Rat swarm to close Farmhouse

[Urtar37]

I had Kyra at the Farmhouse and defeated the henchmen, and to close it it summoned a rat swarm, I failed to beat it by 4 or more so it shuffled it into the location deck, but summoned cards can not go anywhere but back into the box unless the card that summoned it says otherwise, according to the Skull and Shackles rule book.

[da_mayor]

Did the location close?  And if it did, was there still a card in the location deck?

[RedPred]

That could be just the animation, because the card wasn't defeated. Animations don't produce effect in general, they are just triggered. Did you encountered that card again in the location deck then?

[Hannibal_PJV]

RedPred is right in here. Even if there is a animation it is possible that the thing animation normally means does not happen actually.

[Urtar37]

I encountered it again because the game did not let me close the location.

[Saint Ajora]

That's kinda difficult to establish as a bug, since it is possible that a Rat Swarm could already be in the Farmhouse deck, unless you state otherwise. But, as you saw in the S&S rulebook, and in my experience, undefeated summoned creatures are banished and not shuffled back into the location deck. That's rare thing to happen, but if possible, I'll try to reproduce your situation to confirm if there is a issue.

[Kiirnodel]

This is definitely a bug. Unless the Pathfinder Adventures changed the card text from the physical game it should read: "If you do not defeat the Rat Swarm by at least 4, shuffle it into the deck it came from; the Rat Swarm still counts as defeated.

 

So a) The Rat Swarm didn't come from the farmhouse (it was summoned from the "box" for the purposes of closing the location).

 b) The Rat Swarm still should have counted as defeated.

 

So a) it shouldn't have been shuffled back into the farmhouse, and b) the location should have been successfully closed, even if it wasn't beaten by 4 or more.

[RedPred]

This is definitely a bug. Unless the Pathfinder Adventures changed the card text from the physical game it should read: "If you do not defeat the Rat Swarm by at least 4, shuffle it into the deck it came from; the Rat Swarm still counts as defeated.

 

So a) The Rat Swarm didn't come from the farmhouse (it was summoned from the "box" for the purposes of closing the location).

 b) The Rat Swarm still should have counted as defeated.

 

So a) it shouldn't have been shuffled back into the farmhouse, and b) the location should have been successfully closed, even if it wasn't beaten by 4 or more.

 

Not sure.

Farmhouse rule: When closing "Summon and defeat a random monster"

Rat Swarm: "If you not defeat by at least 4 shuffle it into the deck it come from; still counts as defeated.

 

So we need to know 3 things:

1) player failed beat Rat Swarm? (he said something that still doesn't exclude that logically, so we need confirmation)

2) the animation really added the Rat Swarm in the location deck? (it could be just an automatic animation and an other Rat Swarm could be already inside the location)  <- you could know that if the monster count in location deck composition changed (adding 1 new monster)

3) location deck increased dimension and got shuffled?

 

Then if I have to place a bet knowing the actual state of the game, I'll chose triple bug:

- shuffle animation doesn't have to trigger with that specific summoned card (because its rule says "into the deck it come from" so not the location deck for sure)

- shuffle function for the location deck doesn't have to activate for the shuffling condition of that specific card (because the card doesn't return to location deck and so this deck doesn't have to be shuffled) <- unluckily we can't know if this really happened..

- beating that card by less than 4, is still considered as undefeated monster (and location doesn't close has it supposed to do with that card).

 

In the only case where player didn't beat the Rat Swarm (undefeated condition) and deck location size didn't change, we could have just a minor 'empty' animation (as Major Cure that trigger the +1 animation also if discarded pile is empty, without producing any effects).

[Longshot11]

Just FYI for newcomers: there was a bug with Rat Swarm ever since launch, where -when summoned and not defeated by 4- it would shuffle in the location deck. I thought it was fixed, bu there you go...

 

The "location not closed" is a new thing, but it's such an edge-case, it could've been there from the start. If I have to make an uneducated guess, maybe the DEFEATED condition is hard-coded to produce BANISH effect, and so the programmer took a shortcut and the card is coded something like:

- IF defeated by {target_check}+4 or more, apply DEFEATED effect
- IF defeated by {target_check}+3 , apply SHUFFLE effect (they're not using UNDEFEATED effect, so the player doesn't take Combat damage; however, they could've used EVADE effect, which is proven to work correctly with other summons (and is probably making a check "When EVADED, IF Summoned - apply BANISH; if not - apply SHUFFLE"), and would produce the desired results when applied to Rat swarm; note that both of those cases would be based on the programmer's wrong assumption that the DEFEATED condition is irrelevant, if the the final result will be a SHUFFLE effect anyway.)