Several posts over on BGG have asked about the removal mechanic and some questions arose because people were assuming 'return to the box' meant banish, but I've been disagreeing, saying it's not banishing, it's just returning to the box.
However, I noticed something on a related note in the rules (v2 rules) that specifically mentions this point in time (after the scenario).
Dying
If you are ever required to draw a card from your deck and cannot,
your character dies. Place any cards in your deck, hand, and discard
pile under your character card. You cannot take turns, play cards, move,
or do anything else for the rest of this scenario. Certain powerful cards
allow you to return from death; if this doesn’t happen before the end of
the scenario, your death is permanent. The other characters may use the
dead character’s cards when they rebuild their decks after the scenario;
any cards that they don’t keep are then banished.
So my question is twofold.
1) When a character dies, are only the cards from that character banished if they're not kept, or when a character dies, does it make the entire cardpool of non-kept cards get banished?2) Was this a miswording in the rules either in this section for dying or for the After the Scenario deck-rebuilding section, and if so, then which one is correct?
1) Only the ones not kept from that deceased character's deck are banished. The acquired card pool is still only "put-back-in-the-box". The "any cards" refers to any of the dead character's cards.
2) They are two different things. This section deals with what to do with the dead character's deck. You can either use them to rebuild your deck or banish them. Any of the dead character's cards you don't use to rebuild are banished. The other section is about what to do with cards you acquired. You didn't acquire the dead character's cards, so they are covered under a different set of rules. I think that it is intentional to let you banish the dead character's cards, but the cards you acquire and choose not to keep. Here is why:
The difference is, the cards you acquire, you had an intention of using, even if just as "hit points" or a fireball for Seoni or a turn-into-a-bear card for Lini or rage card for Amiri or recharge-to-aid card for Harsk or Lem. But the cards the dead character acquired you had no intention of using. And you can choose what you want to attempt to acquire, but you can't choose what another player's character attempts to acquire.
So by saying you can't remove from the game what you've acquired, they are saying "If you want to pick up that Caltrops and use it for a weak monster you encounter this scenario, go ahead. But doing so shows you use it, so you won't get to remove it from the game." In other words, you can't say "This is useful" and then say "This isn't useful."
In essence, they aren't saddling you with the dead Drunken Master Sajan's choice to keep some potions when his player is going to decide to start playing Amiri since Sajan died. You don't have to remove dead Drunken Master Sajan's basic cards, but you can if you want to since no one will have the advantage he had with them.
I didn't notice that these cards are banished instead of just putting them in the box. Now I'll just invite some new characters to join the party and let them die so that I can get unwanted cards out of the game more quickly.... Sajan would be a great first victim since he can use all his Blessings of the Gods to help the rest of us before they are eliminated from the game along with him.
Seems slightly broken to play that way.
Not sure if serious.
To respond to your comment - I doubt anyone IS playing that way. (By that I mean intentionally starting extra characters to kill them off in an effort to banish their stuff)
Sure you can manipulate the system if you wanted.. in the same way if you were actually playing a pen and paper rpg you *could* start up a whole bunch of extra characters and just suicide them all so that the remaining party members could sell off their starter stuff for small amounts of cash, do it enough times and you could have as much gold as you wanted.
You could also re-run Brigandoom 100 times until you literally had the best possible combination of cards available from the box in your deck, and repeat that with the very first scenario of each adventure after new cards are added. I doubt anyone does that either, as it's obviously not intended and at least for me, doesn't sound very fun.
See also farming for boons. MMORPGs have the behaviour that you describe.
I don't intend to play that way, but it was amusing to note the advantages of a twisted approach to the game.
I did not intend to play that way, but in a competitive game this would be a problem. I normally play games with people who playtest Race for the Galaxy and Dominion, so broken strategies are likely to get played. Why throw away the rulebook when it already lets us do these things?
I am much more interested in chaining my players to their chairs and having someone crack a whip at them so that we get through the scenarios faster. I understand that this will be thematically appropriate in the next adventure path and approve.
I assume the intent of the banishment rules is that each card will get out of the box at least once before it is banished.
If you ever want to mix up things in the future, having subsets of cards for scenarios instead of just banishment would be enjoyable despite the set-up time ('use goblinoids elite to 2 and animals basic to 2 for monsters', 'include the falling bell among the barriers' or 'use cityfolk for allies') would improve the thematic nature of the game. It isn't too bad in Thunderstone.
But that's sort of the point, this is a co-op game, not a competitive game.
Chief Technical Officer
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So my question is twofold.
1) When a character dies, are only the cards from that character banished if they're not kept, or when a character dies, does it make the entire cardpool of non-kept cards get banished?2) Was this a miswording in the rules either in this section for dying or for the After the Scenario deck-rebuilding section, and if so, then which one is correct?