Funny, I've been asking myself the exact same question just a few days ago ;-)

I came to the conclusion that all cards, including the Shoggoth, go underneath the draw deck. This is because of this FAQ entry:

If a passive ability would alter
an action as it is being initiated, the
passive is first resolved on the action,
which now altered, is initiated. A
Disrupt triggered, disrupts the altered
action not the action before the passive
is applied.

The Shoggoth's passive is an altering effect (because it doesn't use the word instead) and therefore the Rift's Action is altered in step 1 (Initiation). Only later, in step 3 (Resolution), the Shoggoth leaves play, with all of your other cards, going to the bottom of the deck.

I would agree with that reasoning.

 In not that sure. Action effect destroys characters. It's not "send all cards to discard pile" its "destroy characters" effect. And characters are placed in the discard pile after they are destroyed. ]

hmm 10 a) when forgotten shoggoth is destroyed does he go to the discard or bottom of the deck - i think its discard as he is dead when his ability would send him to bottom of the deck

A character is placed into the discard pile concurrently with the card being destroyed (to be more precise, immediately after the destruction, but in the same step of an action window, the resolution):

3) Action is executed
The active player now executes the
effects of the action. If this action
discards or destroys one or more cards,
returns one or more cards to a player’s
hand or deck, these cards immediately
leave play.

When a card is destroyed, this implicitly means that the card goes onto the discard pile. And that is the triggering condition stated in the Shoggoths's passive ability.

If the Shoggoth were to be read so literal that it isn't applicable with "discard", "sacrifice" or "destroy" effects, what were his passive useful for? There are not many cards that read "move to the discard pile"….

10a) I still think the timing is otherwise. The Shoggoth's passive uses the word "would", indicating that the following happens somewhen before the destruction effect. And it is not a replacement effect, but an altering effect (altering the destination for the destroyed card from the top of the discard pile to the bottom of the deck), therefore the FAQ already stated should apply, which says that the altering effect does do its alteration in step 1) of the action window, the initiation. So the effect is altered before the shoggoth leaves play, therefore also effecting the Shoggoth itself.

Hmm guess I'm still thinking about responses and passive timing after effects resolve.

I'm still sad the only way to get official answers is mailing a designer and getting personal answer rather than some kind of more public answer. I still think the only guy who really understands this game is Penfold. I still cant live down the general timing framework that has so many cards IMO struggle to fit. (edit: now that i think of it, adding a step for altering passives before disrupt step and marking those passives somehow on cards might be all this timing structure needs; hmm i need to start thinking that way)

Thx for help.

I wonder how many ruling discussions are there during tournaments? Especially with tricky combos where nuances can make a deck stop working at all.

.Zephyr. said:

I'm glad I could be of help.
Yes, I also think some more info in the FAQ about how to correctly resolve passive abilities with special timing words ("would", "before") would be good. Currently, only the "after" timing of passives has its proper place in the structure of the action window. ("while" and "when" are usually pretty easy to sort out, too.) Mentally adding inserts in the timing structure is also the thing I'm doing. I guess it will be included in the FAQ somewhen in the future, after enough players have submitted their correct-timing-of-passives questions.

.Zephyr. said:

If you haven't been to a tournament yet you may not know, but I've found that few players use anything overly tricky. Weird combos are for casual play. In a tournament you're more interested in proven, reliable performance, so many decks are rather 'boring', focusing more on 'stats'.

Virtually none of the tournament deck ideas are discussed online before the event and usually only the top three decks or so are posted afterwards (if at all).

E.g. before the last European Championship, the boards were abuzz with Silver Twilight questions, ideas, decks and combos, and particularly the 'overpoweredness' of the Initiate of Huang Hun. In the tournament there was about one player (out of 26 or so) who used ST cards.

It makes sense to me that if your deck depends on a certain card interaction, you make sure that you understand how those cards work BEFORE you go to a major tournament.  If it happens that you use some tricky case that's not well-defined, you would send a private email to Damon beforehand to confirm how it should work and take a printout of the email chain with you to the tournament in case you need to show it to the judge.

What it basically comes down to is why would anyone take the risk of going to a big tournament not knowing whether key components of their deck "work" or not?

dboeren said: