Question about encountering a random ship

[bluestacks]

I have read somewhere in the rule book that if you are told to summon a card, but there are no cards left named that card, then you should still summon a blank sheet of paper and pretend that it is a copy of that card. I am paraphrasing of course but that was the gist of it.

My question is when a card tells you to encounter a random ship... lets say I am on the Truewind ship and there are 5 other ships in the box. Do I summon 1 random of the 5, or do I treat the Truewind as a 6th possible ship and summon one of the random 6?

Basically can the ship I already control be duplicated to count as a potential enemy ship as well?

As always, thanks very much to this community for answering all of these questions.

[skizzerz]

If you are told to summon a card and that card does not exist in the box (i.e. all copies of it are hidden in location decks or whatnot), that becomes an impossible instruction and you ignore it per the golden rules.

However, if you are told to summon a card multiple times (such as "each character summons and encounters X"), you only need to grab one copy of X and then pass it around between all the characters. In other words, everyone gets their own "virtual" copy of the physical card, instead of needing to grab multiple copies of that card.

When told to summon and encounter any card, whether that is a random ship or a random weapon, it comes from the box unless explicitly specified otherwise. As the ship you are using is not in the box, it cannot be summoned. As such, you would summon one of the 5 that are still in the box (determined randomly).

[bluestacks]

Clutch response, skizzerz. That clears up a lot for me. THANK YOU!

[bluestacks]

I like to lay all extra ships out on the table above the game as if they are floating in the sea, making a nice visual as well as a warning of what can come. But of course, from a rule standpoint they need to be treated as in the box. I'll make sure I never treat the ship I control as in the box.