The steps involved in encountering a villain differ from those when encountering any other card. These series of steps are well detailed on pages 10 ("cards") and 17-18 ("villains").
Cards
1. Evade the Card (Optional).
2. Apply Any Effects That Happen Before the Encounter, If Needed.
3. Attempt the Check
4. Attempt the Next Check, If Needed
5. Apply Any Effects That Happen After the Encounter, If Needed
6. Resolve the Encounter.
Villain
1. Attempt to Temporarily Close Open Locations
2. Encounter the Villain.
3. If You Defeat the Villain, Close the Villain’s Location.
4. Check to See Whether the Villain Escapes.
5. If the Villain Has Nowhere to Escape to, You Win!
The wording for step 2 (Encounter the villain) implies you go straight to "Attempt the Check" but this seems wrong to me so I have a couple of questions ...
Q. Do you get a chance to evade the villain?
If so does it occur before step 1 (Attempt to temporarily close ...)
Q. Is it safe to assume step 2 of encountering a villain actually consists of steps 2 to 5 in the general description of encountering a card? The current wording suggests you go straight to step 3 (Attempt the Check).
If so you'd end up with the following steps for encountering any card
1. Evade the Card (optional)
2. If the card is a villain attempt to temporarily close open locations
3. Apply Any Effects That Happen Before the Encounter, If Needed.
4. Attempt the Check
5. Attempt the Next Check, If Needed
6. Apply Any Effects That Happen After the Encounter, If Needed
7. Resolve the encounter
If the card is a villain
7a. If You Defeat the Villain, Close the Villain’s Location.
7b. Check to See Whether the Villain Escapes.
7c. If the Villain Has Nowhere to Escape to, You Win!
If the card is another type of bane and you succeed at all of the checks required to defeat a bane, banish it; if you don’t succeed, it is undefeated—shuffle the card back into its location deck.
If you succeed at a check to acquire a boon, put it in your hand; otherwise, banish it.
All of the "Encounter" steps are part of "Encounter the Villain". Encountering a villain is actually no different to encountering any other card, it's just that there are some things that happen before and after.
In other words you do:
1. Attempt to temp close open locations
2. All the encounter stuff (from "1. Evade the card" through to "6. Resolve the Encounter")
3. If You Defeat the Villain, Close the Villain’s Location.
4. Check to See Whether the Villain Escapes.
5. If the Villain Has Nowhere to Escape to, You Win!
As far as I know, you can temp close locations and THEN evade the villain if you really want to.
All of the "Encounter" steps are part of "Encounter the Villain". Encountering a villain is actually no different to encountering any other card, it's just that there are some things that happen before and after.
In other words you do:
1. Attempt to temp close open locations
2. All the encounter stuff (from "1. Evade the card" through to "6. Resolve the Encounter")
3. If You Defeat the Villain, Close the Villain’s Location.
4. Check to See Whether the Villain Escapes.
5. If the Villain Has Nowhere to Escape to, You Win!As far as I know, you can temp close locations and THEN evade the villain if you really want to.
Wouldn't evading the Villain take priority before doing anything else? So why would you need to temp close a location?
Example:
You draw the villain and decide to evade. The villain is neither defeated or undefeated, so they get re-shuffled in the same location they were found. I also believe that you do NOT apply any "if encountered" status effects. I'm fairly certain you don't take away from the blessing deck as if you were not successful in a check.
If you decide to NOT evade, you proceed as normal being sure to apply the "if encountered" effects first, if the card has any, and finish determining the rest of the outcomes.
If you know you're going to evade the villain then tell everyone and there's no reason for people to temp-close their locations. However, the order I put up is the order the rules say to do things as far as I understand them.
The opportunity to evade a card is part of the encounter 'phase' (it actually comes before the encounter itself). The opportunity to temp-close locations, logically or not, comes BEFORE the encounter.
See the timing docs for more info - and let me know if I'm wrong!
Wouldn't evading the Villain take priority before doing anything else? So why would you need to temp close a location?
Because there are circumstances where you might care, and in those circumstances we want you to care as much as you can.
For example:
- You, as Seoni, encounter Black Fang at the Wooden Bridge.
- You have 3 cards in hand.
- Bob, playing Valeros, is at the Warrens.
- He must succeed at a Dexterity 6 check, which you really want him to make.
- You play Speed and a blessing, so he will roll 2d8+3.
- Bob says, "Well, there's no way I can fail this."
- He rolls two 1s and blows the roll.
- You now want to evade Black Fang.
- You look at the Wooden Bridge's power, which lets you discard 2 cards to evade a monster.
- But you have only 1 card in hand, so you can't.
- You resolve never to play with Bob again.
By making you make the close decisions first, we heighten the drama a teeny-tiny bit.
