absolute Zero immune to damage exactly? Misplaced Memo only works on non-hero targets, if that is where you're getting it from.

16. First of all, Absolute Zero is a hero target.  He will never be the non-hero target with the lowest HP.

However you resolve each damage to each target separately.  As you resolve each one, you determine if Misplaced Memo applies to that target.  If no other non-hero targets are equal or lower, then they are immune.  If they are tied for the lowest, or become tied for the lowest you can change which target is considered the lowest each time you resolve damage.  Theoretically if all non-hero targets were tied, you could treat them each as immune whenever they are dealt damage.  (Thought typically you would choose to make your current target not immune, so then it will take damage and become the lowest until something else takes damage).

"Threat" to the president says non-character card because I brought it up in the playtester forum.  I didn't point out the rest of the cards in that set because it seemed like it was just cluttering up the cards when the intention was obvious.

Yes, that might make a difference.  facepalm  Well, my first game against Miss Info has turned out to be a little screwy, but that's usually the case when I play a villain for the first time (and often thereafter).

As this is a rules question thread and I didn't really want to start a whole new thread just to check one little thing, I'll ask this here…

Danger Sense makes Legacy immune to environment damage. Does this only mean damage dealt directly from environment cards, or does it also cover the times when the environment makes you hurt yourself? Specifically, yesterday we were playing in the Realm of Discord and the Spinning Vortex came up, which basically says "You can choose to destroy some of your stuff, but if you have any stuff left after that you have to deal yourself damage". Legacy did have Danger Sense out, but I figured that it only prevents damage dealt by an enviroment card - while it was the environment causing damage to be dealt, the damage wasn't dealt by the environment, but by the hero, therefore Legacy still had to hit himself. Did I play this right?

Only damage dealt by the environment, so yes Legacy would hurt himself because of Spinning Vortex.

Danger Sense prevents damage dealt by Environment cards, Spinning Vortex is damage dealt by a hero so it doesn't help out.

From the same environment deck Ethereal Bonds would prevent that damage as it speficies that "a target dealt damage this way cannot deal damage" so you wouldn't be able to deal yourself damage if you were under its effects (which would be very rare).

Hey, folks. I know it sounds odd, but please (in the future - don't have to do it with this one ) start a new thread when you have a rules question or a group of related questions. It makes it a lot easier for folks when they're searching the site to find an answer to a question when it's not buried in a thread like this but in its own.

Not a big deal, just something to think about. Thanks!

And thank you for all the work answering everyone's questions, also, folks - it's greatly appreciated!

17.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ambuscade's Charged Attacks appears to read "Whenever a device is destroyed, Ambuscade deals each target 3 energy damage" (it reads 2 but there's a bult-in +1).  Not each hero target, but each target, including his other devices and even himself.  Now, the Reactive Plating reads "The first time a target deals damage to Ambuscade each turn, this card deals that target 2 energy damage".  So if a different device is destroyed, Amby will deal 3 damage to himself (reduced to 2 by the Plating), and another 3 (actually 2) to the Plating, and the Plating will deal 2 damage (reduced to 1) to Amby because he damaged himself?  (Obviously all this presumes he's not in Invisible Stalker mode.)

Yes.

And all other devices he has out, he can get a nice little chain going there.

I guess the idea was to prove what a crazy #*$@% he is, but it doesn't exactly help with him being one of the weaker villains.  I just fought him on Advanced, with only three heroes, and he had a Rocket Launcher on turn 1, and we still won without losing any heroes.  (Granted, the Environment helped a lot; I've yet to play a game on Insula Primalis where the dinosaurs weren't easily pointed toward the villain so that they posed little threat to the heroes.)

18.  Cards under a card in play are themselves counted as "cards in play", right?  So when Fanatic plays End of Days, all the cards under La Capitan go back where they belong?

19.  Damage reduced to 0 by a Plating Card doesn't trigger Reactive Plating Subroutine, right?  Because no actual damage was dealt?

20.  Back to La Capitan's stolen cards - do they go face-up or face-down?

18. Yes, I believe that’s the ruling.
19. Correct.
20. Does it matter?

Of course it matters, if only for the sake of knowing whether Ra has a fourth copy of his Staff in his deck that he can Summon.  Nearly all of the decks have a tutor in them, and Fanatic has cards she might be praying to find…I can't think of a single hero who wouldn't benefit from knowing what's been stolen from them.

The question should be can you look at them, as it doesn't matter if you have them face up or down, but you can look to see what is there.

21.  Can irreducible damage be prevented?

Yes. Irreducible damage can not be reduced, but it can be prevented or redirected. So Legacy's Fortitude has no effect against Plague Rat's irreducible damage, but Danger Sense will still prevent damage from Falling Statuary. Also, Fixer and Nightmist could still redirect Plague Rat's irreducible damage with Amulet and Driving Mantis.

Yes it can.  In addition to all the effective prevention Nielzabub brought up, things which use the term 'prevent', like Fanatic's Undaunted and Expatriette's Flak Jacket, can prevent irreducible damage.

There is also an odd possibility with Bunker's Incapacitated ability which prevents the next 2 damage to one hero.  Personally, I treat this ability as 'reduce the next damage to a hero by 2', so I would treat it as wasted if that damage is irreducible.  However, before Enhanced Edition, Wraith's base power used the same 'prevent' wording as Bunkers ability, and the ruling there was that it could prevent irreducible if it was 2 or less, but was completely wasted otherwise.  Since Wraith was presumably reworded specifically to get away from weirdness like that, I assume Bunker was just overlooked, but you can make your own judgement.

18. Yes, unless something says otherwise, like Mad Bomber Blade says the cards under his character card have no text and are not considered in play.

Hm, well if cards under La Capitan can be destroyed, then I beat Cappi a lot more easily than I thought I did, but oh well, the mistake made the game more epic.

Thanks for pointing out the Bunker weirdness, dyapaca.  I will probably intentionally treat it as functioning differently than Wraith, just because I consider it fitting for different characters to work variously.

It's quite hard to destroy a card that doesn't have text. (Cards under La Capitan are not considered to have text; I'm less confident they are in play.) I think End of Days and Cedistic Dissonant are the only two ways.

Sacrifice Tempest can destroy his own cards under Capitain for instance. They are in play. You are correct that they do not have text though. 

That wraith ruling makes no sense to me, if you can prevent irreducible damage than you can prevent part of it.  It isn't reduction at all, so the damage isn't being reduced, it is being prevented, but not wholly.

I play it as prevention, and let it partially prevent irreducible damage.  That seems like such a wierd ruling.

If we are talking about one instance of damage, then any partial prevention would in fact be reducing that specific instance of damage thats supposed to be irreducible. I think the key to that ruling is that if irreducible damage is not prevented in its entirety (and effects like immunity and redirection are prime examples of this) than it is not prevented at all

Also, just to be clear, even if that 'wraith' ruling applies at all, it no longer applies to the wraith.  As of enhanced edition, her ability is definately reduction and cannot effect irreducible damage.

End of Days was the important one.  It virtually always comes up when I play Fanatic, and I consider it one of her two most defining cards, along with Wrathful Retribution.  Both are huge spoilers which win otherwise nigh-unwinnable games on a regular basis.

Not necessarily. End of Days destroys everything so it'll put all the heroes back to square one as well, even if they have copies of all their lost cards in-hand, because they'll need to then spend time re-playing those cards, during which time the villain is putting stuff out again as well. Something like Savage Mana can be more effective, especially against someone like the Chairman, Voss, or the Matriarch. Okay so it only works on targets, and only targets that Haka destroys, but at least it doesn't force him to destroy hero stuff in the process ;).

Wrathful Retribution makes for a nice game finisher if it comes up, and it's even more satisfying if you can manage to then re-use it (through someone such as Tempest or the Adept letting you get it back out of your trash). But the chances of it coming up are…well, one in forty ;).

Technically the odds are 1/40 * number of draws. So at a bare minimum it's got a 1 in 10 chance of appearing in her opemning draw.

[end statistical pedantry]

[restart statistical pedantry]

It would be a 1/10 chance if there were four copies of the card and you did one draw, but what we're doing is four draws, so you have to account for the thinning of the deck.

The actual chance of EoD being in the opening hand of forty cards is: (1 - (39/40 * 38/39 * 37/38 * 36/37)), which equals  … 0.1 or 1 in 10?!

So much for my smug sense of superiority

[/restart statistical pedantry]

The heroes start at square one, while a lot of the villains don't.  Voss, Dreamy, and Dawn all start with a slew of minions in play, La Capitan frequently busts out large numbers of Crew with a single Raiding Party, Omnitron has his Devices that he's fairly good at manufacturing in a hurry…the chances are quite good that the villain will have out more cards than the hero team until at least the third turn (assuming that not all the heroes are specced for playing Ongoings and Equipment), and that's if they don't destroy anything of the heroes'.  I've yet to see End of Days take out more than two hero cards; usually it's a turn-1 play, and otherwise it gets played when the heroes have just been wiped out anyway, or just to save their bacon against an overwhelming tide.

Moving on to a few new questions, all pertaining to Expatriette:

19.  If you are somehow caused to play Unload out of turn, you gain the ability to use X powers, where X is the number of guns you have out, even though you couldn't normally use powers at all at this time?

20.  Assuming the previous answer was "yes", say that Expat does indeed play Unload.  She has only one Gun in play, so she gets to use one power; she uses her innate "Load" power to play a card, and that card is a Gun or a way of getting one.  Does she now get to use a second power?

21.  When Expat fires a Submachine Gun (1 damage to each non-hero target) which is loaded with Shock Rounds (1 damage to each non-hero target whenever the loaded Gun's power is used to damage a target, destroyed "after that power is used"), what happens?  Is this as insane as it looks like it might be, or is it just 2 damage to everything (assuming no modifiers)?  If it is 2 damage to everything, does all the damage from Shock Rounds happen after the first damage from Submachine, which then resumes damaging everything other than the first target after Shock Rounds is done?  (Not sure whether that would ever matter, I'm just checking.)

You can generate actions out of turn, a la Fixer playing his "I can use my base power twice" card on someone else's turn, which lets him punch twice that turn.

Also there was a ruling about shock rounds+sub machine gun. It only triggers once is the gist of it.

Here it is: https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/expatriette-shock-rounds-and-submachine-gun

Yes, you get a power for each gun, even though it isn't your turn.

I would say yes.

As brytehfryguy said, it goes off once.  Typically timing will not matter, but there are several reasons why it could.  I would resolve shock rounds after all the damage from the gun.

For all the other X cards if the number changes X changes, so I'd say yes you do get another power.

Shock Rounds only goes once, I always do it after the first hit, assuming that the shock round was the first bullet fired.  It doesn't make sens that the shock rounds would only trigger once with the name being plural and the way the card words it, but I understand why.  With a +2 you could almost completely kill the Ennead in force.

Per this ruling, Chrono-Ranger has to be careful when firing Danny-Boy…if he had out three Bounties, but his second shot kills a target that had one of those Bounties on it, the target dies and the Bounty dies as well, so Danny-boy no longer gets to hit a third target.  Thusly, if all three of the Bounties are on 2-HP targets, one of them functionally doesn't exist.

Speaking of revisiting old rulings, I believe we somehow determined that when Visionary uses Mass Levitation to lift away from Toxic Seaweed, she doesn't take damage for the power because it's resolved completely before the Seaweed's trigger occurs.  By the same token, if O-X uses Bioengineering Beam to destroy the Seaweed, he also isn't damaged, correct?  (It occurs to me that, since making the game comprehensible is apparently >G's priority, they might consider having a future reprint replace a lot of instances of "When" with "After" or "Before".)

Finally, a new question that I've been meaning to ask for some time and keep forgetting about…including now.  ARGH.  It was something to do with multiple simultaneous damages and the way they resolve…gonna have to try and figure out what it was after my current game.

Ahah, got it.  When you have an Environment card (usually) that says something like "deal damage to the target with the second-lowest HP", if two appropriate targets are tied for lowest, are they also tied for second-lowest, making either one a valid choice?  Or do you ignore all targets that are tied and select one from the second-lowest unique value of HP in play?  For the duration of my current game, I'm assuming it's the former.  (Which means that when Bunker and the Dreamer are both at 2 HP and an Abominable Snowman goes looking for lunch, Bunker is screwed.)

It was clarified somewhere or other that the former interpretation is correct. In your example, though, I would have the Snowman chomp on the Dreamer, and then redirect the environmental damage to another hero using that rule on The Dreamer's card.

Dreamy can only redirect damage to the lowest HP hero (this is a big contributer to her being Diff 3 IMO; part of why Omnitron is diff 1 is that he only ever attacks the high-HP heroes, which not only are less likely to abruptly die as a result, but also keep changing so that the damage isn't concentrated on a single victim).  Had the Snowman targeted Dreamy in that case, it would have dealt her 2 cold damage, which would redirect to Bunker and then kill him, and then dealt Dreamy 2 melee damage which the next-lowest hero would have to take.  It was safer just to let the Snowman eat Bunker directly, so that his second damage wouldn't occur.

