[The Prefect]

The following came up and I want to see if we ended up playing the right way...

Thanks in advance for answering:

When I place a card from hand on Watch Dog is it placed face up or face down?

When I place a card on an event like Security Drills is it placed face up or face down?

Are cards placed on events, like the two examples mentioned above, public knowledge, ie can they be examined by an opponent?

If I'm facing a dilemma like Greater Needs and there is no ship at the mission, what happens to the dilemma if I can't meet the requirements?

If I'm facing a dilemma like Alternatives to Fighting and there are several ships at the mission, can I use any of them to meet the weapons >7 requirements of the dilemma?

If I'm facing Interstellar Exigence, are all the stops considered a single action, ie can I use a card like Central Command to prevent all stops on the dilemma?

[Armus]

1. Face Up

2. Face Up

3. Yes

4. Your away team is stopped and the dilemma is overcome.

5. Only the ship involved in the mission attempt

6. The Law stop is a separate action from the Headquarters-driven stop(s). You'd need two copies of The Central Command to get both of them.

[Jono]

Anytime there are multiple sentences on a dilemma where each sentence stops a personnel, those are separate stop actions. Pitching In is an example of this.

When you have a filter dilemma like Chula: The Chandra where the personnel are chosen in multiple steps but then the the stopping portion of the dilemma is in just one sentence then the stops all occur at the same time.

[Faithful Reader]

How was the rest of the (still ongoing) weekend?

Will we get another article?

With (more) pictures?

[The Prefect]

Anytime there are multiple sentences on a dilemma where each sentence stops a personnel, those are separate stop actions. Pitching In is an example of this.

When you have a filter dilemma like Chula: The Chandra where the personnel are chosen in multiple steps but then the the stopping portion of the dilemma is in just one sentence then the stops all occur at the same time.

Except, on Interstellar Exigence the stops all happen from one sentence separated by a comma. Does that make a difference?

[The Prefect]

1. Face Up

2. Face Up

3. Yes

4. Your away team is stopped and the dilemma is overcome.

5. Only the ship involved in the mission attempt

6. The Law stop is a separate action from the Headquarters-driven stop(s). You'd need two copies of The Central Command to get both of them.

Except, on Interstellar Exigence the stops all happen from one sentence separated by a comma. Does that make a difference?

[The Prefect]

How was the rest of the (still ongoing) weekend?

Will we get another article?

With (more) pictures?

Great. And, yes there will be a recap article.

[Armus]

1. Face Up

2. Face Up

3. Yes

4. Your away team is stopped and the dilemma is overcome.

5. Only the ship involved in the mission attempt

6. The Law stop is a separate action from the Headquarters-driven stop(s). You'd need two copies of The Central Command to get both of them.

Except, on Interstellar Exigence the stops all happen from one sentence separated by a comma. Does that make a difference?

It's still two actions. Choose a Law to be stopped, THEN randomly select a person to be stopped for each HQ.

Were it all one action, it would say "...AND randomly select a person for each HQ..."

[Cmdr Xym]

When I place a card from hand on Watch Dog is it placed face up or face down?

When I place a card on an event like Security Drills is it placed face up or face down?

Are cards placed on events, like the two examples mentioned above, public knowledge, ie can they be examined by an opponent?

Glossary, page 18 under "Play and Place"

[The Prefect]

Okay. We got all of them right except Interstellar Exigence. I'm still not sure I agree with that one, but I understand the argument.

[bhosp]

Okay. We got all of them right except Interstellar Exigence. I'm still not sure I agree with that one, but I understand the argument.

The punctuation doesn’t matter. I think it used to matter something like ten years ago. But what matters is that you stop someone with Law, then you stop some more people. In contrast, Chula: The Chandra says to *select* one person, then *select* some other people, then stop them all.

[The Prefect]

Okay. We got all of them right except Interstellar Exigence. I'm still not sure I agree with that one, but I understand the argument.

The punctuation doesn’t matter. I think it used to matter something like ten years ago. But what matters is that you stop someone with Law, then you stop some more people. In contrast, Chula: The Chandra says to *select* one person, then *select* some other people, then stop them all.

The way I was reading it I was contrasting it with Pitching In.

Choose a Leadership or Security personnel to be stopped. Then choose an Engineer or Programming personnel to be stopped.

Period before the "then" means two separate actions - two stops.

Choose a Law personnel to be stopped, then randomly select an additional personnel to be stopped for each headquarters mission the opponent on your left commands.

No period means one action with two parts - one stop.

I really feel like design should a unified convention where this is concerned. Just out of curiosity, why did we decide the punctuation stopped mattering?

[Cmdr Xym]

It's not the punctuation...it's the number of times the cards says "stopped" that matters. It's really not that confusing.

[The Prefect]

It's not the punctuation...it's the number of times the cards says "stopped" that matters. It's really not that confusing.

I'm gratified to learn it's not confusing for you. Thank you for the clarification.

[Armus]

No period means one action with two parts - one stop.

I really feel like design should a unified convention where this is concerned. Just out of curiosity, why did we decide the punctuation stopped mattering?

No, there's definitely two stops. Punctuation is irrelevant.

As to your last question, I think there's actually an answer:

There used to be this thing called the "period rule" that basically said you could respond to card text at the beginning, or after any period. It was most relevant to facing and responding to dilemmas.

Real world example: Worlds 2003 I was playing Wolfram Pulsfort. He played Face to Face. He named leadership. Then he selected two of my people. One had leadership. I played Stricken Dumb to prevent him from getting killed. This was ruled a legal play because of the period rule and I solved for the win.

Some version of the period rule may still exist today, like, I think that exact scenario still works. HOWEVER, circa 2014 there was a change to how dilemmas like Counterinsurgency Program were treated because Donatra could cancel them using period rule timing because before the discard there's no Bold Skill requirement defined. So at the very least, even if the period rule still generally applies, it doesn't apply literally and universally anymore.

Now, having said all of that, I could make a case that because of the punctuation on Interstellar Exigence, it's still two stops, but you can respond to either, neither, or both at the same time.

Example: You need Medical to solve your mission. Law guy gets stopped. Rando gets stopped. Let's say rando was your only medical. Now you can look at who you have left and figure out what you need to solve. Maybe you just need to unstop medical guy. Maybe you need to unstop both for attributes. Maybe you don't have what you need. If that's the case you don't need to burn cheaters (e.g., unstopping law guy before the selection) with incomplete information. This allows you to conserve resources, so there's that.

That was a lot of words. Hopefully at least some of them were helpful.