IT is at the end. Each story is resolved in order, and then the skill check is made and you only ever compare the existing/current skill of all characters committed to the story. If no one is committed on the other side, for any reason, then they have 0 skill to apply so it is considered unchallenged.

Dark Initiate said: It was reported on another thread that Damon stated that Educated Officer permits the controlling player to draw 7 cards after that player wounds another player's character using Short Fuse. I'm not sure that the rules of the game demand that interpretation, and I am pretty sure that this makes the Educated Officer too powerful. (Compare with card Forbidden Knowledge.) Anyway, my suspicion is that Damon will reverse this ruling. So I'd like to know with certainty whether this will or will not happen before an upcoming regional that I plan to attend. I don't want to build a deck around this exploit and get screwed, when the local organizers rule that the Educated Officer cannot do this. I also don't relish facing a deck that uses this exploit against me. Given the explanation of the ruling that I heard, it appears that a player could draw 14 cards with Professor Rice in play. There will almost certainly be no reversal. The timing chart and wording on the cards allow for no other rule interpretation. I'll walk you through the steps about why it works this way: 1) All wounds are dealt at the same time. 2) Only after the wounding effect is executed do characters get destroyed. 3) How many wounds did it take during the execution of that effect? 4) That is how many triggers there are for Educated Officer to respond to in the response window of the executed effect. From a rules wonkiness standpoint there is really only a single issue that could be cited as precedent for this working in a different manner, and that is drawing or discarding cards, regardless of the number the effect is causing, are done individually. I have previously said that each wound is simultaneous, but looking at the timing chart I may be wrong there. It may be that because each is delivered individually but during the same step and cards that are destroyed do not leave play until the end of that step they just keep getting hit again and again, similar to getting shot by a machine gun where the first bullet hits you but your body is also hit six more times before you even drop. Hm. This actually makes a lot more sense. Interesting.

Magnus, you'll note I came to the same ruling that Damon did, for pretty much the same reason, before he had been consulted. So looking at what he wrote there are clearly two important parts, one it is a replacement effect. There is absolutely no evidence to support any other conclusion than this. Zero. None. If you do not agree this is a replacement effect your understanding is mortally flawed and we cannot continue with this discussion until this addressed. Do you or do you not agree that it is a replacement effect? If not please provide evidence (direct citation of the rulebook or faq please) to the contrary. I'm going to assume you agree that it is and move on. So the next bit seems to be your problem with the word resolve. What is exactly resolving EM's ability? It is a passive replacement effect, so what it is changing is the wounding effect, altering it so at that wounding effects execution it turns EM into an attachment. This is where I think you have a fundamentally wrong understanding… everything you are writing seems to be under the impression that EM's passive turns it into an attachment, but this is not strictly speaking correct. EM's passive forces a wounding effect to turn it into an attachment. Once you understand this (and because it is a replacement effect, it is still the resolution of the original effect that causes EM to turn into an attachment) then understanding the resolution of EM's ability on the action is making that action a "turn to attachment" effect instead of a wounding effect, in regards to EM. That wounding/turn into an attachment effect must still resolve within the timing structure. Because it is a replacement effect it has NO way to turn into an attachment before the effect itself is executed. If there was a disrupt effect played that cancels the wound on EM your ruling would STILL have EM turn into an attachment, and that clearly cannot happen, since you cannot replace an effect that has been canceled, because it never happened in game terms. There is no way your ruling works without breaking the game, that for no other reason should prove that you are wrong. Now you can make a statement that resolves is the wrong word, but resolve clearly has a specific meaning in this game that is different than you think, and when you view EM's ability as a modification of another effect, then it must have resolved prior to that effect resolving if it is a replacement effect. Damon's more fully explained answer follows the same thing I said, and his is perfectly internally consistent without disturbing any part of the timing structure. Your is not. Internal consistency and when extrapolated out continued adherence and support of the greater timing structure trumps, well, kind of everything.

Hm… the designer disagrees… and to be fair there are lots of "casual" wording in the rulebook which is further defined, clarified, and extrapolated on in the FAQ. The FAQ says "a Forced Response must trigger if able." Not that a player must trigger if able. Which seems to be a bit of a distinction, and certainly seems to support what Damon ruled. Then there is this, "The only responses players can choose to trigger are Disrupts, however Forced Responses that apply to the situation must trigger automatically." Which darn near spells out exactly what he was saying in his ruling, which also speaks to this, "The main difference between a passive ability and a forced response is that a passive effect cannot be canceled." Also to clarify, a Forced Response is not a Response. They are two completely separate types of triggered effects. I think there is more support in the FAQ pointing to the answer he gave than there is in the rulebook against it. That said Dreamlands Messenger still prevents the Khopesh from being triggered when it is committed to a story. You just need to have a turn with it being untargeted by the khopesh. You can use cards that prevent it from being uncommitted from a story until it is won and then there is no khopesh, or really much of any non-Combat struggle wounding/destroying that can hit it.

