So in preparation for the upcoming OutPost play-by-forums of PACG, I've been re-reading the Adventure Card Guild Guide to ensure I'm familiar with the process of Organised Play. Among one or two things that I'm certain will become more clear in time, I noticed one unusual element.
Removing Cards from Play
If you encounter a boon that require you to remove it from
the game to activate its power, you must instead exchange
that boon with a random boon of the same type from the
game box and encounter that card.
Now, from my experience with Wrath of the Righteous, I'm pretty confident that this is to avoid the awkward situation of Organised Play characters using items that would allow them to permanently check off additional feats on their character cards, thus allowing characters to become stronger than other OP characters, especially since Organised Play will often involve one character going through multiple game boxes, removing any real limit as to how many times these could be used to 'max out' a character.
Really, all cards that are able to be removed from the game generally do so so that they cannot be re-used or spammed, even over the course of an entire adventure, so it makes sense.
...however, the wording strikes me as odd, because, as per Rules As Written, it only covers Encountering these boons. There are quite a few ways to draw boons from the box, such as from character or location powers. I believe there's a couple of Barriers, for example, that upon defeat let you draw an item from the box to add to your hand, and it seems like this would be allowed. There's also at least one Barrier (Treasure Map, I believe) that allows you to examine the top card of the location deck, and if it's a boon, you may add it to your hand. Once again, no "Encountering" is taking place, which is a word that has a very specific meaning in the PACG ruleset.
Admittedly, unless you have a character power that lets you repeatedly try this, this is a difficult strategy to exploit, but it's certainly not impossible. Especially if a player was consciously trying to max out an Organised Play character. Is this really intended? Because it seems like an odd oversight to use the word 'encounter' rather than just saying "If you examine, encounter or draw a boon that [X], exchange that boon [...etc]".
After all, as written, it also means these boons remain if Examined, which basically makes them 'mystery boons' even in fully scouted location decks, because you don't replace them until you actually take an action that causes you to encounter them.
It does feel like it ought to say "if you see [the front face of] a boon that requires you to remove it from the game to activate one of its powers, immediately exchange that boon with a random boon of the same type from the game box".
Or it could just say to remove such boons from the box before you play. Because if it said that, then even if you forgot to do it (or just didn't spot one such a boon), guess what you would do as soon as you saw such a card?
Removing all such boons from the box before play is too much of a hassle to be a general rule... you shouldn't have to look at every card in the game before you play it.
I'm debating if the edge case of gaining cards without encountering them is broken enough to need addressing. Perhaps "when you encounter or draw a boon that etc" is enough.
Note also that in the cold path of Cosmic Captive, the party gets a card which can be removed from the game as a scenario reward (one for the entire party, not one per character), and that card can be used to gain a permanent feat (Zhaleh).
I would agree that I think the intent is that unless a reward names a specific card-- when you examine from a location deck, encounter, draw from the game box, or acquire a card that's power has the possibility of removing it from the game then it needs to be replaced.
Chief Technical Officer
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We had solved this in Guide 6.0 by making the removal rule apply to any cards, not just ones you encounter, but we're going bigger in Guide 6.2: "When you would remove a card from the game, instead banish it."
(Between this adjustment and the introduction of "feat caps" in 6.0, Zhaleh from the Cosmic Captive is now a bit overpowered to groups with multiple players who have not had their feat cap raised, yet she’s much less useful to characters who have already had their feat cap raised. We will issue a separate fix that should make her more appropriate for both groups.)