Check to Acquire: None
You may automatically acquire this card.If you have the Goblin trait, after you play this card, you may discard the top card of the blessings deck; if that card is a blessing, you may bury this card to automatically acquire it, then recharge it.
When this is the Hour:
When you would bury a boon, succeed at its check to acquire or banish it instead.
So I played Blessing of the Gobs and turned up The Crows, and wasn't quite sure how it worked. I have two questions about this interaction:
1: When I bury Blessing of the Gobs, The Crows is the Hour, so its effect triggers, right?
2: Since Blessing of the Gobs has no check to acquire, is it impossible to succeed? Or does its normal "you may automatically acquire" apply and allow me to succeed in that way? Or... Something else?
1. Yes
2. There is no check to acquire, so that is impossible. You may banish Gobs to acquire and recharge The Crows if you so wish.
“See below” wouldn’t make any difference whatsoever; there is still no check to make if it’s changed to that. The aside isn’t relevant here because “check to acquire” and “summon and acquire” are two very different things. The latter is definitely not impossible with Gobs whereas the former is.
1 - Yes, certainly seems to work that way, timing-wise
Say that the location states "Closing: (Summon and) acquire a random blessing", which may be seen as impossible instruction if BoGobs is drawn.
Why would that be an issue, since BoGobs specifically says it's *acquired* automatically?!?
2 - In such corner cases, we try to look for the "spirit of the law" (since the "letter of the law" doesn't cover that instance). My theory would be - Devs just want you to succeed at the *condition* to Acquire the buried card, but since wording that perfectly would require introducing new terminology (like "condition to acquire") or be overly wordy ("When you would bury a boon, succeed at its check to acquire or do any one other thing that would allow you to acquire it; otherwise, banish it instead.") - they just decided to take the easy way out and wrote it that way (since the overhead is not worthy the handful of exceptions).
Also, from a balance perspective, there's nothing particularly special about boons without checks to acquire - they're not perceivably more powerful than other boons (and in the case of basic blessings - they're usually LESS powerful), so there's no apparent reason why you should be penalized more severely for those.
Furthermore, Rulebook texts that could be interpreted:
A: " If a card’s check says “None” or “See Below,” the card’s powers will tell you what to do. If the check is listed as “None” and the power does not state the requirements to acquire or defeat, the card cannot be acquired or defeated."
- Even if a card doesn't have a numeral check value to beat - that is STILL in its "check to acquire" box. So, it can be argued you literally need to fulfill the condition in that box (like "Check to Acquire: Bury a boon") to succeed at its "check to acquire.
Of course, BoGobs says "None" in that box, but it DOES have power that "states the requirement to acquire or defeat" (so the provision "the card cannot be acquired or defeated" does NOT apply!). So then, we fall on the following rule:
B: "If a power allows you to automatically defeat or acquire a card, you may use it instead of attempting the check. Doing so counts as succeeding at all checks and requirements to defeat or acquire the card."
BoGobs DOES have a power that allow you to "automatically ... acquire a card" - so you can use it instead of attempting a check. This DOES count as "succeeding at all checks... to acquire" - and so your corner case is all set.
EDIT: ninja'd by Skizzerz with a disagreeing opinion, but I still think those two Rulebook quotes above solve the situation pretty cleanly, unless there is some argument to the contrary I'm missing?
Your B quote only applies when encountering the card. It says you may do that instead of going through the “attempting the check” encounter step. There is no encounter happening here.
I think this came up in the past with Teleportation Chamber (I think). On phone though and about to head off so I can’t look up the resolution.
It was indeed Teleportation Chamber (click into the page after the link as well). Consensus of post-errata Teleportation Chamber was that if the card had a check to defeat of "None" that you couldn't close the location. The same applies here -- if the check to acquire is "None" then you can't succeed at it.
Encounter rules (such as both your quotes above; I just noticed quote A also only applies while in an encounter) don't apply because there is no encounter happening.
In any case, I don't see any particular issue here. You can still banish Gobs to nab The Crows, and Gobs is easy to replace if you wind up with missing blessing slots at the end of the scenario.