Per your toxic seaweed question, the power fully resolves before toxic seaweed reacts.  So Bio Engineering beam knocks it out with no retaliation.

And you are right, sending the Snowman after Bunker directly is the better move in that situation.  (Barring any other effects which make you want to damage a hero).

Oops, thanks for the reminder!

Wraith and her smoke bombs are awesome vs. the Dreamer (or anyone that heavily targets lowest HP.

We tanked Dreamer in Primalis with a bunker that had plating and recharge (gatling and Omni too, epic starting hand) and smoke bombs.  Anything hitting dreamer had to do 4 damage or it didn't even scratch Lt. Vance.

Only environment damage can be redirected from the dreamer and only villain damage can be redirected using Smoke Bombs. If the environment hits the Dreamer and it is decided to redirect the damage to the hero with the lowest HP, it will still hit the hero with the lowest HP.

You really do have to ruin everything I do illegally don't you.  Curse you Ronway and your informative knowledge!

I had a similar fumble while playing Legacy in the Pike Industrial Complex.  Lead from the Front + Next Evolution with an Irradiated Cyclohexane Vat in play makes the entire party invincible…except against rats and vat explosions.  Poor Expatriette paid with her life for my failure to notice that issue.

22.  As written, Prison Riot apparently expects to be able to find a certain number of Inmates, even though they may all be in play already.  What exactly ends up happening?  For today we played it on the assumption that you put the entire Environment deck in the trash, but later there was another Riot while a few Inmates were dead, and we weren't certain whether we should shuffle the discards into a new when it runs out and then continue trying to find all the Inmates.  If you're allowed to recycle the deck in search of cards that may not be there, the game could theoretically go into an infinite loop, and it seems weird that you would reshuffle the trash only if inmates are in it, so our assumption was that you don't reshuffle it at all.

23.  Argent Adept plays Silver Shadow to activate the Accompany text of Alacritous Subdominant.  This lets him use a power, and then destroy the Subdominant.  If he uses the Power to play an Instrument which is capable of activating the Perform of the Subdominant, can he do so?  Or was it destroyed the instant you used the Power?  (For today's game I played on the assumption that, since nothing is simultaneous, you resolve the Power fully and then destroy the song...but later I realized that this implies you could instead have played a different Instrument and activated the Subdominant's Accompany again, using another power before destroying the song twice.  I'm not entirely sure that's not allowed, but I figure it merits checking.)

22) Reveal goes to the end of the deck and then stops. If you don't find what you're looking for, breath a sigh of relief and move on.

23) This is correct. You can do that. .it's one of the things that can make the Argent Adept's turns so horrendously chainy.

So to generalize 22 to the game as a whole, revealing never prompts a deck reshuffle unless specifically indicated?  I suspect I'll find a villain where that produces wonky results eventually.  Might make La Capitan slightly less dangerous.

Subdominant and supertonic when well used can be insane, just time it up right because the first time that accompany is resolved the card dies.

With three instruments to activate Subdominant, and two for supertonic you can get a ton done on one turn when you decide to destroy subdominant.

Some of the stuff we've pulled off with adept has been insane (a 2nd galvanize, argent boosting omni's damage 2, then let Unity play hasty for Omni to do defensive blast was amazing) I think Akash is Argents nemesis because anyone else is dead before you get to be  truly ridiculous as Argent.

Ahh, I love some of the chains the Adept can pull off. Today, for example, I had the Harp, the Horn, Inspiring Supertonic, Rhapsody of Vigour, and Sarabande of Destruction out. That was the most I managed at once because we were fighting Akash'Bhuta and she nuked my stuff a few times (though I managed to get most of it back). So the Harp activates Inspiring Supertonic, which activates the Horn, which activates either Sarabande of Destruction (if there's something nasty which needs taking out...which only happened a couple of times in this game) or Rhapsody of Vigour, then the Accompany of Supertonic (+2hp to me), then the Harp finishes off and activates the Accompany of Supertonic again. During the first half of the game I'd been gradually beaten down to 10hp but after getting this combo going I ended up healing all the way to full and stayed above 20hp for the majority of the rest of the game (may have dropped to about 18 once or twice) :).

With regard to revealing cards - yes, if you need to reveal from the deck and you run out of deck, that's it. You only reshuffle if you need to draw or discard from the top of the deck. You don't reshuffle just because the deck has run out of cards - you wait until you actually need to take one from the top. If you're the Adept, for example, and you play Arcane Cadence (reveal the top five cards of your deck) when there are only three cards in your deck, that's all you get - you don't reshuffle to get the other two. If you're fighting La Capitan and need to reveal cards from her deck to bring out a certain number of crew and the deck runs out before you reach that total, that's all she gets. Aww, diddums ;).

If you're the Adept, for example, and you play Arcane Cadence (reveal the top five cards of your deck) when there are only three cards in your deck, that's all you get - you don't reshuffle to get the other two.

Would you get to pick which results to use on them, or would you resolve in order of wording until you ran out of cards?

It seems like you would do order listed on the card, which means three cards would get you 1 in hand, 1 on top of your deck and 1 on the bottom of the deck.

You would need all five to get one in play.

That's correct. Reshuffle is only triggered by drawing or playing from the villain deck (I think, I may be misstating the exact rule).

This would all be clearer if the relevant rule had not been omitted from the EE rulebook, but it's designed in and the designers had this in mind designing all the decks.

This was discussed here:  https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/two-chairman-rule-questions-3613

Concensus agreed with you (as do I)

Yeah, it's order listed - that order was actually established during play testing based on playtest results/feedback.

That's exactly like the rule I'm used to (mostly in deckbuilding games), with the exception that those count an instruction to "reveal" cards from the deck as "needing to take one (or more) from the top".  Y'know what would have helped with figuring out rules like this?  If the "reshuffle your deck when it runs out" were IN THE RULEBOOK.  If it was, I couldn't find it; as far as I can tell, it's only defined on the website.

If you're the Adept, for example, and you play Arcane Cadence (reveal the top five cards of your deck) when there are only three cards in your deck, that's all you get - you don't reshuffle to get the other two. If you're fighting La Capitan and need to reveal cards from her deck to bring out a certain number of crew and the deck runs out before you reach that total, that's all she gets. Aww, diddums ;).

That makes a BIG difference to how dangerous she is.  Once the ship is down, I can totally see using Timeshift on her deck just to run it out so that Raiding Party is less likely to find enough crew.

Yup. I understand it was an editing error in the second edition rulebook.

Quote:

The only way of permanently ending the ship is to have Haka punch it to death and store it in Savage Mana, and even that isn't immune to Cappy busting out a lot of Plunders or the like and destroying your Ongoings.  Destroying the ship once and then Timeshifting every turn, in hopes of catching an ATN and putting it into the trash, is about the best you can hope to do.  Unless of course Visionary is in the game. 

That makes pretty much no difference though, unless your plan is to waste so many Timeshifts on the villain deck that it all gets reshuffled. Essentially, you're doing is discarding every second card in the deck, which could get rid of an ATN but is equally likely to bring it up sooner...

The only way to guarantee the ship never comes back (as with every other target in the whole game), is to have it taken out by something in the Final Wasteland when Unforgiving Wasteland is out >:).

If you have enough damaging stuff built up by the time the ship comes back (assuming it ever does), you should be able to take it out pretty quickly. Or maybe Tempest can grant you a temporary reprieve by whacking it Into the Stratosphere or something :).

An into the Stratosphere/Time Shift combo is always nice.

Yes, definitely :). And that'd work with several other villains as well - the Chairman or Gloomweaver, for example >:).

Yeah normally if the ship makes it back out we kill it pretty quick.  Once that extra card play is gone Cap is rather easy to manage.

At least until Mable comes out and gives her yet another free card play plus some stuff-destruction ;). Mable is horrible, boooo!

Yes, fear the acrobat.

No executions also works on the ship, though it's vulnerable to ongoing destruction.

24.  Surprise Shopping Trip is in play, and Omnitron (after flipping to Self-Aware Robotics factory and with no Components or Drones in the trash, so it matters because this is the only card he'll play, and Fanatic will be stabbing him with either Absolution or Exorcism on her turn) pulls Adaptive Plating Subroutine.  Is the Subroutine in play when he takes the damage from SST?  Does he become immune to melee?

25.  Likewise, if a Target enters play, does it immediately take the damage from SST?  (I may have asked this before.)

Yes on both counts.  Surprise Shopping Trip goes off after the triggering card enters play.

Oh, I forgot my most important SST question, which I meant to ask in place of the one about Targets (as I probably already had that answer).

26.  SST says "Whenever a card enter play, deal each target damage".  There's no listed source for the damage.  Is it SST itself?  Is it the card which entered play?  Or is it the hero/villain which played the card?  If Omnitron is on his advanced Factory side, and a Device enters play, does SST cause it to deal 2 damage instead of 1?  If Fanatic plays Zealous Offense and then Exorcises something, has she dealt 3 damage this turn so she gets to keep ZO in play?

Surprise shopping trip is the source of the damage. 

The card which entered play is definately not the source of the damage.  There is an ambiguity as to whether the source is the card 'Surprise Shopping Trip' or the environment itself.  The glossary entry for Environment (and I think a comment from Christopher) are the basis for the idea that the environment itself is dealing the damage.

However, with the exception of Explosive Wagon, environment cards which do not specify the source of the damage are not targets.  Therefor the distinction between the environment being the source and the card being the source typically only matters for Haka's Enduring Intercession and more importantly Ground Pound.  (For Explosive Wagon, it matters for a large number of effects which manipulate damage from a target).

Personally I've always played that the source of the damage is 'this card' if an environment card doesn't specify anything else.

27.  Per the ruling about self-damage ongoings (that if Tachyon fails to take at least 2 damage at the start of her turn, Pushing the Limits must be destroyed), what about the reverse scenario?  With Fixed Point in play, Pushing the Limits can't be destroyed, so does that mean Tachyon must take 2 damage?  Or can she choose not to take the damage, accept the consequence that PtL will be destroyed, and then ignore that consequence because of fixed Point?

The way I believe it works is like this; the destruction trigger for pushing the limits specifies that it all takes place at the start of your turn. You can choose not to deal yourself damage, Pushing the limits doesn't get destroyed because of Fixed Point and when Fixed Point goes away, Pushing the Limits is still in play. At the start of your next turn, the cycle repeats as normal after Fixed Point is destroyed.

With Fixer's styles, any extra styles in play get destroyed when Fixed Point does and any excess tools or plating go back into your hand since these triggers rely on other cards being in play and their effects don't specify a turn phase.

I don't have Fixer to reference, but Omnitron's Plating very definitely says "When this card enters play", so I see no sane way to interpret that text as meaning that two Platings can't remain side-by-side after a Fixed Point.  (He is a time traveler after all; who better to watch his own back with both eyes, despite only possessing one?)  Although actually, the Platings don't destroy each other after all, so you still can't get two of them in play, but I stand by my quip.  Tools also "bounce" each other rather than destroying, but I will have to remember to play Fixer in the Time Cataclysm again sometime, just so that I can try to turn my reliable habit of drawing multiple styles and Meditations into an advantage.  Alternating Riveting Tiger Crane Claw is a neat enough idea that I'm very sad it isn't normally legal.)

By the way, I assume that any claim that Fixed Point prevents One-Shots from going to the bin after play was quickly quashed?

Nielzabub, I agree on your answer to the Pushing the Limits question, but I don't think you are right about the styles/tools.

The destruction/removal of the older styles/tools is triggered when the new one enters play.  If the old ones are indestructible at that point then they just remain in play indefinately.  Just as Pushing the Limits only tries to destroy itself at the start of your turn, Styles only try to destroy the other styles when they enter play.  (However a third style played once Fixed Point is gone would destroy all the older styles).

Yes, one-shots have been ruled to be their own category and an exception to the rule of Fixed Point.

I don't think the intent of the card is to allow Omni and Fixer to have multiple types of a card out after it is destroyed. Once the Fixed Point is destroyed the bubble of time that was weirdly affecting the battle is supposed to revert back to normal. Also, the condition of returning cards to your hand on the tools and plating don't specify a turn phase either so I think that text is supposed to resume and follow through once the Fixed Point no longer prevents them.

Cards like Pushing the Limits are a bit of an exception because the destruction effect specifically occurs during the start of a hero's turn. If it is no longer the start of a hero's turn, the trigger is no longer being checked for.

The definition of indestructible says not only that the card can't be destroyed, but also that it cannot leave play.  So it does indeed protect plating cards and tools.  (This was probably just meant to make Spite's drugs totally iron clad so he can't be completely neutered, but there probably aren't going to be a large number of ways to make random hero cards indestructible anyway).

However it has been stated by the designers that Fixed Point is not supposed to affect one-shots.  They enter play, resolve, then go to the trash normally.

I was talking about when Fixed Point was destroyed. Yes, while it's out it protects Plating and Tool cards as well as everything else.

Sorry, we have some reply lag here.  My clarification on indestructible and cards leaving play (and one-shots) is aimed at Envisioner's last post (which I didn't see until after posting my post right after it).  And then your next post showed up as I typed that reply.

