Summoning and not enough Monsters

[mickcatron]

Ok, my group has been playing for a couple of weeks now and we think we may have been playing this incorrectly.

This is from page 12 in the rulebook.

Summoning and Adding Cards
Sometimes you will be told to summon a card and encounter it, or
to add a card to a deck. When this happens, retrieve the card from
the box. If you need to summon or add a number of cards and there
aren’t enough copies of that card in the box, the current player
decides how to distribute the cards that are there; ignore the rest.

In the case of a card that says EACH player summons such and such a monster and has to encounter it, we were just retrieving one card and passing it around for each player to fight. We are pretty sure there was at least one situation where there would have not been enough of the particular monster type for each player to have fought it.

So, my question is has anyone else encountered this problem and how did you resolve? According to the rules above, or just similar to the way I stated we were playing.

I can kind of see it going either way. I imagine when I (now) read the rules that it is an ambush situation and every available monster is rushing in to fight at the same time; hence if there isn't enough, there isn't enough.

On the other hand, maybe the intention, at least in the case of monster encounters, was to make it a much more difficult situation and everyone should be fighting regardless of the fact that there might not be enough cards... you can always imagine the monster.

[Mike Selinker]

mickcatron wrote:

In the case of a card that says EACH player summons such and such a monster and has to encounter it, we were just retrieving one card and passing it around for each player to fight.

That is what we meant.

[Gary Stitely]

Mike Selinker wrote:

mickcatron wrote:

In the case of a card that says EACH player summons such and such a monster and has to encounter it, we were just retrieving one card and passing it around for each player to fight.

That is what we meant.

So if there is just one card, everyone must fight it? but if no cardd, noone fights anything?

[mickcatron]

No I think the point of the situation is just to encounter the monster, not really focus on if you still have the cards. The monster shows up no matter what, the card is just for reference.

[Kirk Bauer]

I agree all players must encounter the monster regardless of the number of cards available. I don't see any problem with passing it around and resolving it one player at a time though.

[Gary Stitely]

I have no problem with whatever way it is meant to be. i just wonder why page 12 seems to say the opposite of what is posted here.

[Mike Riley 302]

So, Mike. What does the page 12 text apply to?

[Throknor]

Mike Riley 302 wrote:

So, Mike. What does the page 12 text apply to?

I'm guessing the 'Add cards to a deck' portion would still apply. You don't need multiple copies of summoned encounters since you would take turns regardless, but for adding you would.

And this may just be more future-proofing.

An example:

Some card in the future could say 'Shuffle a soldier into every open location'. If there aren't enough left in the box the player must decide which locations they go to.

[Mike Selinker]

It's *mostly* future-proofing along the lines you describe. Right now we believe we've covered every circumstance with enough cards to handle it but you never know. Imagine this location:

Mike's Stupid Loot Shop
Reward: Each character draws a random loot from the box.

Six-player group, four loots left in the box. I close the location so I choose which order we draw.

Also, that card will never happen.

[Mike Riley 302]

Thanks, Mike S for the clarification. I'll let you know why I open my stupid loot shop. ;-)

[h4ppy]

@MikeSelinker - there are plenty of situations in the base game where there are not enough cards to go around, usually when playing with six players:

If you're playing with six characters in Trouble at Sandpoint and find the non-Wrathful Sinspawn henchman at the location which has a closing requirement "summon and defeat a Wrathful Sinspawn henchman", but this happens before you've defeated any of the Wrathful Sinspawns at other locations. In this case there are no Wrathful Sinspawns anywhere for you to find the details from... so you don't have to do anything to close the location? (Thematically they are all out elsewhere and left the base undefended?!?)

If you come across a Skeleton Horde ambush in any Scenario where there are Ancient Skeleton henchmen at the locations.

If you come across a Goblin Raid ambush in any Scenario where there are Goblin henchmen at the locations.

