Some more answers:

1. What about if I control Professor Herman Mulder and Underground Asylum then what effects I can cancel?

Yes you can cancel the effect… but there is still 6 or more characters in play which means he just goes insane again. In other words you will not be able to effectively stop him because the effect just keeps reasserting itself as long as the state is true.

2. Lets say for example Terror of the Tides is put in play with the action (as a 6th character in play). Can I cancel the whole effect of action if Terror of the Tides would cause Herman to go insane? What about if opponent just plays Terror of the Tides normally? Is playing a card an effect?

You cannot cancel something that is not expressly stated as being able to be canceled by the card granting the cancel. In other words, it is not putting Terror of the Tides in play that makes Professor Herman Mulder insane, but his own effect. The only way to cancel putting Terror of the Tides into play would be to use a cancel effect that expressly cancels a card coming into play or a triggered effect. Playing a card is not a card or game effect, it is a rule of the game.

These answers make sense and I feel I am starting to really understand the game now.

I just received a bunch of new answers to some question that came up during our CoC tournament in Stahleck:

Rule Question:
What is the proper timing for Prophesy cards?
E.g. Hastur's Hamu XX 15:14 says:
"Response: After a character is made insane, discard Hamu XX 15:14 from the top of your deck to choose up to two cards in your discard pile. Add those cards to your hand."
Can I choose the Prophesy card just triggered as one of the cards to be added to my hand from the discard pile?

Answer:
Yes. You pay the cost of the card and then choose its targets.
=========================================================================================================================

Rule Question:
Catacombs Docent has the following card text:
"Response: After a character you control is made insane, drive Catacombs Docent insane to add 1 success token to a story with less than 4 success tokens on your side."
What exactly is covered by the (relatively new) wording 'made insane'?
Does it cover insanity caused by
1) losing a terror struggle?
2) a card effect (e.g. Victoria Glasser's)?
3) driving a Lunatic character insane?
 

Answer:
Made insane is exactly what you think. Go insane is through the result of a game or card effect. Driving insane is a cost. Made insane is any manner in which a character goes from "restored" to "in[s]ane."
=========================================================================================================================

Rule Question:
Lethargic Miasma says:
"Attached character may not ready."
Since it doesn't use the defined term 'cannot' I assume that a card effect such as the Ancient Guardian's ("Pay 1 to choose and ready an exhausted character or support card you control.") could be used to ready the exhausted character, despite Lethargic Miasma?

Answer:
Yes.
=========================================================================================================================

Rule Question:
If I commit two (or more) Beings of Ib at the same story while I have a single Ancient One in play (or the Ancient One and a single Beings of Ib), do I count the AO's skill and icons twice or just once?
The card says:
"If you control a single Ancient One character, count its skill and icons at any story to which Beings of Ib is committed."

Answer:
Twice.

Thanks for posting the Q+A! Good to know what "to be made insane" means :-)

But I've got to say, I'm surprised about the answer to the prophecy question. I always thought that targets are chosen / play restrictions checked before costs are paid. (E.g. Feed Her Young isn't resourced under the domain it has been paid for.) I thought that the Hastur prophecy can't take itself out of the discard pile. Did Damon say anything more about this topic, or do you know the reasoning for this behaviour?

Relevant FAQ:

1) Action is initiated
a) Determine the cost (to either play
the card or pay for the card’s effect) or
costs (if multiple costs are necessary
for the intended action).
b) Check play restrictions, including
verification and designation of
applicable targets or cards to be
effected.
…
e) Pay the cost(s).
f) Play the card, or trigger the effect,
and proceed to step two.

Kind regards,

Pete

HilariousPete said:

jhaelen said:

Looks like you got screwed by the call at Stahleck.

While the designer's verdict is final, I think this is a bad call (i.e., Damon made a bad decision). The call makes Beings of Ib very powerful, and I don't think that a zero cost card should be so powerful. (If you look at the FAQ ruling on The Captain, it looks like the previous designer ruled that the card would be too good, if you could count The Captain's icons twice at a single story. I think the same idea should be applied with Beings of Ib, since the effect is even cheaper, i.e., free. In fact, I think it would be OK to reverse the ruling on The Captain, since there is a reasonable cost attached to the effect.)

Another Question: What if you have your (single) Ancient One and your Beings of Ib attached to a story? Do you count the Ancient One's icons twice? I assume that Damon would give the same answer.

In regards to the prophecy posing, i do hope that the FAQ is correct as:

A ) it already fixes the Necronomicon / Logan dilemma.

B ) it would stop the prophecy from being used for ridiculous loops like Hamu XX 15:14 / Glimpse of the Void and such.

I've felt for a while now that things are just being made up as they go along and that they should be finalised as soon as possible. If anyone tries a Necro / Logan / skill bonus then I'd be quoting this specific little FAQ section and all hell would break loose, especially if it's within a tournament !! ( as for those attending the Aus. Nationals probably won't have it officially remedied yet ).

As for Beings of Ib and the Ancient being committed to the same story, this is how we've been playing it and it really sucks as the last game i played had the little Iblings and Cthulhu doubling up for a 16 skill story attack, which he just kept repeating until he got the domains high enough to sac 3 characters every turn. Not nice.

I should also have an answer to add here about the contradicting response turn sections of the FAQ which I have sent to Damon.