However I do think that after Fixed Point goes away you can keep multiple styles/tools/platings/modes until you play another style/tool/plating/mode.

I can agree that based solely on the wording that this is a valid interpretation of the rules, but Fixer and Omnitron's decks are comprised under the mechanic of only being able to have one style/tool/or plating at one time. Fixed Point allows for the disregard for the limitations of the core mechanic of the deck, but I don't think it was intended to allow them to be able to break those limitations for the rest of the game. Fixer with multiple styles and or tools and Omni-X with multiple plating cards can easily be ridiculously overpowered especially dependent on when the Fixed Point enters the game.

There are ridiculous situations in a lot of games, like End of Days vs. The Matriarch, if there are are any fowl in play. I've played Mr. Fixer in the Time Cataclysm environment a few times, and honestly I don't think I ever managed to get two tools out. Whereas I've murdered people with the Rod of Anubis a few times.

Does using End of Days on the Martriarch with fowl out break or mess the core mechanic of how Fanatic's deck work? Yes, ridiculous situations happen. Thematically, it's hillarious that Wraith can stop a volcano or the kraken with a grappling hook, but that's how those cards were built to work. All of the cards in Omni-X and Fixer's cards work under the assumption that only one plating card can be out at a time and only one tool or style can be out at a time. This is not the same category as something being thematically funny.

The Indestructible thing with returning to hand is exceedingly weird, but I'll take you guys's word for it.  (They really should have called it "unremovable" or something instead.)  Meanwhile, the longest slog of a game I think I've ever played has generated yet another question.

27.  Oppressive Smog reduces all HP recovery by 2.  Does this mean that Fanatic's Aegis of Resurrection raises her with 8 HP, or is rising from 0 or less to a specified value not treated as "HP recovery" of an amount equal to 10 plus the number of negative HP you plummeted to while dying?

Fixed point and One-Shots: #13 https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/answers-to-debated-questions-3871

I know what the Glossary says, that's not my point.  My point is, it was a poorly-chosen word because it doesn't properly describe the effect.  Returning a card to its owner's hand is not "destroying" it, and thus should completely affect an "indestructible" card.  If it can't be "removed from play", then say that, instead of saying it can't be "destroyed" and then expecting people to have looked up what "indestructible" actually means.  That's hugely counterintuitive, and goes very poorly with the general minimalism of the EE rulebook.

Except for one small issue. 99% of the time a card will leave play because it is destroyed. This whole ea of leaving play another way is very unique and only used in very few situations. So add on a lot of extra words for a few fringe cases can actually make the game more confusing, not to mention it will severely limit teal estate that is already used to the max. Furthermore, it also hinders you ability to produce different types of cards with different abilities in the future. If the card specified each different way a card leaves play, you would have to reprint all those cards each time a new ability came out, instead of just redefining indestructible. It might not make complete sense as is, buy I don’t think there is a better way to do it except to put the fringe case in the rulebook.

Popping in to say that this is absolutley true. Try to not pigeon hole your thought proccess about these cards to just the fringe case, but tease it out to the game at large. There is always a bigger picture to look at.

I always imagined Wraith used the grappling hooks to swing the heroes (or at least enough of them) away, moving the fight to another area as the villains followed. There's ways to make things like this make sense.

After all, comics!

If they wanted to have Mr. Fixer's tool not be able to stack on fixed point tey could have worded it differently, like adding only one tool may be in play at a time, or change the wording to "if this card is in play return all other tools to your hand"

I have used an Argent adept to get two styles and two tools in play with fixed point.

Riveting, Tiger, hoist chain and jackhandle.  It was a very bad day for Voss.  If I had Tire Iron or crowbrs instead of Hoist Chain it would have been even better.

I think she would be restored to 8.  While I can see a counter argument, I would say she regains 2 less HP than she would normally.  Same with flipping Blade or Apostate.

Good question.

I would agree with Dypaca, the above cards are the only uses of recovery I could find either, Blade and Apostate flipping and Fanatic's Aegis.  All of them involve the target hitting 0hp and then their health being put at an exact number, so I don't think restore is a seperate category that isn't recovery, just a different style of recovery.

Haka of Restoration uses the laguage regain.  Not tht that is any kind of proof, but I think it shows that the game makers weren't thinking of restoring and regaining as two very different things.

I can see why you see it that way. I am leaning toward disagreeing. Apostate I think you're right. But for Aegis and Baron, those are not really "healing" effects like redemption or better living. I don't see it as "restoring lost hit points" as much as I see those effects as "second wind after you shoulda died". 

I could see them being lumped into "healing" effects I guess, but I am not a fan of that interpretation. 

Because they all mention setting HP to a particular number, rather than adding a number to your current HP, I view all those effects mentioned as not affected by things which add or subtract from HP recovery. I have never seen Fantatic go to 11 HP when Phosphorescent Chamber was in play for example, nor have I seen it suggested before.

How would you seperate Apostate from other cards that use the same language?

Idk actually. Maybe I remember the card different, obviously don't have it in front of me. 

Matchstick makes a fantastic point above. Healing, like damage, happens in instances correct? Those instances of healing can and should be subject to modification. 

Aegis has no instance of healing. How can you subject a non existent number to modification? 

A quick look over the cards shows that all the healing cards use the word regain, all the 'set total' cards use the word restore.

Much as Discard and Destroy are not used interchangably, even though they have the same net effect (1 card enters the discard pile), I would argue that Restore and Regain mean different things and should not both be affected by the same term.

That was my first thought.  If Phosphorescent Chamber and Oppressive Smog had used the term Regain or Restore I would have said they apply only to cards which also use that term.  But they say HP recovery, and it seems to me Fanatic is recoving HP.

Like I said, I can see a counter argument, but to me it seems pretty reasonable for these cards to interact.

Idk if I would place the caveat within the differences of the words "restore" and "regain". That does not seem like the best way to handle it. No one enjoys that kind of semantic game.

I think if there is any differences here, and I believe there is, it is the lack of a defined instance of healing. Restore, regain, potato, potato. Without an instance of healing to modify, no modifications can occur. That seems pretty straight forward. 

How much HP is being recovered? 10? If Fanatic was at 20, and took a 25 damage hit (for whatever reason), wouldnt Aegis be healing for 15 in that case? Would smog make that 13? How exactly are we supposed to figure out the instance of healing to modify?

I do believe the difference lies in "regain" vs "restore to". The first (regain) simply says to add a specific amount of hit points to a target... this amount is in turn modifiable by any healing effects that are in play. The only implication with "regain" is that you cannot go past your starting HP (that's why it says REgain and not just simply gain"

The second (restore to) implies that you add whatever amount of HP is necessary to get you to the target amount, so if there are healing effects on play those would be considered while calculating the amount necessary to get you to the target HP. For example, if Fanatic is at -6 HP and there is a +1 to healing then you would add 15HP to get her to 10, but if Fanatic was at -4 and a -2 healing effect was in place then you would add 16 HP to get her to 10. The amount being "healed" or added is affected by the healing modifiers, but the end result is the amount she is being restored to, which is 10. 

That's the way I interpret it. 

Yes.  Obviously Aegis would be healing for 15 if Fanatic was at -5.  I don't even understand your last question, how would we figure out the instance to modify?  you modift every instance of healing, and Aegis would be one instance of healing.  You would subtract two from any healing she would recieve, so instead of 10 she would always end at 8.  Because whenever you have X+Y=10, then X+Y-2=8.  It would not be hard at all.

It is variable healing.  We have variable damage, but it is never based on final hp so it never uses the same language, it is no trouble at all to reduce a Haka of Battle boosted attack by 2, you add the damages and then subtract 2.  The only difference here is you are healing to a set number, instead of healing a set amount.

Haka of battle still is one instance of damage. Setting a target to a specific hp number I just don't see as a specific instance of healing. 

since it is a discrete action occurring once after a specific trigger event, I would consider it an instance. 

But I think we do agree that the end result would be unaffected (i.e. Fanatic ends up with 10HP)

Ultimatley if it winds up being unaffected and Fanatic and Baron are going to end up at 10 and 30 HP respectfully regardless of healing modifications in play, then I still call into question labeling them as instances of healing in the first place.

They are not being given HP the same way Scholar or Tempest or AA gives HP. They are being restored to a specific number instead of being outright destroyed at 0 or fewer HP. This is not healing. This is a "Battle Rez" mechanic for all intents and purposes as far as I am concerned.

Welcome back, Foote! It has been too long.

They are recovering HP.  That is what they are doing.  How they are doing it can be debated, but they are recovering HP that was lost.

Because the same result does not mean the same effect is generating it.

Putting a card into play is not Playing a card and does not trigger any effects associated with it

But we aren't dealing with one type of effect.  The word recover is not used in any action that heals in the game.  Regain is used for one type of healing, Restore for another, but when they chose a modifier they chose recover.  I tend to think they did that on purpose.

I think it compares more to damage, there are all sorts of damage types and sources, but if you reduce all damage dealt, it reduces every single one, no matter what the source or type.

Recovering HP can be done by regaining, or by restoring, they are both recovery.

You are right it is more comparable to damage, but you still run into the same issue of not being able to produce an instance of healing like you can an instance of damage. 

Fanatic is not being healed by amount X that is then modifiable by effect Y. That is just not what is happening. She is not healing for X where X = the amount of HP it takes to get back to 10. That is what you are effectivly saying is happening by using the assumption there is an instance of healing here. (Edit: To clarify, I am not saying it absolutley can't work this way. I am saying that at this point, such an assumption is a pretty big stretch at this point)

To me, it looks like the card is giving you a specific HP to reset her to instead of incapping her. That is not the same as recovery. That is a hard reset. This is Resurection, not Restoration. Easter Sunday kinda stuff if you will.

I'm not sure any one assumption is any stronger than the other here. 

I do still believe, however, that whether you call it healing or not, the end result is the same: Fanatic's Aegis brings her back up to 10HP... whether this is done through healing with modifiers included, or by taking a completely separate action that just puts her at 10HP. I think the key here is "restore TO" which indicates to me that the end result is fixed regardless of what path you take to it. 

Resurection is creating an entirely new category here.

We have hp levels and destroyed, that is it.  Fanatic is not destroyed, she is at 0 or fewer hp, she then is restored to 10hp.  Creating a new class of effect seems like a bigger stretch.

Seriously, look at the wording, restore HP to 10.  You are recovering what was lost to 10hp.  That is an acceptable rewording from a definitional standpoint.  The way you want it to read it is setting her HP at ten, which is not at all what is written.  Restore and regain are synonyms of recover.  To restore her to 10 hp is a recovery of HP, to regain 2 hp is a recovery of HP.

Both are instances of recovering HP.  That is a fact, not opinion.  My opinion is that the game intends for recovery to mean recovery and not regain only.

The only difference between restoring to 10 and regaining hp is that you are recovering hp to a set point.  With a -2 you would simply recover hp to 10-2, with a +1 you would recover hp to 10+1.

Christopher stepped in and confirmed the "cannot trumps can" on another thread; it'd be nice if he'd clear this one up, since it's generating far more uncertainty and discussion.

Played and enter play sound synonymous at first too. You make the same assumption here.

Having your HP hard set to a specific number is not recovery. 

Square. Rectangle. Square can be a Rectangle but never the other way around. What makes you so certain that restore is the square to the rectangles recovery? Why can it not be the other way? 

It also isn't as simple an answer with possible unintended consequences for a rushed answer. 

I'd say the opposite.  HP recovery is rare, so this is a fairly niche case, arguably not worth C's time.  But the consequences of a misruling here are pretty narrow, while "can't trumps can every time" is a huge meta-rule with incredible implications.  For instance, it technically means Ammo Dump can't do what it says it does, because the "can't draw cards" of other Modes cannot be overruled by any number of "cans" on the Ammo Drop.

I am sure you would as it is pretty short sighted.

"Can't trumping can" was a no brainer question with a very obvious answer. This is neither of those things.

In that case it is not a matter of breaking the "cannot > can" rule, but more of an override written into the card itself. 

Well, Ammo Drop makes an exception. If the card specifically calls out an exception, you need to let it have the exception, or there's no point printing the exception in the first place.

It is nothing of the sort!  As I said before, it is a "changes everything" kind of meta-rule which affects the entire structure of the game, making other rules dysfunctional or impossible.  Having everything determined by card-play order is much more sensible.  Exceptions ought to be case-specific.

Not really. Cannot is total denial. I've never seen an instance where someone tried "this let's me do X, even though the current game state denies that action."

You understand that just because you say it doesn't nessesarily make it true right?

The card doesn't say set.  No card in the game says anything about setting HP.

Let us check the Manual Glossary:

Restore:  When a target has HP restored, increase its current hp by that amount, up to but not exceeding its maximum HP.

Regain/recover has an amount by which you increase the character's HP. AoR has Fanatic going to a specific point. You are not adding a random number to get her to that point.

Like Monopoly: Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

I agree with that.  When I flip Baron Blade or Apostate, I'm not healing them up to their new hp total, I'm reseting their hp total to a new value.  I wouldn't apply and +healing bonuses to that.

