The Free Captains' Regatta victory condition question

[Dave Riley]

Sometimes the cards have rules printed on them with homebrew in mind, like Black Magga having stats even though you never encounter her.

I agree it's a little weird to have not closing locations be an essential part of the scenario, but to not explicitly define it in any way. But only a little weird, since space for rules on the scenario card is limited, and maybe they thought "well since the henchman needs to be at the top of the deck, people will inuit that you can't close the location."

[Hawkmoon269]

My wife and I finally ran this one last night. We had 3 locations with Enemy Ships on top after 3 turns. The first had an Enemy Ship when Jirelle examined the location after her move step. The second didn't but then Merisiel shuffled and explore, encountering an Enemy Ship henchman, which she defeated. Likewise at the third location with Oloch, encountered and defeated after the shuffled.

We took it slow the rest of the scenario, getting our fourth closed after only a few more turns, and always making sure we never did anything to risk our locations being shuffled. We only encountered one non-Enemy Ship henchman, one of the Hurricane Winds, and use everything we had to totally guarantee it would be defeated to not mess with our other locations. We had them all set after about 15 turns.

We have still not encountered Hirgenzosk.

[Ilpalazo]

I have to say that the regatta with 6 people running is ludicrously easy. Or maybe we just got lucky, we had all the ships set up with about 12 turns to go at least (maybe more) so we simply went to a location with only three cards left, and kept defeating the ship over and over again, ending up with 29 loot cards!

We never did run into Hirgenzosk and only ran into one of the storm henchmen, so I guess luck had a big role in it, but if you do get this set up early, it becomes like shooting fish in a barrel for loot.

[Ilpalazo]

This thread was invaluable to figuring out how to play this, because frankly it's a bit silly that there are henchmen there that allow you to close locations, which auto fails the scenario.

[ryric]

My fiancé and I squeaked this out on literally the last turn - one card left in the blessings deck, and I was on the brink of death with Lini(0 cards left in deck but no need to draw). One location left to sort and we managed to find the ship in the 3 explores we could muster.

[Dark Nero]

Nefrubyr wrote:

I don't have this scenario yet, but reading the above raises this question:

Quote:

Shuffle an Enemy Ship henchman into each location deck. If you defeat an Enemy Ship, put it on top of its location deck.

If you defeat an Enemy Ship, two effects trigger: (1) The Enemy Ship says you can attempt to close the location, and (2) the scenario says to put the Enemy Ship on top of its location deck.

Is there any reason you can't choose to do them in that order? That is, close the location, and assuming you succeed, return the Enemy Ship to the (closed, empty) location deck. I'd think that would make it quite a bit easier to keep the card on top.

Hawkmoon269 wrote:

You can decide the order, but the consequences of choosing to close first would also mean that the Enemy Ship henchman is banished.

S&S Rulebook p15 wrote:

Closing a Location If you didn’t find any villains, perform the When Permanently Closed effect: First, apply any effects that say “before closing.” Then banish all of the cards from the location deck; it is now closed.

So, you banish "all of the cards from the location deck". And the Enemy Ship henchman never stops being a card from the location deck. So you would also banish it. And thus you'd lose.

So no matter which order you'd perform them in, you'd banish the Enemy Ship henchman if you closed the location.

------------------------------

Hello, Hawkmoon269, I hope you can still reply to this. I've been thinking about this case a lot, trying to find proof that you CAN close locations in this scenario and NOT lose. Nefrubyr came to exactly the same conclusion as I did, and your counter-argument seemed solid at first, but now I am not so sure.

First, we need to pay attention to the fact that in this scenario, putting an Enemy Ship on top of a location is NOT a replacement effect. If it were a replacement effect, it would say "If you would banish an enemy ship, put it on top of its location deck INSTEAD." Such an effect would trigger during the Resolve the Encounter step, when you attempt to banish the defeated Enemy Ship.

But this is not the case. The scenario says, "If you defeat an Enemy Ship, put it on top of its location deck." As we know, all "If / When you defeat..." effects trigger after the encounter is completely over, right after the "Resolve the Encounter" step. Another very important rule from the rulebook within the Resolve the Encounter step is: "If you succeed at all of the checks required to defeat a bane, banish it," meaning we banish the defeated bane before ending the encounter—this is important.

Based on this, let's break down the encounter with the Enemy Ship henchman and what happens after it (omitting the details of encountering the summoned ship).

Flip over the Enemy Ship henchman during an exploration.
Apply no Effects That Happen When You Encounter a Card.
Apply no Evasion Effects.
Apply no Effects That Happen Before You Act.
Skip all steps related to the Check To Defeat, because the Enemy Ship doesn't have one. Instead, apply its first power to summon and encounter a random ship. After you defeat the summoned ship, return to this current encounter with the Enemy Ship henchman.
Apply no Effects That Happen After You Act.
Now we enter the "Resolve the Encounter" step. It says, "If you succeed at all of the checks required to defeat a bane, banish it," but we did not make any checks. At this point in this step, we determine that the henchman is defeated due to its second power. Unfortunately, the rulebook does NOT specify what to do in this situation if the bane was defeated without making any checks, but the only logical assumption is to follow the same action—banish it (as if you had succeeded at all checks to defeat it)—since no other option is suggested. So, at this moment, the Enemy Ship is banished, and no replacement effects occur (as described above, the scenario power does not state to do anything "instead of banishing"), and we end the "Resolve the Encounter" step and the encounter as a whole.

At this moment, two powers are triggered:

a) Henchman power: "The Enemy Ship is defeated, and you may immediately attempt to close the location this henchman came from." This has unusual wording, as it doesn't start with "If the Enemy Ship is defeated..." but this is the only logical timing to resolve this power. Since we could not just start closing the location in the middle of the encounter, we do it immediately as soon as we can—after the encounter.

b) Scenario power: "If you defeat an Enemy Ship, put it on top of its location deck."

Which effect should be resolved first? The one with the word "immediately," because this is the word designers use to indicate the precedence and priority of some powers. Such powers must be resolved as soon as the opportunity arises, and you may not activate any other powers in between. Unless... those powers also say "immediately," in which case you probably choose the order—but this is not explicitly stated in the rulebook.

So, first, we resolve the "immediate" henchman power to attempt to close a location, and we succeed. Whether we activate the "When Permanently Closed" location power at this moment is a big question. But in any case, we then proceed to activate the second power still in the queue—the scenario power to put the defeated Enemy Ship on top of its location, which we gladly do.

As a result, we have a closed location with the Enemy Ship henchman on top of it.

[skizzerz]

The "instead" is implied per the golden rules. The rulebook says that defeated banes are banished. The scenario card says to reload it on the location. This is conflicting information (the rulebook says do one thing, the card says do something else). Per the golden rules, the card overrides the rulebook. It does not need to use the word "instead" because the conflict can be resolved without it and the PACG designers have typically not used extra words when unnecessary.

So, the ship is reloaded as part of being defeated; this happens during the encounter (in the "Resolve the Encounter" step of the encounter). Then you get to the part where you may attempt to close. If you choose to do so, the ship is still part of the location deck and thus would be banished by being closed. Attempting to permanently close locations happens during the encounter as well, timing-wise.

Edit: You can certainly interpret it the other way (as not a conflict that the golden rules resolve, but rather an instruction of "fetch the banished Enemy Ship and reload it on the location" -- since the bane would be banished simply by being defeated in such a case). However, I feel the intent behind this scenario is that you are supposed to keep all of them open (the final scenario in each adventure tends to be a difficulty spike, and many of the other henchmen shuffle into other open locations if undefeated), so anything that allows you to close while keeping a ship around feels unintentional.