Old Road

Any rule erratum or clarification submission for the upcoming 2018 ARV should be posted here.
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CDavis7M
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Konrad, and everyone, thanks for all of the explanation and discussion.

I have to say that I think Old Road falls into Konrad's first interpretation. But, Hour of Need falls into the second interpretation.

The wording in Old Road suggests that it is altering the conditions of the Faction (ie where the faction is playable). The wording implying: "Allows a character at a Haven to attempt to bring a faction into play *as if that faction were playable at the Haven*". I feel like Old Road is just enabling the faction card itself to be played at an additional site. (faction arrives to the Haven by an old road, character attempts to influence the faction that arrived as normal)

Where as Hour of Need has this long weird recitation of steps (play a faction from your hand, tap, etc) with some redundancy with the normal influence rules (tapping) and some new rules (organization phase). And then it also has a very harsh failure condition (death) compared to old road. I feel like Hour of Need enables the faction to be played "out of nowhere" bypassing the normal rules (a character sends a messenger a long distance with the red arrow to influence a faction).


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CDavis7M
Posts: 2816
Joined: Fri Jul 20, 2018 3:10 am
Location: California

Ichabod knows.
ICE wrote:From: ich...@spamblock.net (Ichabod)
Subject: [MECCG] Rules Digest 27
Date: 1998/01/04
>These questions regard the card "Old Road":
>
>If the influence attempt is successful, does the site at which the faction can
>normally be played become tapped? I think the answer would be yes, but became
>confused by looking at "Here, There or Yonder" (a somewhat similar card, but
>instead affecting allies), which has card text that specifically states that
>if the attempt is successful, the site becomes tapped, while "Old Road" does
>not.

Here there and Yonder is referring to the site it is played at, not the
site that the ally comes from. Factions played with Old Road will tap
the site Old Road is played at, but not the site where the faction
comes from.

>Also, if the influence attempt is not successful, is the faction discarded?
>Again, I think the answer is yes, but was confused by "Hour of Need" (an even
>more similar card), which specifically states that an unsuccessful attempt
>discards the faction, while "Old Road" makes no such mention.

Yes, the faction is discarded. In general, if a card does not say the rules
change, then they don't.
Some cards remind you that the rules don't change,
but that doesn't mean that cards without such reminders don't change the
rules.

------- "The Crossing-guard of Mordor" -------
Craig "Ichabod" O'Brien www.cstone.net/~ichabod/
Assistant Editor, ICE Me:CCG Official Netrep
"Home isa where you hanga your hat!" -Dr. Emilio Lizardo
-------- To email me, remove spamblock from the reply adress --------
Old Road does not have an effect to "play" a faction, it has an effect that modifies how a faction may be played. The faction must still be played and factions are only playable during the site phase.

The rules state: "If one of your characters is at the site specified on a faction card, he may tap during the site phase to attempt an influence check in order to play the faction card."

Old Road states: "Allows a character at a Haven to attempt to bring a faction into play. The length of the site path from this Haven to the site at which the faction can be played must be two or less (this must be verified by an available site card)."

So in combination: "If one of your characters at a haven and the length of the site path from this Haven to the site at which the faction can be played is be two or less, he may tap during the site phase to attempt an influence check in order to play the faction card."

The normal rules apply unless they are specifically overridden by the card effect. It's really that simple.
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