Or you are reading things into stuff that is not there.

Let us wait and put this question on the pending list.

Thank you for quoting from the Glossary.

From the definition though, it does not appear to be applicable to Aegis even though the term "restore" is consistent. "…increase its current HP by that amount". What is "that" amount? In the glossary, the unclear pronoun is really the instance of healing being restored. And this bring us back to the plain old fact that Aegis does not introduce any notion of a specific instance of healing. 

"restore Fanatic to 10 HP". Thats the wording on Aegis. So let us work together from a common premise here (and I will use yours if you do not mind) that there is a variable instance of X healing that = whatever it takes to get Fanatic to 10 HP.

Does that hidden variable of X above get modified before or after Fanatic reaches 10 HP? Great! Now we have another totally unnessesary and confusing instance of trying to jam modifications into a timing window (Why do all of you do this?!). As most of you know, I absolutly loath the notion that these types of modifications (damage or otherwise) have anything to do with timing. How exactly is anyone supposed to be able to figure out on their own the timing of all that? You can't. It was not intended to be that way in the first place. This game is much more simple than we make it out to be. It seems like we try and find the most convoluted readings of these things sometimes when it was meant to be more straight forward and literal.

Easy Solution: No timing. If there is no timing to figure out, then that logically leads to the conclusion that Fanatic will be at 10HP regardless of healing mods out. And if that is the case, saying that there is an instance of healing at all becomes highly suspect. 

I don't choose the wording, and I don't differentiate between recovery, restore or regain.

The Glossary doesn't either, as it gives only one definition that involves recovery of HP, and it is restore.

Again, the words are synonyms.  

If you restore to 10, then restoring to 10-2 seems reasonable.  This question is worthy of an official answer, simply because so many of us view it differently.

However you want to have the recovery occur, it does occur.

Recovery to 10 can be reduced by 2, because 10-2=8.  Reduce the recovery and you get:  restore Fanatic to 8hp.  Add one to recovery and you get:  restore fanatic to 11hp.

You don't need to be healing a specific amount, you just reduce the recovery of hp.  It is simple, it doesn't require timing, and it agrees with the wording and official text we are given, as well as the English language.

I understand that this may not be the intent, but it is exactly what we have.

Restore or regain, both are recovery.  

To Regain means to obtain possesion after losing it.

To Restore means to bring back, like to a normal state.

To Recover means to get something back.  

All of the words make sense as used, and recovery includes both restoring and regaining.  So yeah, it is the rectangle to Restore or Regain's square.

Technically "healing" is not defined anywhere in the game, right?

We have just gone on under the assumption that its definition was something akin to the definition of "restore".

Maybe that's the way to tackle this issue, to see what the definition of "healing" is (by the developers, and not out own interpretations)... then we can see if it is a subset of "restore", the parent set of "restore", or a separate action altogether. This should help us identify whether or not "healing" modifiers apply at all to "restore" actions. 

I agree. I've added this to the pending list.

You should add in the inverse too, do they get more HP if 'recovery' is increased

Good point. Will add.

 I don't think anyone was arguing that Blade could be restored to above his Max HP. Although I guess it isn't hurting anything to have that in the pending question.

Also, there are other cards which use the 'restore ... to' phrase, like the Talisman or Akash's Rejuvinating Entropy. I just mentioned Blade and Apostate as examples.

Hi all,

I would like to say that it is better and more organized to ask a new question in a new thread with a proper title.

2 cents, and out.

/agree.

I say things which I perceive as being true (unless speaking in a fictional context or the like).  And I stand by my claims, as I am doing in this instance.  "Can't always trumps can" is a hugely dangerous rule that requires far more thinking-through to determine all of its implications, considering how it applies to an incredibly wide variety of situations that will come up in practically any game (whenever one card says something can happen and another says it can't).  By converse, the other question is about two cards that I can think of, and how they interact with two other cards I can think of.  If Christopher tossed off a ruling in haste there, it would affect only a tiny handful of games.

Noted, and disagreed with.  A proliferation of short, single-purpose threads which are abandoned after like three posts is wasteful of data-space; it clutters the forum with threads not worth the bother of clicking on them, making it difficult to page through the archive in search of information or interest value.  True, long threads like this one end up wishing they had an index, but separate threads do not improve the issue, they simply change what you have to wade through in search of relevant info from "one thread" to "the entire forum".

I wouldn't say that the smaller, specific threads are a waste of space. If you have a question for a particular rule or scenario, you can search the different threads and easily find any that are relevant to your actual question if any exist. You are less likely to ask a question that's already been asked, and it's a bit more convenient than looking through pages of a longer more generalized thread to see if the particular issue you're having has been addressed there or not. 

"Can't always trumps can" is such an obvious and basic rule, and one that I don't think I've ever seen averted, that I'd be very surprised if >G didn't have it in their heads from the moment the first card with 'heroes may not X' was created. It's only a hasty ruling if it's made up on the spot, as this one might well be, not if the entire game has been created with it in mind.

EDIT:

That's your opinion, but this is not your forum, and at least one of the moderators of this forum would rather you made seperate threads for different rules questions.

FWIW, I've always been of the opinion that simplicity is best when it comes to rules. And if I'm in doubt about how to interpret a rule, the simpler solution is the one I'll go for (unless I get official confirmation otherwise).

In the end this is a game that, for all that I love it, has the tendency to become a bit fiddly - rulings that create more fiddliness are not desirable for me, because it detracts from the fun and theme of the game.

I'm firmly in the "Fanatic gets reset to 10" camp for this reason - I've never seen it as "healing" in the usual sense anyway.

As for seperate threads, I'm all for that too. It's way easier to find information about a particular case or card or interaction when it's in an appropriately-titled thread rather than a generic rules questions thread, because you can decide from the title whether it's actually relevant to your question rather than having to read through big chunks of a generic thread. But maybe a generic index thread might be helpful, linking to particular rulings and discussions with official rulings clearly marked?

Just to clarify here, I'm not talking about healing, I'm not saying Fanatic is healing.  Her HP being set to a level it once was and is lower now is recovery.

I'm ok with the idea of return her HP to a set amount, but the action is recovery.

Scholar's Liquid form says "When Scholar would regain HP increase that amount by 1"

Phospherous Chamber says "Increase all HP Recovery by 1"

Recovery should encompass restoring and regaining, and the word all doesn't leave room for exemption, just like Scholar's wording wouldn't cover a restoration of hp, because the wording matches a specific action.

I'm honestly not trying to keep the argument going, I am happy it is on the list of unresolved questions, just wanted to clarify.

sigh Yeah, me too.

For official rulings, we have Spiff's collection to meet that need (direct link). Maintaining a list of unofficial rulings would be incredibly challenging, and it would frequently be out of date. For that, we have the forum search, which returns results on hits for card names, etc. That's the best bet for finding non-official rulings.

I'm nearly certain the Can't trumps Can is already in the rule book.  I have the Enhanced Edition and all the expansions, and between them I recall reading that rule.  I specifically remember my group discussing it at our first game.  I don't have access to the manual right now, but I think it was already part of the rules, at least as of the Enhanced Edition.

I would tend to side with that HP set to a specific number is not modified, because that is what immediately comes to mind when I think of the situation, because, in rare cases, the HP reset can actually be a decrease (based on the assumption that cancelling a destruction caused by dealing damage cancels the damage, as has been stated what happens when Apostate flips back to his front side, unless that has been changed), and due to an unreleased mechanic which uses similar wording, but to which the main arguments on the modifiable side would make a bit less sense.

WOW!  When this thread grows, it grows.

I don't really have anything to say about the current discussion, but I noticed some talk of Fixed Point and Mister Fixer about two or three pages back.

It is TOTALLY supposed to allow Fixer's extra Styles and Tools to stay in play.  I even made a topic about it during Shattered Timelines playtesting ("Mister Fixed Point" - I'm so clever) discussing how much I loved the card and its interaction with Fixer.  It definitely wasn't something overlooked by GtG and it's something completely awesome that Fixer can do when that card is in play.

It's even more fun when other heroes allow him to play more cards.  During playtesting, my group accellerated the environment two or three times to get Fixed Point out repeatedly with Fixer.  He ended up getting out a copy of every Tool and Style (and an extra copy of Pipe Wrench and Grease Monkey Fist) and was basically using Sidereal martial arts at that point (Exalted reference).

I'm not that hung up on rules for this game because there's no competition element.  It's co-op.

Also, there are no World Champions of Sentinels of the Multiverse like there would be with Settlers, Puerto Rico or other games (I am not aware of a world championship for Puerto Rico, but I would be interested in it).

Having played other games and been judge/rules guru/playtester for those games, I am well aware of the importance of rules, wording, and procedures.  But in this game, there's not a need to have an overly complex system.  I haven't even bothered reading how triggers in this game acts exactly due to the nature of this game.

Actually, I'd always assumed that restore meant only increase, and if Apostate was above 20 HP when he flipped, then he would stay at his current HP.  (To be clear, this would be when he is above 20HP on his front side with a relic out and you get a single hit greater than his current HP).  I would treat it the same as if Oppressive Smog reduced an HP regain to -1, I would leave HP where it is.

I don't think I've actually seen that situation come up with Apostate, but then I rarely find it worthwhile to flip him.  His relics can be tough to kill directly, but usually not that tough.

This, which is why I never got into the spirit of the whole ruling-debate thing. Sure, I ask sometimes, and I try to contribute, but in the end, when I play (either solo or with friends) I play by the funnest, simplest rules possible-that is, rules that make sense to me/us.

In the end, the only real, solid rule GTG gives us is

-wait for it-

have fun.

In the end, the only real, solid rule GTG gives us is

-wait for it-

have fun.

Dang straight.

I don't think any of us that like to debate rules would say people have to follow official rulings, much less our interpretation of situations that don't have clear rulings.  I really like the absence of a rigid system of timing and order of effects.

That said there are people who want these answers, and we try to give them.  I think it is pretty clear that I like to debate, and that Foote and I disagree on just about everything, but it is all in good spirits.

I can be quite the contrarian, that is true. Though I will admit that there are times when I find myself just throwing spaghetti at the wall, so to speak. Maybe we disagree sometimes, but I am genuinly interested in your (and everyone else's) interpretations because I can examine things from other angles that maybe I would not have thought of on my own.

I have a strong desire to play the "correct" way. It is probably too strong at times. As much as I enjoy and favor the idea that there is no "correct" way to play, I have never been able to fully embrace the concept 

Well, by the rules, Apostate isn't going to die unless he's destroyed by a card effect or he's reduced to 0 or fewer hit points, and there are no card effects that destroy characters with 20+ hit points, so it would be very odd if that did happen.

Um...well, apart from Wrathful Retribution, potentially ;).

Or a fuelled-up Savage Mana oe Omni-Cannon or similar. now I think of it.

But those cards deal damage to reduce the target to 0 or fewer, not a automatic destroy a character of 20+ HP.

I think that the game needs rules clarity so that you can tell whether you really, properly won or lost the game.  My only game against Miss Information to date was an awesome victory, but I later realized that I had massively screwed up and should have lost, so the victory didn't really "count", and that makes me sad.  Like Foote, I want the ability to play "correctly", although in some cases I'll decide that the way that's really "correct" isn't the one printed in the rulebook.  But in most cases, I have no opinion on what should happen, and want to go with an official answer, rather than just fudge all the rules, declare myself the winner, and have proven nothing.

I believe the scenario being alluded to was something like Wrathful Retribution when he's at 21+ HP and Fanatic is low enough to do more than that.  (Ninja'ed.)  I don't have Apostate to reference, but I think there's something about how one of his sides prevents all damage when he destroys a relic and flips.  Thusly, he could have positive HP at the time, but I forget which side is which.

The key here is that unlike the Aegis, which kicks in when Fanatic IS reduced to 0 or fewer HP, Apostate flips when he WOULD BE reduced to zero or fewer HP (and there is a villain relic in play).  This is the whole reason he doesn't need a 'restore' on his front side, he doesn't actually take the killing blow.

Now I believe (I don't have the cards here) that there is an extra 'instead' on his reverse flip condition.  I'm sure some will argue that without that on the front he does take the killing blow, then restore up from negative HP.  The way I read the card though, he doesn't actually get hit for the killing blow on either side.

(PS. fiddlyness haters can feel free to ignore this post )

Now that I look at the card, it does say "If Apostate would be reduced to 0 or fewer hp" on the relevant side, so arguably his hit points don't get reduced by the attack.

I usually declare myself the winner before the game even starts, then I play the game as a delusion/fever dream of the villain. If at any point the villain is about to win, I reset the game and say "and then he/she woke up..." and continue until I win. Does wonders for my ego. 

In all seriousness though, I play this game far less frequently these days than I would want to and that's mostly due to the fiddlyness and ambiguity of so many cards, which tends to be a problem for my gaming group. When I do manage to get a game in though we usually stick to the simplest most direct interpretation and that usually tends to settle things a resolve them relatively easily. Even then, after two games pretty much everyone, except for me, is just about done with it.

which is a real shame because I do enjoy how immersive the game is. 