[Charles Scholz]

h4ppy wrote:

@MikeSelinker - there are plenty of situations in the base game where there are not enough cards to go around, usually when playing with six players:

If you're playing with six characters in Trouble at Sandpoint and find the non-Wrathful Sinspawn henchman at the location which has a closing requirement "summon and defeat a Wrathful Sinspawn henchman", but this happens before you've defeated any of the Wrathful Sinspawns at other locations. In this case there are no Wrathful Sinspawns anywhere for you to find the details from... so you don't have to do anything to close the location? (Thematically they are all out elsewhere and left the base undefended?!?)

If you come across a Skeleton Horde ambush in any Scenario where there are Ancient Skeleton henchmen at the locations.

If you come across a Goblin Raid ambush in any Scenario where there are Goblin henchmen at the locations.

If you are at the point where you are closing a location, you have already defeated the henchman at that location, so there is always one available, unless you encoutered the villain first thing.

[Fromper]

Charles Scholz wrote:

h4ppy wrote:

@MikeSelinker - there are plenty of situations in the base game where there are not enough cards to go around, usually when playing with six players:

If you're playing with six characters in Trouble at Sandpoint and find the non-Wrathful Sinspawn henchman at the location which has a closing requirement "summon and defeat a Wrathful Sinspawn henchman", but this happens before you've defeated any of the Wrathful Sinspawns at other locations. In this case there are no Wrathful Sinspawns anywhere for you to find the details from... so you don't have to do anything to close the location? (Thematically they are all out elsewhere and left the base undefended?!?)

If you come across a Skeleton Horde ambush in any Scenario where there are Ancient Skeleton henchmen at the locations.

If you come across a Goblin Raid ambush in any Scenario where there are Goblin henchmen at the locations.

If you are at the point where you are closing a location, you have already defeated the henchman at that location, so there is always one available, unless you encoutered the villain first thing.

Just played that adventure yesterday, so I know this one. There's a different henchman, besides the sinspawns. So if they beat that guy, then try to close the location that requires summoning the sinspawn, there might not be a sinspawn available if they're all deployed to other location decks.

Also, the villain in that adventure summons a sinspawn that you have to fight before you fight him. If you meet him before you run into any of the henchmen, then you have the same issue.

[Charles Scholz]

Are there 7 sinspawns? If there are other henchman being used, shouldn't there be sinspawn left in the box since there are only eight locations?

[Fromper]

There are only 6 sinspawns. So in a 6 player game with 8 locations, they'll all be in location decks at the start of the game, along with the villain and the one other henchman.

[Tamago]

Fromper wrote:

There are only 6 sinspawns. So in a 6 player game with 8 locations, they'll all be in location decks at the start of the game, along with the villain and the one other henchman.

My group had the same sort of thing happen when we played "Black Fang's Dungeon". There were only 5 Ancient Skeleton Henchmen in the box, so they all went into the starting location deck. Then someone flipped a Barrier that said we had to fight an Ancient Skeleton Henchman and ended up having to search through one of the location decks to find one.

One of the players wondered why that barrier didn't just have the stats for the skeleton on it; that would have saved a lot of time in addition to avoiding the problem we ran into.

[h4ppy]

I think if there are none in the box you'd be better off either:

a) drawing a new, random, barrier from the box

or

b) saying that all the skeletons were on holiday so you auto-pass the event.

Searching through location decks is a major spoiler. It reveals the boons and banes in a deck and may even reveal the Villain's location which is going to ruin your game.

[Mike Selinker]

h4ppy wrote:

@MikeSelinker - there are plenty of situations in the base game where there are not enough cards to go around, usually when playing with six players:

If you're playing with six characters in Trouble at Sandpoint and find the non-Wrathful Sinspawn henchman at the location which has a closing requirement "summon and defeat a Wrathful Sinspawn henchman", but this happens before you've defeated any of the Wrathful Sinspawns at other locations. In this case there are no Wrathful Sinspawns anywhere for you to find the details from... so you don't have to do anything to close the location? (Thematically they are all out elsewhere and left the base undefended?!?)

If you come across a Skeleton Horde ambush in any Scenario where there are Ancient Skeleton henchmen at the locations.

If you come across a Goblin Raid ambush in any Scenario where there are Goblin henchmen at the locations.

Fair enough. In a six-player game, you could write down the stats of those specific henchmen in any scenario that uses those henchmen. Any other cases?