Wouldn't evading the Villain take priority before doing anything else? So why would you need to temp close a location?Because there are circumstances where you might care, and in those circumstances we want you to care as much as you can.
For example:
- You, as Seoni, encounter Black Fang at the Wooden Bridge.
- You have 3 cards in hand.
- Bob, playing Valeros, is at the Warrens.
- He must succeed at a Dexterity 6 check, which you really want him to make.
- You play Speed and a blessing, so he will roll 2d8+3.
- Bob says, "Well, there's no way I can fail this."
- He rolls two 1s and blows the roll.
- You now want to evade Black Fang.
- You look at the Wooden Bridge's power, which lets you discard 2 cards to evade a monster.
- But you have only 1 card in hand, so you can't.
- You resolve never to play with Bob again.
By making you make the close decisions first, we heighten the drama a teeny-tiny bit.
It took me some time, but now I get the point you are trying to make. What I gather from your information is that if a character might not have a guaranteed escape, you would want to take precautions in temp-closing other locations.
What about characters like Merisiel who can automatically evade. Or if another a character has Cape of Escape or the spell Invisibility? In this case, at least Merisiel's I'm certain, you wouldn't need try to temp-close other locations?
I think this is why I was confused as to why you would attempt to temp close locations if you are evading, but the example you provide makes sense. Thank you.
I really like the extra drama and story telling that is involved when close happens before evade
So the order would be
1. If the card is a villain attempt to temporarily close open locations
2. Evade the Card (optional)
3. Apply Any Effects That Happen Before the Encounter, If Needed.
4. Attempt the Check
5. Attempt the Next Check, If Needed
6. Apply Any Effects That Happen After the Encounter, If Needed
7. Resolve the encounter
If the card is a villain
7a. If You Defeat the Villain, Close the Villain’s Location.
7b. Check to See Whether the Villain Escapes.
7c. If the Villain Has Nowhere to Escape to, You Win!
If the card is another type of bane and you succeed at all of the checks required to defeat a bane, banish it; if you don’t succeed, it is undefeated—shuffle the card back into its location deck.
If you succeed at a check to acquire a boon, put it in your hand; otherwise, banish it.
I am new to the game and have only really read the updated pdf rules. I had to go back to the original paper rulebook to find out that the original rules intend you to have the option to evade. At the moment the updated rules are pretty ambiguous in my opinion. They do imply on page 18 that you go straight to "check to defeat" after attempting to close. It might be worth clarifying that section of the rules ....
What about characters like Merisiel who can automatically evade. Or if another a character has Cape of Escape or the spell Invisibility? In this case, at least Merisiel's I'm certain, you wouldn't need try to temp-close other locations?
You never need to try to temporarily close locations.
When a player encounters the villain, each player at any other location may immediately attempt to fulfill the When Closing requirement for his location.
That looks right. I've had good feedback from players that used the timing breakdown docs for a scenario or two - it should help it become second nature.
(And then you, like me, can forget some of the detail and give people bad advice on the forums... thankfully not on *this* thread. Yet.)
To add to what Mike said, there amy also be times when you want to attempt to close locations even if you already know you want to evade the villain. Those attempts to close generally involve checks, which means that it give players the chance to use cards they might otherwise not want in their hand (and in some cases even the opportunity to draw new cards, like with Ezren's power to draw a card (if it's a spell) when he plays a spell).
Overall, it does seem as though the decision to temporarily close can have an impact (for good or bad depending on the circumstances) even with you evading the villain.
It does make sense now. I was confused, because the party I play with every character has some kind of escape ability. So when I saw people were going to escape and attempt temp-closing a location it was a head scratcher for me. I just never thought of a scenario where you might NOT be able to succeed at escaping, like Mike pointed out.
This is why I don't play with Bob, and play with my friends. ;p
It's not only that you might not be **able to** evade - it's also that you might not WANT to evade unless some of the locations were successfully closed.
E.g. Villain is in a deck with one card. There's another location with 10 cards and lots of monsters. If you fail to temp close the big location you might be better off evading the villain and facing him again next time.
Chief Technical Officer
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At the moment the updated rules are pretty ambiguous in my opinion. They do imply on page 18 that you go straight to "check to defeat" after attempting to close. It might be worth clarifying that section of the rules ....
The bit that says "Encounter the Villain" in bold type is pretty clearly telling you to encounter the villain, and "encounter" was previously defined very throughly as a series of steps of which "attempt the check" is just one.
Its your call Vic, to me this is clearer
Encounter the Villain.
Be careful to look for any special rules listed on the villain card or the scenario card. Follow the normal steps for encountering a card as detailed on page 10 with one exception. Since the villain needs to be cornered you should skip the last step "Resolve the Encounter".
If You Defeat the Villain ......