It stands as precedent. It is not an exact duplicate, but it clearly shows that if two players were to have the same number of stories in the pile to win the game at the same time that tie goes to the active player. IT is hardly a leap of faith to apply that same reasoning to the success tokens of a story/conspiracy. If you are looking for a clear ruling the link for Rules Questions is at the bottom of the page. Outside of that, most of what we do here is quote from the rulebook, the faq, communication with Damon, or extrapolating from a ruling in one of those sources.

I think at this point I have to ask if you are purposefully being difficult. You don't like the answer so you insist that it is wrong, despite his explanation being exceptionally clear. At some point you have to just accept that you are 1) wrong, 2) don't understand the timing structure as well as you think, 3) don't know what the definitions of the words are in game terms. And what the heck, 4) refuse to adjust your understanding of any of the above. #4 for me is the most troubling. I can't even begin to understand why time and again you seem un-willing or un-able to adjust your understanding of the game. It is like you aren't even considering that your understanding is wrong. You'd rather blame it on bad wording rather than a bad understanding of the rules. I mean those misinterpretations don't effect me, and thankfully with Damon being easily reachable and people here posting his replies, other players are not so duly influenced by said mistakes, but it does constantly imply that the game is at fault, or he is at fault, rather than you being at fault, and that is never a good face to put on our game and community for potential new players. I also have no idea how much your opinion impacts your local play group, but I wouldn't be surprised if they end up conceiving of the game wrongly and echo your reluctance to refine or adapt their knowledge of the game.

I agree with what Tom said for most everything, with the exception of scouting. Scouting is poor sportsmanship. It is specifically trying to seek knowledge of an opponents deck and play style that they are not privy to of yours. Watching a round because you are bored and you have completed your round and want to be entertained is perfectly reasonable and in a local weekly or monthly tournament I don't think anyone really cares because it doesn't really matter, but a regional is a different thing. There are (probably) more people, from outside your local playgroup, and it carries more meaning. I think it would be best if everyone just moved from the tournament area or found something to do quietly in the area that did not involve watching others play. That said when I judge I don't try to enforce this rule so much as enforce other players enforcement of this rule. IOW if someone asks not to be watched, everyone not in that game vacates the area. Anyone who argues or attempts to observe after being asked not to gets a warning or outright penalty. If the players playing the game (both of them) don't care I'm not going to care. As to enforcing non-optional rules, you are a referee not just the tournament organizer. What would happen if referees in sporting events didn't enforce rule infractions and just let the players handle it? It all starts to break down. If you see someone failing to follow a rule it is your job to correct it. If you see someone making a strategic or tactical mistake, that is on them. Good choices versus legal choices are the difference.

People have been cube drafting in aGoT for years. If you wanted to draft I would recommend this format. You could always shuffle all the corp cards together and all the runner cards together and then divide them up into "booster-pack" size groups and then draft from those. The uneven distribution model which is ideal for out of the box play, would actually replicate the Rare, Uncommon, and Common format pretty decently. Meaning each time you pass a specific card, you recognize it vastly reduces the chances of you getting another copy of it if any other opponent is trying to build the same style of deck. Makes the drafting decisions more difficult than if everything was x3… though I don't begin to claim that this is enough to replicate the feel of a typical CCG booster draft.

Hellfury, I'd like to apologize with my tone in my last post that quoted you. I'm excited about the game being redone, and about the LCG model in general. I really have had a number of interactions with FFG employees at Gencon and other events and try to engage them in talk about the inner workings (as much as they can actually tell me) of the company and model because I am such a fan. That however is no excuse for me being a ****** about any of it. I apologize. I would delete the post, but I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to cover up my actions. I made them, I'll deal with the opinions and dismissals that come from them. I do hope you accept my apology though.

I wonder if Darksbane has thought about "partnering" with someone and let them do a lot of the legwork for this and he just hosts it on his site to keep it as the number one destination for all things LCG. I am so incredibly jazzed by this game being reproduced.