I'm just going to say here that I love forum games, and with all the crazy rule debate we've had here, I don't think we've had one problem in those games.  Usually it is best to go with what makes sense at the time, unless you have some rule sticklers.

I'm in law school at the moment, and it's crazy how similar legal interpretation debates surrounding various codes and statutes sounds to some of the stuff people raise in this forum on card rulings.  There's always the age-old contradiction between people who want to zoom in on the instance of the language and read it in isolation, and those who want to take the spirit of the overall text as a guiding philosophy that breaks ties in close calls between interpretations.  Then you have general rules that work for the most part, but in exceptional circumstances produce undesirable results (and you get judges who try to fix such things by creating new doctrines which eventually subsume the original rule).

Is "and" indicative of an exhaustive list, or just offering examples which we are meant to extend to the game as a whole?  These types of questions.

Coincidentally enough (or not) my main gaming group has a few lawyers... I think they get more satisfaction out of being able to find a rules language loophole that they feel allows them to play an illegal card combo than the satisfaction they get out of the game. 

I do play with other friends in a more casual environment with other friends, who aren't really gamers, but can enjoy a game every now and then. That group is much more laid back about it and the game is infinitely much more fun. We just don't get together to play that often (most of the time we get together for other activities), and when we do alcohol is added pretty liberally, so games kind of fall apart after two at most as well... but for much better reasons.  

In any case I do enjoy the philosophical debates we have on the forums here about rules and how they apply and I enjoy seeing different people's interpretation of the rules... but when I'm playing the game I want to play the game, kick some villain ass, and save the multiverse. 

Amen to that, brother.  In sticky situations I generally poll the group, and we go that way.  Especially after a few brews, when I've probably already forgot some ongoing effect for a couple of turns. Haha.

Although I must note that Christopher has been an exceptionally good Supreme Court / final arbiter in the sentinels world.  He only speaks on the problems worth solving, and when he does, his holdings are tightly worded.

I don't know if anyone looks at these rule debates and thinks it must be a problem for the game, but I definately don't see them as a problem.  I come to the forum almost exclusively for these rules debates because I really enjoy picking apart how the game works (as well as what kind of language in general leads to questions).  Most of these cases rarely come up and make very little difference when they matter at all.  Plus, as others pointed out, it is a cooperative game and I would almost never correct someone on how I think a card works during a game.  (Even fellow pedants who share in discussions like this between games).

This thread's getting hard to follow. There's like three seperate convesations going on at once.

I kind of do - I know it's a co-op game but that doesn't decrease my desire to play it "right". The fact that we're collectively unsure about so many rules/situations is probably the only negative thing about this game for me.

And I worry that it might put off new players who get to this forum and find lots of very long threads arguing the details of rules that at first seem quite simple and straightforward. It'd certainly put off my casual players if they read some of this stuff.

Not that I'm saying we shouldn't discuss rules, but all the rules-lawyering might give a bad impression, that's all.

I generally avoid discussing the forum with new players.  I think they already find it intimidating when I pull out my playmat, bags full of dice and tokens, and three containers of cards (the Core box, and two white card boxes containing Shattered Timelines and playtest cards).  It can be even more over new players' heads if they see me pull up Spiff's Randomizer on top of all of that!

I generally try to approach rules in a scholarly sense, if I may be so bold.  I think understanding the intentions behind the rules helps illuminate what game GtG was trying to create.  There is certainly more to it than playing however you want to, but there's nothing wrong with that, either.  Christopher can't be in the room of every single Sentinels game in the world to be consulted over rules nuances in his game (sadly).  I just find it fascinating to learn how a certain mechanic was intended to be used for this game.  I usually love it, and sometimes I hate it.  But every time I've had a rule clarified I've used it without feeling that the game becomes "imbalanced" or "broken".

The balance between an author's intent and the reaction to that author's creation makes a work interesting for me.  Discussing and sometimes arguing or debating rules on this forum helps me understand how this game came to be what it is, and I find that experience to be absolutely incredible.

Maybe, maybe not. Christopher recently cut his beard. My guess is that it is being used as DNA samples to create other Christophers. This is a special suprise for each of the KS backers, so that each one has their own Christopher to answer any questions, and so the real one can continue to work on the cool new stuff. I am guessing this is also the reason Vengeance was pushed back, it takes awhile for a clone to grow. Just in case, I highly advise everyone to open the box quickly when they get it, just in case there isn't enough air.

Cool! I didn't know there were any lawyers who liked tabletop games!

Though it may expose my biases, this is not meant as a joke. Part of what I'm expressing is that by circumstance and happenstance, I don't tend to meet a lot of people from different occupations, but I also admit to a bit of surprise that there are (very many) lawyers that like tabletop gaming. I am happy to have my preconceptions challenged.

Can I pre-order a Christopher? How much is shipping to the UK?

I believe they are bringing the prototype over for their UK trip, you might be able to get it for a discount, or trade a crochet raptor bot for him.

*grabs yarn and crochet hook*

Oh, I'm so sorry! We're going to need that prototype immediately after the UK trip when we go to Germany! Still, if you can get to Essen, perhaps he'll be included in the after-convention auction. What do you think a good starting bid would be?

Whatever the bid I am sure I cannot afford it, I do not mean to moan but can I arrange a loan for the purchase of a clone?

I don't think there are any rent-to-own options, but you might be able to simply lease a clone. Send email to GTG and ask them how much it would cost to have a clone of Christopher come to your event. I believe you will have to pay for transport, lodging, and food, but after those expensives the actual cost is pretty low. Usually the issue is the availability of the clones.

I'll trade a pretty well used edition of Rook City for one.  I hear they are worth about $500.

Actually, more recently I found one going for just $100.  Thought seriously about paying that, but it's an $80 markup compared to publishing price, so I'm still figuring I must wait until December.

28.  Amphibious Chupacabra is in play and it's getting +1 damage.  In a 3-player game, it zeroes in on the lowest-HP target and tries to deal it 3 damage, increased to 4...the lowest-HP target is Cryo Bot at 1 HP, but Stealth Bot takes the damage instead, reducing it back to 3.  Does Chupacabra then zero in on Stealth Bot automatically for the extra toxin damage, or does that still go after the original "that target", Cryo Bot?  (Assume Stealth Bot was down an HP, so that taking the 1-becomes-2-becomes-1 toxin damage would kill whichever bot you choose, and that you'd rather keep Stealth Bot...can you leave the damage on Cryo Bot despite having previously redirected it?  This of course begs the question of why you'd redirect away from Cryo Bot at all, but let's assume there's a reason.)

"That target" is the one that was dealt damage

I don't know the exact wording on Chupacabra, but "that target" is probably talking about the target that took the damage, so in this case it would be stealth bot. 

Because everybody loves Cryobot!

Cryo Bot is the best Bot ever.  It is either nearly useless or the greatest thing ever.  Those cards are always the best.

Personally I'd rather have the reliable ones.  Swift Bot is my favorite just because she replaces herself, but all three other FF bots are better than Cryo Bot.  Heck, I'd even rather draw a Raptor or Platform half the time instead of him.

Today I had my first non-solo game as Unity, against Iron Legacy no less, and naturally her deck picked THIS of all times to have me open with no bots in hand (and no Flash Forge).  I drew two cards on turn 1, and I died on turn 4, albeit after getting a Construction Pylon (which meant Anubis smacked my buddy Chrono-Ranger for 2) into Swift Bot and Stealth Bot, and then got a Turret Bot out.  Alas and alack, Demoralizing Presence was too much for me.  So much for her undefeated record.  (Visionary is left as the only hero I have yet to lose with...I think, she might have died during my first game ever with her, but even if she did, we still won the game overall).

If Cryo Bot has a few damage buffs and there are a lot of annoying targets out, it might be beneficial to deliberately hit him so that he goes mad and zaps everything :). I tend to favour Mr Chomps in terms of damage, though...but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one to do so ;). Once had pretty much every Bot out so all three Mr Chomps were hitting for about sixteen damage each or something. It was ridiculously epic-feeling >:). Then last time I played Unity, I started with a couple of bots and no means to get them out for a couple of rounds. Managed it eventually, though, and managed to get out a Mr Chomps and a Platform Bot...we won the fight and then I found that Stealth and Swift Bot were the next two cards in my deck ('cause I checked once the game had finished to see where all my bots were). Bahh :P.

Vs. the Ennead (until they flip if you are playing advanced) Cryo Bot is insanely good.  If you can reduce damage taken by him by one on the flip advanced he's still awesome.

Adept Unity Legacy was amazing, we had Cryo bot at -1 damage taken and +3 damage dealt.  All the hit all hero targets for 1 damage led to a swift demise for the Ennead.  

He's also a boss vs. Chairman, the peons don't get reduction and cyro bot tears them up.

Then there's the ridiculous WtM TtE combo of doom.

Cryo Bot is all kinds of fun, he's just situational awesomeness rather than consistency. 

Chamion Bot is Cryo's best friend ever.

As for Raptor, it is low on hp, but it is epic for the damage.

I really wish there was a way of boosting the bots's permanent HP, both to keep Raptor Bot alive and to enable CryoBot to do his thing more effectively (though it would also dial Stealth Bot up to a possibly unbalanced effectiveness, and have the somewhat undesireable effect of making Bee Bot able to survive damage).  As it is, the bots are just too fragile; Unity still wins very often so maybe the balance point is as it should be, but I find it frustrating to constantly lose my bots when I went to so much trouble creating them.

Stealth Bot effectively increases the HP of all her bots. Adding a shared total of 5 HP, along with adding some DR, thus protecting more damage. She also has Inspired Repair, which can heal her bots by 3. WIth careful planning and a bit of luck, she can keep her bots kicking for a couple of turns.

But sabotages Cryo Bot if you extend that protection to him.

She also has Inspired Repair, which can heal her bots by 3.

Does litle good in Raptor Bot's case, plus I very rarely draw it, and almost never when it's needed (usually my bots are unscratched and I just play it for the extra card).

WIth careful planning and a bit of luck, she can keep her bots kicking for a couple of turns.

I'm not disputing that, I just think the amount of planning and luck required is not quite proportionate to the difficulty she has in creating the Bots in the first place.

Not really, protect him from bigger hits, while letting the 1s and 2s hit him, that way he gets more damage out.

It does good with Stealth bot in play, as it can protect that Raptors from damage, then you can heal Stealth bot. Plus you just said "a way to increase", there is a way, you just don't like it.

So you want to have more HP, but you're bots remain unscratched? You also play the card that can heal them for just the extra card, so that way when they do get destroyed, you won't have anything to help them? Then you come on here to say that you're bots are dieing and they need more ways to get HP, because you use they card that gives them that HP for a single card?

Perhaps more games are in order then?

Healing is not increasing HP, it's just reversing damage.  What I want is a way to make Raptor Bot able to get hit for 2 and not instantly die, or make Cryo Bot able to soak up more than 6 damage between the round he's played and the round you return him to your hand with Scrap Metal so you can replay him.

So you want to have more HP, but you're bots remain unscratched?

Yes, precisely.  They usually either remain unharmed or get killed outright.  The Freedom 5 bots are about the only ones that can take even one or two light taps without falling apart.  Very occasionally Platform Bot because of its reduction, but that doesn't go very far with only 3 HP.  Even Turret Bot, who's an homage to the "Indestructible" Bunker, has a mere 9 HP.  HP totals that low are fitting for villain mooks; Unity is a relatively squishy 26-HP hero with no reduction and healing, and the golems are her bodyguards, so given how hard it is for them to get out, I think they should be a lot harder to destroy (and that Stealth Bot shouldn't be the only one capable of taking damage for her).

You also play the card that can heal them for just the extra card, so that way when they do get destroyed, you won't have anything to help them?

That's generally not how it works out.  I draw Inspired Healing when I have nothing better to do, and I play it in the hopes of getting something relevant to help with the situation; often that doesn't occur, and either I go on to win, having never needed the healing, or the villain grows more dangerous afterward because I wasn't able to finish him or his minions off when I needed to.  Conversely, often I get all my bots killed earlier and then draw Inspired Healing, needing to cycle it in hopes of finding a bot.

Perhaps more games are in order then?

That, certainly, is always true.    But six games is not an incredibly tiny sample size.

Sorry dude, but 6 is actually still pretty small... D: Go play more games!

Planning on it.  But keep in mind I've only been into the game for two months, so the fact that I'm about to start my 36th game feels like rather a lot of play.  I'm sure in the two years since it was released, you guys have gotten in hundreds of matches, but to me this is all still pretty new.

29.  I don't have the cards in front of me right now, but I seem to recall that Tony Taurus and Dr. Tremata in Rook City both say "This card is immune to damage from heroes", rather than "from hero cards".  Thusly, they could still be damaged by Unity's bots, yes?  Also, both cards explicitly say that after they do their song and dance, "the villain character card" deals damage to either them or a hero (not a hero target, so I'm again assuming that Unity's bots don't count).  So what happens when you're fighting The Ennead?  (I can see assuming that "the villain character card" means The Chairman even if The Operative is out, but there is no single member of the Ennead who is obviously superior; the one game I played against them, Ammut never even came out.)