While 2 Beings of Ib + AO really sucks to face, it requires a lot of cards to set up. A lot of things can be done to those BoI after they're played. They're very easily taken out with a 1 cost Catastrophic Explosion, 0 cost Shotgun Blast or DoA, exhausted with a 1 cost Panic, destroyed with a Calling Down the Ancients or Twilight Gate + Many Angled Thing for 2 cost, etc.

Dark Initiate said:

I brought the Captain vs. Beings of Ib dilemma to Damon's attention. Let's see what comes out of this…

Got an answer to clear things up. Damon's responses ( excuse the pun ) are in bold italics.

Rule Question:

Hiya. In regards to responses there 'seems' to be 2 different answers as to order of such. Being :

'Action, Disrupt, and Response Effects', Page 17: "Any number of responses can be played in response to any occurrence that allows them to trigger, with response opportunities passing back and forth between players, starting with the active player."

It is each player taking an opportunity to respond to things that happened but were unable to be immediately responded to, for example when the story phase resolves a character was wounded. No responses are possible until the end of the story phase. The active play gets the first opportunity to respond to that wounding. Then it goes back and forth (or left if multiplayer rules are being used). When a new phase begins it is the active player who gets first opportunity to take an action. When a game effect has been initiated it is the first player who gets the first opportunity to trigger a disrupt.

'Responses', Page 18: "After all disrupts, passive abilities, and/or forced responses to an action are resolved, players may now play normal responses in clockwise order (starting with the player to the left of the player who initiated the action)."

The player to the left gets the first opportunity to trigger a response to an action taken by a player. The active player cannot get two opportunities to take actions (the action which created the opportunity for Responses) in a row.

I just ask as it would be vitally important to know in cases such as Lord Finchington vs Diseased Sewer Rats as to which goes first, the active or non active player. Thanks !!

It always goes back and forth, the question is just one of who gets first opportunity and the answer as you can see above is context dependent. The rule of thumb is if it the game being responded to or first opportunity to take any action or player triggered effect it is the active player who gets first shot. If it is a player action being responded to it is the player on the left of the triggering player who gets first shot.

So yes. After closed box phase sections, the active player responds first to occurances within the box. In response to actions in windows, the opponent gets to respond first ( So in the example Finchington would cause the Sewer Rats to go insane before the wound ).

 Seriously… what ?!

So if i play Action, then my opponent gets firs opportunity to do somethin and plays Responce, and then I want to play disrupt… and what happens…
or is it like this: i ask "any disrupts?" i play my disrupts first, then my opponent, and if only he plays a disrupt i get my responce first so its back and forth???
or is it "Responce to Action (or play of a character/support/conspiracy card) by active player is started by the next player, all other things start with active player" [if so, why is it not written that way in the f**** rules…]
or is this something else
this timing doesn't make any sense to me.

Why design it like this so it makes no sense, is context dependant and no one understands how its supposed to work? Wouldnt just "first player starts playing every timing type (Action, Disrupt, Responce), if he plays/passes opponent can play, it continues till all players pass in a row" be simpler and better?

And using "action" meaning something else than "Action" is just plain stupid… are "Response" and "response" also different things?

.Zephyr. said:

Basically, yes.

.Zephyr. said:

And basically no. The opponent would play his / her disrupt first to your action. But yes, you would respond to his disrupt before he / she did.

So, if I trigger an Action or play a card other players act first i. e. they trigger their Disrupt first, and then trigger they're Response first.

But when something other than above causes an Disrupt/Responce opportunity it's active player who goes first.

Thats how it works?

When i think about often it doesnt really matter who goest first, but i really hate when such mechanics are unclear as i consider them basic framework on whitch all mechanics should work, and having holes/misscommunication in basic framework sounds like a really bad idea.

I really dont get FFGs approach, they do design and playtest really interesting cards, and then fail to explain what are they designed to do… How hard would it be to write a paragraph explaining some uses of cards with interesting effects and post them online. There are so many cards where a few examples of what this card can do and what are its limitations would help so much. Like apeirophobia explanation with T icons, not enough cards in hand. Hamu XX 15:14 and picking itself back; The Claret Knight with sacrifice effect from Cthulhu, etc. those are not very complicated interactions that need much rule expertise, those are basic interactions of those cards, that define what they do…

And another interesting rule that may not be common knowledge and that I have had clarified by Damon concerns the Artists Colony - Hastur Location. If the case is that both cards revealed are the same cost, then the active player DOES get to keep the card. Although not specifically the 'highest', there is a rule buried within the FAQ that when a player has 2 equal targets of the same cost / skill ( in the example it is the 'lowest' skill' I believe ) then the active player chooses the target out of all the available ones. This rule also carries over to the Artists Colony. It was explained in a convoluted post that went on about the emphasis of language and so forth so I will spare you the details as it only confuses the response which was to be short - yes the active player keeps cards of equal cost. It mat recieve an errata in the future but for now that is how it is played. A much better card now yes ??

COCLCG said:

It would be interesting to hear the reasoning that Damon had for that, since it's rather unintuitinve - in the English language, lowest would mean lowest and highest would mean highest, so if there was a tie then the effect would fizzle, but the FAQ says otherwise regarding "lowest" (which I didn't know btw, and this makes Calling Down the Ancients much better, too). I can see that the FAQ may change to say that in all ties of effects (as opposed to stories) the active player decides, which would make sense, but that's not clear now since the FAQ specifically clarifies this ruling under "Lowest Skill". It does not reference highest skill at all.