Hellfury said: The gaming world needs more cyberpunk. An underappreciated and underdeveloped thematic gaming background that at least FFG is fleshing out. If R.Talsorian cannot be bothered, then I say "Let a thousand Android games bloom". Also, I would not be the least bit surprised to see a revised 2nd ed of Android to be put out at some point in the not so distant future. I have no inside info on that other than logical extension of FFG going as far as they are with the property, then why not revise and and make an otherwise great game more playable to get as much profit from the IP they have created as possible. I think you are completely correct there. I suspect they will wait until the game is out of their warehouse (if it is not already) and a fair amount of them are out of stores before they give any serious development time to this, but for every reason you mentioned I think this is all but a foregone conclusion.

It doesn't really tell us how that effects game play though and I think that is really what everyone is wondering.

But there are new players starting AGoT on a daily basis (yes, daily, it is pretty **** amazing that way). You don't need to spend hundreds of dollars to play in a tournament, but you do need hundreds of dollars to be truly competitive in a tournament. Those are two different things. However if anyone thinks any form of rotation or limited format would effectively change this without killing the game they are deluded. Two core sets, a deluxe expansion box, and two cycles of cards is the minimum to own to be able to put together a serious competitive deck that stands a chance at winning a tournament. Sure you could almost certainly win at your local store if you have simply one deck from a core set, one deluxe expansion and one cycle of cards, but your ability to fine tune your deck to exploit the wholes in other decks, close up the holes in your own, and generally exploit the metagame is dependent on having a diverse cardpool as well as being able to focus your deck. That can only happen with a certain number of cards to draw from. If you want to be a competitive player from day 1 you need to spend about $250. If you want to really be able to kick ass and take names you need to spend about $400. After that investment, you will probably at best not need to spend more than $45 a year. Now compare that to having to spend over $500 for a single tier 1 deck in a game like Magic and then another $150-$250 dollars every rotation assuming your deck can be updated rather than having to be completely torn apart and replaced. As to Chapter packs for AGoT being out of print, that is a new issue. There are two chapter packs in the last month that seem to have finally been sold out everywhere. Prior to that they were hard to find, but they could be found in stores. three months ago the local store I played at had at least 4 of each of them. One guy came in and bought them all. I'd be surprised if FFG didn't announce a reprint of those in the next month or two. That packs go out of print and there is some lag in the reprint, that is just the nature of supply and demand. Capitalism is far from perfect, but you don't really expect FFG to reprint a product and then sit on it taking up space in their warehouse until the stores sell out do you? That is just bad business. Sure it is inconvenient for those players who want those packs, but they are not a requirement to play in a tournament and several tournament decks placing in the top 8 and top 4 have few if any cards from those packs. Some of the decks of course have cards from them that play a central role. the point is you don't need them to be competitive, you just need them to build a specific kind of deck. But seriously at this point we have wandered far afield about discussing card distribution in A:N and are discussing the merits of the LCG model… which I have to say, if you don't like it no one is forcing you to play a game that uses it. There are a number of amazing games in the traditional CCG model and stand alone card game model. There is a certain amount of discussion and emailing to FFG that expresses your view in an informative way that they can balance against their own market research, and then there is just complaining because you want the attention and you feel that your emotions are somehow more important than FFG's bottom line and everyone else's emotions on the subject.

Hellfury said: Penfold said: just that only one of these groups has a proven track record of creating awesome. Really? I guess every idea that FFG does is attributed solely to them. Such as the 3x distribution model. The same one some naysayers were claiming FFG would never do and how much of a horrible idea that is. The same naysayers clamoring over and over about how FFG were gods among board game companies for coming up with such a brilliant idea. By the way, from those of us who fought long and hard to make FFG see why 3x was a good idea for everyone in the face of caustic internet forum users who claim to know the ins and outs of why FFG does anything… You're welcome. Hahahaha. You might want to actually talk to some of the people from FFG. I have talked to two different LCG designers and they both said (independently) that they had always hoped they would be able to do x3. That was what they had originally planned, but the numbers didn't make sense. Of course they could have been lying, but they certainly have a better idea what the motivation and influence was, knowing all sides of it, where what you know is solely what you hope and dream their motivations and influences are. You have no facts on your side. Correlation does not equal causation. What I can do is see a proven track record of good stuff coming from FFG. What I see from players is a bunch of people with no business background and no knowledge of the industry outside of their own desires and experiences disagreeing repeatedly on what the best way to do something is. So yeah, smart money says go with FFG if I have to choose.

