Our house rule until this is officially solved is that we consider that "examine" skips any face up cards (including the one you encounter and others that may be left face up on top of your locations).
This definitively impacts the game but at least it's easy to rule/remember until there is a final fix.
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This is probably looking for the same solution as in the thread you identified.
Ahem... the thread quoted by OP hasn't been updated, but I was under the impression it is already addressed by the Mummy's Mask Rulebook, page 14:
"Sometimes a card allows you to examine one or more cards—that
means looking at the specified card and then putting it back where
it came from. If there are any faceup cards on the deck, ignore them
when determining which cards you are examining."
Yes, that in the online rulebook.
As this example shows, it has been updated since the print version was published.
Chief Technical Officer
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Normally, the way issues like this get solved is that we have a discussion, come to a conclusion, and then I begin implementing the solution. Normally, I update the rules or card files first, then I create the FAQ. Very occasionally, while creating the FAQ, I spot a potential problem in the solution. In these cases, I don't post the FAQ, but I also don't usually back out the changes to the file; while the change I made may not be the perfect text, what it replaced was *also* not the perfect text. This is what happened here.
Which is to say "ignore faceup cards when examining" is not the final answer, but it *is* better than what we had before. It has a couple of problems, the most significant of which is that it might mislead you into not examining tokens shuffled into location decks, which we definitely want you to do—after all, that's one of the ways you can get your token back out. (We will likely solve that by defining both sides of a token card as a face, and instead of telling you to ignore faceup cards, we'll tell you to examine only facedown cards.) We *may* also limit this restriction to location decks, but I'm less sure about that. But there's also a complex interaction that we still need to solve (involving the examination of multiple cards when some of them are Trigger cards that kick off explorations while there are multiple faceup cards on the deck).
It's funny how all this complexity usually results in a change of about ten words.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Added a clarification on examining locations that have faceup cards (which would include the card you are currently encountering).
And if you're curious about the complex interaction, it's this:
Situation: You have the following cards at the top of your location deck:
Card A: Faceup Card that tells you that you must encounter it on your first exploration on a turn
Card B:. Faceup Card that you must encounter it on your first exploration on a turn
Card C: Facedown card that has the Undead trait.
You play a Blessing of Thoth, which says "Discard this card to examine the top card of your location deck. If the card has the Undead trait, you may explore your location."
This new rule tells you that when you examine the deck, you examine Card C, and then you may explore. So what card are you encountering when you explore?
From Faceup Cards: "If a faceup card tells you that you must encounter it on your first exploration on a turn, then you must encounter it the first time you explore that turn. After that exploration, ignore it for the purpose of additional explorations that turn; however, it still counts as the top card of the deck for any other purpose. If multiple cards are left faceup on the same deck, you may place them in any order and encounter them in that order, one per exploration. "
So the answer to the question "what card are you encountering" depends on whether it's your first, second, or later exploration of a turn.
If it's your first exploration for the turn, you're encountering Card A. If it's your second (meaning you already encountered Card A during your first exploration) it's Card B. And if it's anything after that, it's Card C. (Unless, of course, card C had the Trigger trait and made you encounter it when you examined it, in which case it probably isn't there anymore and you're actually encountering Card D now...)
We think this is a little bit weird and not super intuitive, but it's not unreasonable, and it is also a pretty unusual case, so we let it stand.
Thanks for the extensive write-up, Vic!
Just to get an odd consequence of this resolution out of the way:
So, I just failed to defeat a Nightbelly Boa and it returns face-up on top of the deck. I have a Detect Evil in hand, but I will NOT be able to encounter the Boa through it (instead I'll be digging *beneath* the Boa, which is in all-likeliness sub-optimal)
Is that an intended consequence and/or something the team is OK with?
EDIT: Also, given the wording of the FAQ - both about Examine and about Tokens - doesn't that mean we would NEVER get to take back our tokens through Examine (as both sides are 'face-up', which we're instructed to ignore). It does seem pretty counter-intuitive, but in fact would be a better wording if the Tokens were specified to "have no face". (or alternatively, there could be a caveat in the Rulebook that Tokens *always* are considered for purposes of examining?)
Yeah. I had the same thought originally then just came to the same conclusion as Malcolm_Reynolds.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Just to get an odd consequence of this resolution out of the way:
So, I just failed to defeat a Nightbelly Boa and it returns face-up on top of the deck. I have a Detect Evil in hand, but I will NOT be able to encounter the Boa through it (instead I'll be digging *beneath* the Boa, which is in all-likeliness sub-optimal)Is that an intended consequence and/or something the team is OK with?
I'll get back to you. (The wording of Nightbelly Boa hasn't evolved along with the rules—after all, that Faceup Cards sidebar didn't exist until S&S—and I think it needs to change one way or another.)