The answer is you do a search on the forums before asking questions.

https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/rook-city-errata-2589

I have very bad google-fu.  Figuring out exactly what to search for and then sifting through a huge pile of false positives is a time-consuming process; I find it easier to use the rest of the human race as a heuristic data analysis tool.  Someone who isn't me has the answer right at the forefront of their brain; why would I read through dozens of messages trying to find it, when I can just ask that yet-to-be-identified person?  The fact I also have to ask dozens or hundreds of other people who'd rather not be bothered is unfortunate, but it diffuses the inconvenience and annoyance across that population, instead of concentrating it solely upon myself, and therefore the impact is reduced to the point of insignificance.  At least that's always been my theory.

Also the linked topic ends with Christopher saying the OP is "a fair assumption", which is not the same thing as saying it's true, although he might have meant it to be taken that way.  And the second post says there are actual errata; where can these be found?

Okay then In this case then, perhaps it would be better if you play more, and perhaps simply read more around the forums, as opposed to making conclusions about heroes/villains/gameplay straight off. Of course, there is nothing wrong with opinions, I'm just saying perhaps a more open mind, especially regarding suggestions and proposed playing styles, as well as general trends of how the cards play out, is in order. Bear in mind that most other players here have a whole lot more experience under their belts, and only a fool refuses to listen to the wisdom of experience

Hmm… sounds like damage reduction for your bots might help. Have you tried The Argent Adept?

You are asking kind of a silly question though. You have admitted that Unity still "wins very often", and yet you want to make her better? She's already plenty good (and with even a small amount of bot plays ends up with the highest total HP of any hero in the game).

30.  I get that the general gist is "nothing", but what exactly happens when Omnitron-X uses Timeshift on Fanatic's deck and puts Chastise into play, when there are no non-hero targets other than character cards?  This question could probably also be generalized to some of CR's Bounties and various other cards I can't think of.  If they can't legally fulfill their "put me next to something" imperative, are they still capable of being play?  What do you do if something goes pear-shaped due to a "file not found" error with some ability on the card?

Doesn't entirely solve Cryo Bot's problem - he can absorb more 2-damage-and-up hits, but no longer triggers off hits that were 1 damage in the first place.  However it's certainly beneficial to Raptor Bot.

Have you tried The Argent Adept?

Yep.  Saved him for last but I've gotten 3 games under my belt with him, and will be trying a fourth this week sometime, and probably a fifth next week.

You are asking kind of a silly question though. You have admitted that Unity still "wins very often", and yet you want to make her better?

It's not so much that I want an overall increase in her power…I wouldn't mind a "fix" that nerfed some of her winningest cards in exchange for improving her weak links.  In general, I want each character to be as consistent as possible, with no identifiable weaknesses that a particular game might exagerrate into making the character useless.  Even if that means no character has any strengths that can make them a superstar in certain matchups either.  I would prefer if X random heroes fighting a random villain in a random environment always had exactly the same chance of all possible outcomes, so that you could pick who you'll play and who you'll play against entirely on the basis of personal inclination, and never affect your win/loss percentage.  It's okay if some strategies are more or less suited to a particular person's cognitive skills, but they should never be stronger or weaker in the abstract; you should never draw a card and wish you'd drawn a different one, because they should all be equally relevant.

(and with even a small amount of bot plays ends up with the highest total HP of any hero in the game).

I'm not sure how that's relevant, given that she has no innate ability to redirect damage from her bots to herself or vice versa.  (Though that would make for a neat "body full of bees" kind of hero or villain.)  Having that HP spread across multiple targets makes it deplete much faster.

I'd say Unity is balanced because her best bots have such low hp - I once managed to get out pretty much every bot (there may have been a couple who weren't) and thus had each copy of Mr Chomps dealing about sixteen damage to the bad guy (I think it was Baron Blade) at the end of her turn. And without my having to spend an action to do so. On the other hand, if you have lots of bots out and something comes along and nukes them all…well, that's when you should hopefully have out Volatile Parts (any damage buffs are helpful to go with this, naturally ;)) in order to get off a nuke (can't remember if it hits one target or all non-hero targets) for every bot that gets destroyed. And then hopefully you can get hold of a Robot Reclamation (or someone like Tempest or the Adept to loot your trash) to get them all back again :). And she can redirect damage from herself to her bots - to Stealth Bot, specifically, who can redirect damage from any hero target to itself.

Your comments on wanting to make all the heroes "as consistent as possible" would seem to me to go against the very point of the game itself - if you can start up a game and know you'll most likely win, what's the point in playing it? I have a feeling boredom will come pretty quickly if everything is homogenised to the point that you can predict the outcome of every game because you know what cards are gonna come out. The element of "ooh, how will this game go?" and not knowing whether you'll win or have your arse kicked in three rounds, or have a more drawn-out game which comes really really close to a win or a loss before it finally tips over into one of the two, is part of what I think makes Sentinels so addictive. You could have the same set of heroes against the same villain in the same environment and play several games, and have none of them turn out like any of the others. And of course, the fact that some heroes can just be plain better against some villains than others means that you can pick and choose your matches if you want to determine the difficulty of a game. And even then it doesn't always turn out the way you're expecting.

I think basically you just need to play a whole load more games in order to get yourself a much bigger sample size for each hero/villain/environment. You can't really play Wraith against Citizen Dawn, for example, and go "omg this hero is crap, all her stuff got destroyed" just because in that one game, Dawn pulled a Devastating Aurora and nuked all her (and everyone else's) stuff, just as it would be unfair to say to Unity "omg she is overpowered" because you used her against someone who only really tends to hit the hero with the highest hp (Apostate tends to do this, I think) and thus none of your bots got destroyed. You need to play those heroes against those villains a whole load of times to get multiple game variations and see what everyone is capable of. And of course you need to do this for every hero, every villain, and every environment. Yeah, it's gonna take you a few hundred games. Have fun ;).

1. The impact is not insignificant to anyone except you - we all end up having to go through threads on topics that have already been answered.
2. For those of us whose job it is to go through those threads, we can't just skip them when we realize it's already been answered.
3. For the folks who want to be helpful, they have to spend time responding to your request when that response has already been made somewhere else - and honestly you could probably have searched in the time it took for them to respond.
4. Your posts end up adding to the complexity of everyone else being able to find the answers, because now there's yet-another hit in searches on a topic that has already been answered.

It's not that I don't like answering rules question, hell most of my posts are in this section of the forum.

But I do resent answering questions, here in this specific thread (not even questions by you, but question here in this thread), because you've been asked not to ask them this way. And it irks me everytime I see that this thread has been updated.

So this one time, when it was 6 in the morning and I had been up almost 24 hours at that point, I let my irritation get the better of me.

In general, I want each character to be as consistent as possible, with no identifiable weaknesses that a particular game might exagerrate into making the character useless.

And there is your problem.

This is a comic book game.  Read some Comic Books, they aren't about all Heroes being consistent.  Some heroes are designed to be more consistent than others, other heroes are more boom and bust.  Some are slow builders, while others are looking for the right cards for the current fight.

This isn't a strategy game, there certainly are strategic elements, but the game is designed to play like a comic book fight.  Some matches the team is horribly outmatched, but the efforts of one hero save the day, other times the Villain catches the wrong heroes in the wrong place and defeats them.  Other fights it just isn't the heroes day; like that one time I went through half of Expat's deck without getting a single gun in play.  I imagine she was somehow caught unarmed and spent the whole comic running around trying to find something to do (she did find a rocket launcher that helped, but mostly scholar and Tempest crushed)

The lack of consistency isn't a flaw, it is by design, the boom and bust too.  Some players love the slow build to an awesome finish, others prefer the heroes that get you through those first few nasty turns alive, others would rather have a small chance at incredible awesomeness than a reliable impact game in game out.  That's why the game works, there are heroes for everyone.

5. You're not reducing the impact by inflicting it on everyone else instead of you, you're multiplying it by the number of people you inconvenience.

+1.  This thread is a sprawling mess by now.

If someone draws Thread Explosion the whole site could come down.

Quick, where are the Adhesive Grenades?

Earlier on, I honestly thought about parsing these out into their own threads. However, I have neither the time nor the interest, with how it's grown. I wouldn't have a problem if some other obsessive-compulsive out there wants to do it, though.

Honestly I've always considered this thread to be purely entertainment rather than actually helping anyone... like rules trivia almost.  Some of the questions Envisioner posits are blatantly manufactured to keep heads spinning.

I'm all for the most imaginative scenarios we can even think of, but I find it less appealing to actually attempt answering.  Especially given his obvious respect for our time.  "Distribution of annoyance." That made me crack a smile.

To everyone who replied after Ameena, I apologize.  My intentions were honorable, but as it's clear that you are pretty much unanimous in disagreeing with my logic, I will make an attempt to respect your wishes.

That is not what I meant.  Already I feel that I start up most games (unless the villain is difficulty 4 or maybe a high 3, or I'm on Advanced with a 3 or a tough 2) knowing I'm likely to win; the issue is rather how much I am frustrated in the process by an inability for my heroes (or for that matter the villain and environment) to come together.  I don't derive my entertainment from the question of whether I win or lose, but rather from seeing exactly what ends up happening, often largely on a flavor basis ("Haka punches the God of Death", "the Velociraptors slip and fall on the oilslick from Fixer's Grease Gun", etc.).  Consistency is just about avoiding moments in game that make you feel lame and helpless; you should have something useful to do every turn, and the villain should do something threatening every turn.

You could have the same set of heroes against the same villain in the same environment and play several games, and have none of them turn out like any of the others.

"Could", perhaps, but it's not likely.  I'd prefer a game where those outcomes were completely fixed, rather than being only 90% likely to turn out a certain way.  If the variance was more like 50-60%, it'd be worth the effort of shuffling all those decks, but I don't tend to believe that this is the case.  Legacy and Visionary and any three other heroes versus Omnitron in an Environment that never plays a villain card will virtually always win, and I would just as soon get rid of that "virtually", cross that match off the "to play" list, and move on to the other 599 quadrillion-and-change games that someone calculated as possible, and see how those different combinations play out.

You can't really play Wraith against Citizen Dawn, for example, and go "omg this hero is crap, all her stuff got destroyed" just because in that one game, Dawn pulled a Devastating Aurora and nuked all her (and everyone else's) stuff

Actually the one time I played Wraith against Dawn, there was no Devatating Aurora, but Citizens Sweat and Tears rendered Ra and Tachyon completely unable of accomplishing anything (except Ra could Pyre for 2), leaving Wraith's Micro-Targeting Utility Throwing Ordinance as the only way of getting Dawn's HP down while her Citizens were kept immortal by 2x Return with the Dawn (which Wraith had deliberately allowed out in the hopes of turning on Ra's Drawn to the Flame, not knowing that Citizen Tears was coming).

But my point is, you say this game has a lot of variety, but in my experience, decks turn out almost the same every time, and again it's the "almost" I object to…why would you roll a six-sided die if all but one of the numbers were the same?  I've played Fanatic six or seven times, and in at least four of those games, she played End of Days on turn 1 versus a villain that starts the game with minions in play.  It varied exactly how much that set the villain in question back, but it always was a huge swing, and she draws it almost without fail, too early in the game for it to have any drawback for her own team as it otherwise might.  Likewise, in about ten games of seeing her played by myself or others, there's at least a 50% chance that she ends the game with Wrathful Retribution on the main villain for 25+ damage.  It's practically clockwork already, so I say you might as well make it literally so, and reduce the possibility that you can get screwed out of the chance to do your "shtick" just because you got a bad shuffle.

just as it would be unfair to say to Unity "omg she is overpowered" because you used her against someone who only really tends to hit the hero with the highest hp (Apostate tends to do this, I think) and thus none of your bots got destroyed.

I haven't seen Unity against Apostate, so I'll check that out…I'm inclined to suspect it's not an auto-win, just because Apostate really litters the board with extra targets and just plain dishes out a psychotic amount of damage, while being impossible to directly kill, so I suspect everyone else would die and then Unity and him would fight a war of attrition whose outcome I'm not sure of.  (Given that Unity's Jewish, there's something appropriate in her single-handedly defying an anti-Christian villain.  I'll probably include Fanatic in that game just in the hopes that Appy will kill her.)  But Omnitron is another one who (with the exception of Sedative Flechettes) never targets the weaklings, and Unity does mop the floor with him, no question.  Even an early Technological Singularity which destroyed her Modular Workbench only slowed her down a little; the game was on Advanced and was still absurdly easy.  I see little reason to ever try that match again, particularly with Visionary and a dead Tachyon helping to enable Devra's maximum borkenness.  That match made me feel so sorry for Omnitron that I've essentially been trying to lose to him ever since (and eventually managed it, but only through an accidental blunder).

You need to play those heroes against those villains a whole load of times to get multiple game variations and see what everyone is capable of. And of course you need to do this for every hero, every villain, and every environment. Yeah, it's gonna take you a few hundred games. Have fun ;).