Wow, your guys experience with Warhammer was totally different than mine. I find it pretty darn easy to build decks, even in the core set, with a splash of other out of faction cards. Judgment of Verena in a Dwarf deck. Fun times. Because you could always develop a card you could not immediately afford and gain a benefit from it or ramp up your resources to ensure you could play any card in your deck in a turn or two resourcing was rarely a problem, but it did put an interesting twist on my deck construction. I couldn't just toss all the best cards in a deck from the side of Order, I had to actually construct a deck that was balanced and adaptable to ensure that I could put enough power in my Kingdom zone to be able to afford cards. This might mean I was getting hit for two turns while I ignored my draw and/or battlefield zone but once I had the resources necessary my bruisers came out and just overhwelmed the rush that Orcs created. In constructed it was even easier. In the end, loyalty provided an interesting challenge in deck building and strategizing of what to play, where to play it, and when to play it, but never really stopped me from being able to do what I wanted. It also had the added benefit of ensuring a dwarf deck felt like a dwarf deck and an Empire deck felt like an Empire deck, because their cards worked best together, but when other cards supplemented a specific strategy I always had access to them (assuming they were Order) but I needed to adjust my play decisions if I decided to include them. These kinds of games make the play decisions much richer, versus the deck building decisions richer. I know some people love games that have little player interaction (MtG is one) but if I wanted to play a game that began and essentially ended with building my deck and then just playing every card out as I drew it, I'd play Dominion or Ascension (which I actually do). I play CCG and LCG type games because of the play decisions they afford are SO much more rich. That said, I doubt this is the way it is in Netrunner. I don't see any easy implementation of this when it comes to how Netrunner is built. Each card does not potentially provide resources for you and this would create an entirely different costing structure of the cards for little return. You know what those blue dots remind me of? The moons on the Blue Moon cards. You could build a deck with any cards, there was no direct limit of how many cards from another race of people you had in your deck that did not match your leaders race, but there was a limit to the number of moons you could have in any deck (I believe it was 30) that did not match your leaders race. I think that would be pretty interesting, I could borrow cards from other factions but only include a certain amount of them based on their power level… which if each faction corresponds to a style of play (tag and bag, deep dig, etc) I would be able to grab some extra stuff to really fill holes or specialize my deck, but I can't just grab all the best cards from the Corp or Runner side and make a deck. Of course this is all speculation. It may be something else entirely, like how many of that card is in the Starter deck and have no bearing on deck building, or it could be the number of that card that can be used in a deck, or how many of that card you can use if you are not playing that faction. More information please!?

I could totally see runners with factions, I mean what would you call Anonymous, Legion of Doom, and Masters of Deception?

Edwin20er said: So stoked for this, played it for a while when it came out, then it just fell into my drawer of old CCGs, are you all looking at this with hope that it's all new or a reprint of the original? A bit of both. I loved the original, but when I tried to play it a few years ago, this may be blasphemy, it just seemed dated. The rule book was needlessly complicated, the game was still fun, but the art looked like a 1990's interpretation of what the future would look like (the cgi art was, especially guilty of this), and I started remembering the issues with having any number of cards in a deck and trying to deal with the idea of rare hunting under those circumstances was just mind-numbing. I REALLY want the core of the game to remain the same, but with some updated elements (like some sort of revision to trace) and benefitting of all decade and a half of card game development (like a fixed number of cards, a unification of substance and style in creating a solid thematic sense that permeates game play rather than a thin veneer). Basically, what I want is Netrunner 2: Electric Boogaloo… or maybe not, but definitely some small tweeks to the rules, major tweaks to the look and theme. What MUST remain the same? The idea of Corp and Runner being two different forces with differing goals and play styles. The asymmetrical design of the game was brilliant and one of the biggest accomplishments in CCG design that has never been surpassed in my book. Runners able to run on anything anytime. Corp having to draw and losing the game if running out of cards. Winning by killing the runner. I think that covers most of the major things that must remain (assuming they kept the implementation of most if not all of that the same).

I would like to point out, the neutral attachment removal is precisely what players had been asking for about 2-3 years. They got it, and now pretty much everyone just wishes they had STFU and let FFG develop the game the way they had been. Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you is to get exactly what you asked for. This, btw, is why I trust FFG more than the players, even when they are extremely experienced. The balance in a game like this is pretty difficult to even properly conceive, let alone maintain over years. Not to say players are always wrong or that they can't even be more correct than FFG at times, just that only one of these groups has a proven track record of creating awesome.