Planning on it.  I just figure it's never too soon to start drawing conclusions.  Sometimes further experience will bear them out, other times they get overturned, and that's fun in and of itself.

I'd prefer a game where those outcomes were completely fixed, rather than being only 90% likely to turn out a certain way.  If the variance was more like 50-60%, it'd be worth the effort of shuffling all those decks, but I don't tend to believe that this is the case. 

I think you lose a lot of us here.  A game that's completely fixed would be SO much more boring than one having even the smallest increment of variability.  A game that is fixed isn't even a game.  What you're looking for is a comic book/film/novel or other type of linear media to scratch this particular itch.

The villians vary in difficulty in order to provide players with a learning curve, or a sense of accomplishment, from completing each battle.  You've clearly figured out Omnitron's mechanics... so don't play him anymore... or exclude the heroes you think result in certain victory.  What I'm saying is that you alone control the variance of win loss percentage by the very decks you choose to play with, so you can't harp on the game for having winning-heavy scenarios which were a lot of fun to discover in the first place.

As the person who has probably still played the most games of Sentinels of the Multiverse of anyone, I can very safely say that your sample size is very limited. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just that you can really believe you have a definitive set of information on how things will behave, let alone "always" behave. Just keep playing, keep having fun, and be open minded to letting new things happen.

In demos I play at conventions in which the game is pretty much "set", I still experience new and unexpected out comes. And that is after literally THOUSANDS of games. So, as I often say, keep on saving the Multiverse.

On Apostate - we've played him plenty of times (three-player game) and he's beaten us the grand total of once. I just checked the piece of paper (well, the first piece of paper - it ran out of space a few weeks ago so we're on our second now) on which I note down the game stats (for uploading onto the Google Docs thingy) and found that one game. It was Tachyon, the Adept, and Bunker (in that order) in the Pike Industrial Complex. I can't remember how he beat us but I think he just managed to get on top of us with damage and stuff (vats probably had something to do with it as well, whether exploded or otherwise). The game took an hour and fifteen minutes over fifteen rounds so it was clearly pretty long and dragged-out. Compared to all our other games against him, it's like he got lucky, since that's the only time he's beaten us. He's also never flipped in any game we've had against him. Maybe he's easier with three people, that's a possibility. Or maybe we've got lucky every time we've fought him ;).

If you're finding Omnitron so easy, maybe you should, as Brother Dusk suggests, try varying your games against him a bit. Maybe try playing him with only three characters, and have those characters be someone like Bunker, Expatriette, and the Adept (two who are equipment-heavy and one who tends to have a fair bit of set-up time), or something like that. Or take characters with no ongoing/environment destruction - that's one way to screw yourself over in a lot of games because sooner or later something horrible will come out and you won't have any way of getting rid of it.

Like Christopher says, keep on playing, enlarge your sample size in the process, and really find out what characters can do :). Also, in the case of heroes you think you've completely figured out, play in a game where someone else controls that hero and see if there's anything else about them that you've missed or otherwise never realised, hadn't considered, or thought wouldn't work :).

One, I didn't say I wanted nothing to ever vary, I just said I wanted all experiences to be equivalent in value.  The cards should do different things, but all of those things should be equally powerful, at least in context.  For instance, it's potentially acceptible that Fixer's Charge < Haka's Elbow Smash, since Fixer has Jack Handle and Dual Crowbars and such…but he doesn't always draw those cards, so sometimes Charge is just a terrible card (especially if you instead compare it to Legacy's Back-Fist Strike, which is still more damage and can get a Surge of Strength boost on top of it).  Thusly, I want all characters to be interchangeable, so that one can choose on a pure flavor basis what one wants to play, without affecting win percentage at all.

And two, games are experiential, so even a 100% fixed game is not the same as a piece of static media, because you don't just read it, you play through it.  If I have one actual criticism of SOTM (as opposed to just nitpicking or wishing aloud for perfection), it's that the game sometimes seems to play itself…you don't always have much of a diversity of options, and I can see how that would be a turn-off for some players (leading me to kind of apologize for that fact to some of the newbies I introduce to it).  But I am not one of those players…to me, even if the game were 100% automated, I'd still enjoy playing through the randomized sequence of "this happens, then that, then that", at least for the first several dozen times until I'd seen all of the variety the game contains.  Having now played at least once against every villain, three times in every environment (except the Time Cataclysm and Pike Industrial, I've only hit those twice), and 5-7 times with every hero in various combinations, I still feel there's plenty for me to discover, and so I'll keep playing, even if I'm starting to feel that some subsets of the game's options are "solved".

I'm not saying I don't like SOTM exactly the way it is.  I'm just saying, it could be better IMO.

You've clearly figured out Omnitron's mechanics… so don't play him anymore… or exclude the heroes you think result in certain victory.

Indeed, that's precisely what I've been doing.  I will never use Visionary against him again, unless I'm burned out from a miserable loss and want to play an easy game just for the sake of my mood.  Probably not Unity either.  And my next meeting with him will be in one of the Environments that really make him shine, like Ruins of Atlantis (though I will in turn try to pick heroes who have a fighting chance in such cases, such as Expatriette with her Flak Jacket or Nightmist with her Amulet).

What I'm saying is that you alone control the variance of win loss percentage by the very decks you choose to play with, so you can't harp on the game for having winning-heavy scenarios which were a lot of fun to discover in the first place.

…This is true as far as it goes.

By saying variance should exist in a game I mean variance in outcome. That's what separates a game from linear narrative.  A game I know with 100% certainty that I am going to win is utterly boring no matter the permutations of what happens in the middle, and frankly I have better things to do with my time than move cards around on a table if I know what is going to happen in the end.

If that's the experience I'm looking for (knowing a hero character will triumph, as they often do), I'd never ask a card game to do that for me over a book or what have you.  Maybe you conflate the two because SotM tries so hard/pretends to be like a static medium in theme.

Does anyone else understand what he is actually saying here?  You want to be able to magic any character's strongest card into your hand because you drew Charge and the guy before you could play a better card, Back Fist Strike?   Whatever your point, I do not think comparing the absolute worst draw you could ever get in one deck to the best setup in another is productive at all.  That's just the nature of random card draw, and you'll have to go farther than these forums to fix elements of randomness in games.

I think you are talking about balance between characters.  Balance isn't about making every character interchangeable.  Well… I take that back, a game designed with identical decks for all players would be especially easy to balance. But again, that's boring.  SotM takes a different tack by having characters that excell at certain things better than others.  Put together on a team, you hope to find some synergy that carries you to victory, and each person has fun doing their own part.  Does the game do it perfectly?  Nope. Someone will always end up standing out as exceptionally helpful.

So who has the best deck?  Depends on how you define best.  Best for producing irreducible damage with consistency? Mr. Fixer.  Best at stacking the villian deck?  Visionary.  Characters who vary only in flavor sounds like you should be playing checkers.  We're trying to play chess over here.

Any and all variances in outcome are only a more sophisticated variation on flipping a coin to decide whether you win or lose.  It's not that I don't care at all, but I don't consider it to be the important part of the game.  I want to have fun, whether I win or lose - and I have no interest whatsoever in there being a variance of whether I have fun or not.

You want to be able to magic any character's strongest card into your hand

No, I want all of their cards to be tied for the title of strongest card.

Whatever your point, I do not think comparing the absolute worst draw you could ever get in one deck to the best setup in another is productive at all.  That's just the nature of random card draw

Which is precisely the heart of the problem.  Randomness is a way to make outcomes different every time (at least in theory).  They do NOT need to be different in degree of usefulness, however, only in the exact details of how they're used.  It'd be perfectly valid to have a game in which every card contained the same total balance of various disparate values - to use Magic: the Gathering as an example, you could say that one mana was always worth 3 damage, whether dealing it or preventing it, or +3 attack or +3 defense, and as long as the players always had the same amount of mana and the same degree of tempo and card advantage, all those options would be balanced, and you could just decide which one you liked personally, felt most like playing at that moment, and it would be just as effective in any case.  (That's not actually how Magic works - Lightning Bolt is a better card than Healing Salve because you can play a land on your first turn and hit the opponent, and he hasn't yet played a land that would let him prevent the hit.  But it would be possible to create a version of the game in which all players gain mana, cards, and other resources at the exact same rate, so that the choice of whether to focus on attack or defense would be entirely aesthetic.)

Characters who vary only in flavor sounds like you should be playing checkers.  We're trying to play chess over here.

Both chess and checkers are utterly boring to me.  There's no flavor at all in checkers and only a faint trace of it in chess.  On the other hand, I've been very into a couple of games about dragons lately - the actual gameplay has nothing to do with dragons, but just the fact that the cards have pictures of dragons on them makes me enjoy playing the game more than if they were just playing cards.  What can I say, I'm fairly easily amused.

If every hero was as good as any other, there'd be no point in having so many heroes, because they'd all be the same apart from the pictures (which sounds like what you'e saying you want). It's like you're saying you don't want randomness in a card game. Well, umm…it's kind of the point of a card game that most of it is random, hence the term "luck of the draw" - you don't know what cards are going to come out, or in what order…well, you might know the cards (if you've learned the deck well enough to know their names and quantities, as I expect some of us have with at least a few of the decks), but not the order. If all the cards were basically the same (which they'd have to be to all "be tied for the title of strongest card", otherwise some would be stronger than others under certain cisrumstances, like they are right now), then the game would just be the same every time, because you'd know what was gonna happen before you even started playing. After a few games, it would get so boring because of this predictability. As it is, many of us have played hundreds of games (at least) and we're still not bored :).

I think the point Envisioner is trying to make has to do with homogenization of any given hand, rather than of the cards themselves.

In research, to get a good sample, you have to randomize, and the hallmark of a good randomization is that every sample is more or less the same. The individuals are of course still different from each other, but taking any random group of these individuals together, you get the same summary characteristics. I think this is what Envisioner wants: he wants every hand/game/whatever to have the same amount of fun or effectivity for any random sampling of cards drawn, such that every card is considered or equal awesomeness.

This, of course, is patently impossible: this is a card game, and there will always be variations. Moreover, this isn't research; the added risk is part of what makes all this so fun. Having everyone have the same win percentage/effectivity/power would make the game boring, since whatever combo of heroes, villain, and environment I choose, it will all just come down to the same thing, just different names and pictures. Having an equivalent card in every deck would defeat the purpose of having different decks in the first place. Changes in win-loss percentages are thus inherently a part of such variation

Also, you seem to have completely missed the point here. I'm not even sure if you're kidding or not. Regardless, allow me to add to this analogy.

What you want this game to be is checkers, where one piece is just as good as the next, and the only difference of each of the pieces is shape and color. What we have here is an incredibly complex game of chess, where (if you will notice) each and every piece is of differing "effectivity", and yet they all come together to save the Multiverse! (I may have lost the analogy somewhere there)

I wasn't sure before, but after his last post I'm pretty sure he's trolling.  Which is why I'm not putting much effort into this.  His hypothetical ideal game doesn't make any sense, because what makes a game fun is having meaningful choice.  Every card being functionally equal makes the game play itself - you could pick any random card out of your hand and not be in any better or worse position.  So what you have is five to seven decks just playing a card from the top, resolving, and finishing the turn, then moving on to the next ( behavior we've come to associate with villian decks).  There might be a minimal choice remaining in which targets you want to hit, but that isn't significant compared to the (now absent) variety of picking which card to play.  What he really wants, and I've said this before, is a novel or a comic book that's written on cards which he can play one by one.  It would make a horrible, boring game for babies, but that's the ideal game I guess.

Anyway, this thread has inevitably devolved into what every thread on these boards has come to be lately: Envisioner somehow holding yet another impossible position, and everyone else taking their turn at blowing holes the size of Kansas in it.  I'm not in a place to complain really, because he also creates about 70% of the activity here, so whatever, but just know that is what you are participating in at this point.

I'm just here for the lulz at this point.

I am going to recomend to stop posting here then please. Let this thread die.

Nope.  Not trying to hurt anyone else's feelings, just discussing my own.  I might be an oblivious, self-important twit or some similar insult, but I'm not a troll.

His hypothetical ideal game doesn't make any sense, because what makes a game fun is having meaningful choice.

I don't agree.  What makes a game fun is variety, even if the variety is just that you flip up a top card to find out which color moves this turn, or roll dice to see how far you advance along a track (the latter describes Chutes and Latters, which IIRC offers the players absolutely no choices beyond which color of pawn is theirs).  Those aren't terribly deep games, mostly they only work for small children, but they are games, and they can be fun if you're in the mood for extremely light entertainment.  Subjecting yourself to a challenge compares to that much the way masochism compares to conventional sexual desires - it's a more intense form of stimulation, for those who have become (or always were) too jaded to appreciate the lighter pleasures.

What's the point in every city having its own football team?  The multiple heroes allows you to pick one that's "yours".  They don't need to differ more than aesthetically.  If you like simplicity, play Ra; if you like constant activity, play Tachyon; if you like to build up to incredible power, play O-X; if you like to durdle your way through an incredibly long turn to largely incremental benefit, play AA.