Surreal said: I feel it depends a lot of game mechanism if game will survive. CoC, W:I and AGoT are mostly a MTG clones with more or less mechanisms from MTG. Hahahaha.

To netdeck and buy the cards necessary to build a World Champion deck it will cost you $500-700 or more if the deck is still legal and a recent major win attributed to it. That will buy you a core set x3 and 4 entire cycles of cards to build your deck with. That is also enough to make all of the top four World Champion decks and European championship decks for Call of Cthulhu. Booored you are attributing your own psychograph profile to all other players and that isn't really a true condition. Anyone can play any LCG on a competitive level for an expenditure

dboeren said: I think it's due to the number of factions. Call of Cthulhu has the most factions, which means there are fewer cards for each faction, which in turn limits how much deck building you can do out of a Core set. In games with fewer factions, you get more cards per faction and you can do a little more tuning of your deck. Netrunner has always played well with a small set of cards anyway, I'm not too worried about that. The thing is though they could have made Cthulhu differently. They could have made it follow the x1/x2/x3 model and each faction could have potentially played as a solo faction in the core set (which given the number of factions and card counts seems like what they are doing with Netrunner). If each faction was capable of fielding a solo faction deck, playable out of the box, the deck customization would have been through the roof for CoC. I honestly think that because CoC is so modular with so much freedom in deck building they chose to go with a route that highlighted that, rather than create the best experience out of the box which would have been solo faction decks for your first experience and then deck building for the advanced experience. I honestly thing CoC would be much more popular if it had been constructed in this manner. I love the game, but finding people to play against is hard, and after introducing several people to the LCG line, CoC gets a lot of nods and smiles, in the discussion, or with customized decks, but the core set gets frowns. Netrunner should absolutely be packed in whatever form is going to create the greatest retention of players and transformation of super casual boardgame play to investment and deckbuilding.

Hellfury said: I have heard the "Multiple deck" excuse quite a few times. I don't buy it.My own experience doesn't match yours and I build quite a few CoC decks to be ready to play at any single time. I also play in tournaments whenever I am able to. I never felt the need to have 9X of cards, or even 6x for a single players pool to choose from. And on the very rare occasions that I did need 6x of a card, it was maybe 2 or 3 cards in the entire pool of call of cthulhu cards. That still leaves the majority of cards that I have sitting in a box from before FFG went to the 3x distribution in their expansion packs. So the 3x/2x/1x distribution model has not illustrated anything other than wastefulness to me. COC is a very different game. The resourcing system causes a very different set of build decisions, so lack of neutrals to generate resources across the factions, and too many neutrals actually making resourcing harder rather than easier in multi-faction decks means it is far easier to have 3-5 decks with very little need for multiples of any card beyond a playset (unless of course you want all your decks to be tournament winners, but that is a different story). You can't do that to the same extent with any of the other LCG's because the resourcing systems don't really support that structure.

Hellfury said: Isn't it ironic David, how everyone wants a more intuitive core set card distribution but would not be surprised if they continued on with the precedent set in W:I and LotR? What does that say about what consumers expect from FFG? Speaks volumes to me. Yep, it says everyone (a small vocal minority in a within the hardcore players who themselves are a vocal minority of the people who will buy and play this game) would end up making decisions that would almost certainly have the LCG games fail. CoC is the only one which uses a x1 format and it is the smallest game in player-base out of all of them. Those may not be related, but it is interesting. The Core Set is a play out of the box experience. x1 sucks for that. Even CoC which is a brilliant game, but when compared to the other games out of the box (though infinitely better than ccg out of the box experiences) it leaves a LOT to be desired. So yes, FFG is making decisions that are best for their bottom-line which not-coincidently is what is best for the game continuing to be published. If the out of the box game suffers people don't continue to buy into the game. It gets bad reviews, sold or traded cheap, and generally dies on the vine. I'm willing to bet we'll see each faction have multiple copies of agendas, ice-breakers and ice as appropriate. I'd expect those to all be x2 or x3. I expect the neutral cards to be x1, x2, and maybe x3 per faction per side. The more situational cards you play from hand for effect or stack in play for effect nodes and operations etc. will probably be x1. If the having a good out of the box experiences is going to keep some hardcore players away… well, that is too bad, but that good experience will attract a lot new players and I will revel in having dozens of new players at my FLGS.

I'm liking the way that sounds and agree with you. I'm really looking forward to more teasers from FFG.

You are absolutely correct, if the card is exactly the same in every way the black border ccg cards are legal.