It's like you're saying you don't want randomness in a card game. Well, umm…it's kind of the point of a card game that most of it is random, hence the term "luck of the draw"

I want randomness to determine WHICH outcomes occur, but none of them being better or worse than the other ones that might have occurred.  I don't want to be lucky sometimes and unlucky others; I just want different varieties of exactly the same total amount of luck.

Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about.  When I'm playing Fanatic, I virtually always would rather draw Smite the Transgressor than Brutal Censure.  The latter is 2 damage and draw a card, which is a pretty negligible effect; it might be handy if I have nothing else to do with my card play that turn, but against any sort of reduction, I'll just take 2 cards for my turn.  But Smite the Transgressor, even if I can't use it now, will be an amazing card later once I get out Absolution or Sacrosanct Martyr.  (It does deal a less useful damage type, so in theory they might be balanced for that reason, but in practice I don't find them so.)  This inevitably makes me unhappy every time I draw Brutal Censure, because there are very few circumstances under which it's an especially useful card, and I wish I had Smite the Transgressor instead.

For others, perhaps.  I just find it to be a waste of my invested time and effort.  I usually win the game anyway (granted I'm not playing on Advanced in most cases), but often I felt helpless, frustrated, or otherwise bad about my exact position several times during the game, and that makes me a sad panda.  I would rather have had consistent awesomeness all the way through the game…I recognize that this is impractical to achieve, just as very few movies have every scene be equally cool.  I'm just saying, that would be ideal to me.

Also, you seem to have completely missed the point here. I'm not even sure if you're kidding or not.

In general I am virtually never kidding, unless I include a smiley or otherwise make it extremely obvious that I didn't seriously mean it.  (I also tend to be very afraid of insulting my friends whenever I speak; the fact that I often succeed in insulting online strangers is due to my not knowing them as people, and thus being unable to guess how they'll take things that I say.)

Regardless, allow me to add to this analogy.What you want this game to be is checkers, where one piece is just as good as the next, and the only difference of each of the pieces is shape and color.

And, most importantly, where on the board they are placed at any given moment.  That alone gives them variation.

What we have here is an incredibly complex game of chess

Yes, but it's more as if you put the pieces on the board at random, so sometimes your king is in your front row with your opponent's queen pointed right at it, and you lose immediately.  That's what I want to avoid!  Chess is a strategy game with NO randomness at all (unless you roll a die to decide who plays white), and I'm fine with some pieces being pawns and some being queens in that case.  But Sentinels uses too much randomness to be a pure strategy game, and I find that including luck in a strategy game spoils the strategic element of it.  To varying degrees; Sentinels does much better in this regard than a lot of games, but I'm always pushing for perfection.

Just by adjusting the numbers on some cards, adding "draw a card" or "gain 1 HP" clauses to cards that are currently weak, adding drawback clauses to cards that are currently strong, and otherwise tweaking the details, you could eventually achieve a perfect balance, where there are no bad draws in the abstract.  There would still be situationally bad draws, like Legacy getting four melee One-shots when Voss has his Starship in play.  But there would never be an absolutely bad draw, like Argent Adept getting three Instruments and a Vernal Sonata in his opening hand.  Nor would there be absurdly good draws, like Arcane Cadence into Arcane Cadence.  The latter means AA has a disproportionately good game, and the former a disproportionately good one.  I'd rather that he always got Arcane Cadence somewhere in the middle of the game, or maybe that he always got it on his first hand (he does seem to need the extra help in order to be any good), but only once.  Just as Vernal Sonata can't keep looping itself, I don't think Cadence ought to be able to chain into itself, as it's far too swingy.  And I don't like how some of AA's songs are almost useless (Cedistic Dissonant when you don't have a spare Instrument, Rhapsody of Vigor when everyone's at full HP but the villain is close to an alt-win, Rhythms in general), while others are godly (Harmonies in general, especially Supertonic, and also Sarabande of Destruction in some games).  The non-song cards are similarly questionable - Vernal Sonata is wasted if there's nothing in the trash yet, Polyphoric flare is only good if you have Instruments out, and Silver Shadow only if you have a song with a good Accompany (Counterpoint Bulwark and Syncopated Onslaught do NOT have good Accompanies, Cedistic Dissonant's is only good if you have cards to spare, and Alacritous Subdominant's destroys it; Supertonic is usually good, though not if you're at full HP, and that leaves Inventive Preparation, a card whose Perform is quite weak and thus one which is generally less worth playing in the early game, as having the only really good Accompany).

Obviously, Argent Adept is one of the heroes with the most capacity to frustrate me.  Unity is another one, which is how we got on this whole tangent in the first place.  All I've been saying is that I would like those characters better if they were more consistent, with power levels that were a steady 45-degree climb throughout the game (barring a mass-destruction card), rather than some games having them explode out the gate and steamroll the opposition in three turns, while other games they sit there drawing two cards turn after turn until they finally become relevant.

MtG needs to be balanced on a card level, because people can pick whatever cards they want. However, SotM has a fixed deck. This means it needs to be balanced in a deck level, not a card level.
Foe example, let’s say you have a 5 card deck, where each card deals damage. There are a couple of w ays to do this:

1. 2-2-2-2-2
2. 6-1-1-1-1
3. 5-2-1-1-1
4. 4-2-2-1-1
   Etc.
   These decks are all balanced, but they offer different variety, situations, and gameplay.
   You are saying you prefer #1. That’s fine, but I don’t think SotM is built that way.

Bolded for emphasis. Great way to visually explain that Pydro.

I can see Envisioner's point in trying to seek the perfectly balanced game, and I think that game would function like this:

Let's define perfect balance as the ability to have every possible hand represent the same usefulness "value" and let's define every hand as a selection of any 4 cards hand out of the 40 card deck (that's already a simplification since hand size can vary, but let's go with this assumption). In essence, for any 4 card combination to have the same overall value, every card would have to have the same individual value, otherwise you run the risk of having all the higher valued cards come up in a single draw and give you an overpowered hand. 

Now, if we assign each possible effect of a card a discreet usefulness value, it is then still possible to achieve the same overall value with a variety of cards by assigning different combinations to each. For instance, let's say dealing damage is 1 point of value per damage dealt, and healing is 1 point per HP healed, and playing an extra card is 2 points of value, etc. So you could have one card deal 2 damage and allow you to draw 1 card while having another card heal 1 HP and allow you to play an extra card and they would have the same value. 

If you assign every possible effect a discreet value, which could then be modified by things like damage types for extra variety, then theoretically, you could create an infinite combination of cards that all have the same value but are flavored differently... so, theoretically, any combination of heroes with any combination of hands would have the same chance of winning a game against any given fight scenario (whether you win or lose would still be determined by villain and environment draw and how you played your cards). 

This might work in theory, but I think in reality it would be impossible to assign all the different effects a real discreet usefulness values for two main reasons 1) there are so many effects in the game that assigning them an absolute value that stays constant in all situations would be impossible, would healing everyone be given a fixed usefulness value of 2? What if there were only three Heroes? What if there are five? 2) most effects are dependent on what else has been played, what the villain/environment are doing, what else is in your hands, and what the game state is. For example, healing has more value later in the game since it prevents you from dying... and even more value if you are the last person left since it prevents you from losing. 

I think to make this system be truly balanced you would have to limit the effects available, and you would have to limit their interaction, otherwise perfect balance would be unachievable. And what you would end up in the end, I believe, would be a game where you have essentially the same 5 heroes represented in 20 different decks except for different art and different flavor (in the sense of damage types or back story, etc.)

I like Sentinels because it is not that game. It is not a perfect strategy game, it is a game filled with characters that, I feel, come alive in the game. Each hero is unique... and while some are more useful than others in some situations and some are very frustrating at times, I do have a choice in which ones I will play when. I don't have to love all of them all the time... and I never ever have to play regular Bunker ever again. And I'm OK with that, because when my friend plays Bunker... he is a beast. It's got something for everyone, which is more important than having everything for me. 

(OK, that's not entirely true, my girlfriend hates the game... it's got too many words for her taste... but you get my point)

EDIT: tons of typos fixed... but probably not all of them. 

@ Jagarciao - You are now my favorite person on the entire forum.  Thank you.

Ha, thanks... not entirely sure what I did to earn that spot... but I appreciate the sentiment nonetheless. 

You acknowledged my concept, instead of dismissing it out of hand, or making fun of it.  You even put a fair amount of effort into exploring the possibility (before concluding that it probably wouldn't work very well, which didn't surprise me).  I appreciate the validation of my weird ideas by people who are better at making sense of them than I am.

You do understand he came to the conclusion you were wrong though, correct? I wouldn't exactly call it validation. Just a more patient explanation than the rest of us gave. 

I disagree with the core concept jagarciao (uhm... portuguese?) described, at least for this game. For one being able to tell a good story with that kind of restriction is super difficult since stories have exactly all kind of extreme spots. Forget crowning moments of awesomeness for each hero like this. I'll go as far as to say that this kind of imbalance is what makes SotM shine compared to other superhero games. What I do agree is that it would be ideal to be able to have a base equal amount of fun with whatever hero, in whatever team+villain+enviornment. For this you need to feel you are being able to contribute and/or are taking meaningful decisions. That can still be had with some mechanic-for-everyone (like something as an Assit-discard a card so another Hero can draw/play a card) and still having the disparity in cards.

Fortunately, there is a big number of Heroes that fall into this category.

I would think you'd agree with my assessment then, as I go on to describe that the game that I feel would be created by that concept of perfect balance is not Sentinels and is not a game I would enjoy as much as I enjoy Sentinels… precisely for the kind of reasons you mention later in you post.

The thought an assist was interesting and I kind of explored it a little bit before in some games, but I found that, if anything, it actually created a bigger disparity in the contribution of different heroes by making the one hero that was best equipped for the situation at hand be stronger while the rest ended up basically just there to feed him cards. I think the way the game is set up worked out better because it actually forces you to figure out the best thing you can do with the cards you were dealt (even if sometimes that just means bracing for a spanking). 

(I'm Hispanic, the "o" after Garcia is the initial of my second last name)

Trouble is, "fun" isn't something you can put a numerical value to, and it's rather subjective anyway.

I peronally don't find Bunker to be all that much fun to play. I still enjoy the game and won't refuse to play him if the randomiser brings him up, but I have much more fun with, say, Unity. Obviously other people love Bunker and have a great time with him and that's fine.

And I also think it's silly to criticise a game for not being homogenous, when it doesn't claim to be anything of the sort. It's like criticising the Meatloaf album you just bought because it's full of soft rock ballads and insisting that it'd be better if every track was played on bagpipes and was sung in Swahili by 4-year-olds dressed as octopuses.*

One of the things I love about this game is that all the characters are so different - they combine with each other and villains and environments in billions of different ways so no game is ever the same. I would absolutely hate a game where you have the choice of essentially identical but differently "flavoured" decks (or decks where every card has equal "value") and you have a fixed 70% chance of winning and the only differences you'll see game-to-game is the order that the cards come out. I want that unpredictability, the battles where you thought you were going to win but the villain had a massive late surge and wiped everyone out, the times when all your stuff gets destroyed after you finally got set up and you manage to just about scrape the winning blow, the shock when the card you played last turn ends up being a huge mistake, the frustration of your carefully-laid plans getting completely messed up by a T. rex. I like when you totally should win on paper but you get creamed, because the defeats make the victories much sweeter in comparision, especially if you replay the same match!

I'm also very keen on the idea of being able to try different matches with different odds of winning, and variable heroes is a big part of that. So I want a game against the Dreamer to be more difficult, I'll take regular Tempest. Yay, I beat the Ennead, even though I only had Engine of War Bunker! I need some help against Voss, and that's where Fixer comes in. Not that I do this at all often, but it's nice to know it's an option.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is, if you have such a big problem with an essential part of how this game works, then you're probably playing the wrong game, and you should actually buy and enjoy Songs played on Bagpipes in Swahili by 4-year-olds Dressed as Octopuses.

*Actually that probably would be better than Meatloaf. But if you don't want soft rock ballads, don't buy a Meatloaf album.

I would anything for gaming, but listening to Meatloaf? I won't do that.

I can and in fact have put a numeric value on my subjective idea of fun, at least (and believe anyone could do the same for themself).  SOTM, for all that it's not perfect, is one of my dozen or so "10" games - ones I will virtually always play given the chance, sometimes twice or more in a night.  Games that are much less fun to me are given lower numbers in my system; a 2 is a game I'll never play, and a 1 is a game that can drive me from the room just by someone else playing it…the opposite of fun.

That sounds like a perfectly valid, reasonable, and entirely subjective way to judge games.

Whoooosh

Another advantage SotM has in terms of counteracting the randomness of decks is it is a cooperative game.  So while one person might have a weak hand, it is reasonably likely a teammate can cover his weakness until he draws more useful cards.  I find it tends to play out as a give and take in games, with different players peaking in terms of usefulness at different times.  One really nice feature is once the players are familiar with how to play, even non-gamers can have really impressive turns that make them feel really great and connected to the other players.  If the theme connects with someone who isn't normally a gamer, teaching them SotM is great at creating really positive experiences and bonding groups.