Mistborn: House War

[Herowannabe]

Only two days until the release party! I have several people confirmed as coming, but again, if you’re planning on coming please let me know ASAP. 

Also, in case you missed it, it turns out that Brandon coincidentally (?) is doing a signing at the Barnes and Nobles in Sugarhouse just a few hours before the release party. That’s only a couple blocks away from Game Night Games. So if you have the free time, head to Brandon’s signing in the afternoon, then pop over to GNG and play some House War with us for an awesome Sanderson-filled Saturday.  

Edited December 13, 2017 by Herowannabe

[RippleGylf]

I'll try my hardest to be there for the second half of it.

[Herowannabe]

10 hours ago, Ookla the Puzzling said:

I'll try my hardest to be there for the second half of it.

Little Wilson (@Ookla the Itinerant) told me that she is still planning on giving you a ride.

[Herowannabe]

Thanks everyone who came out tonight! As always, it was fun to see and meet fellow sharders in real life.  Between all of us who came we got in 3 games of House War. The first two both ended with Unrest, and the last one was so close, with the player in first place having 31 points, second place 30 points, and third place 27 points (IIRC). 

I had a blast, and hope you guys did too. And of course, this guy showed up for a little bit: 

Isaac Stewart was with him too, and they played a few games of Magic beforehand but weren’t able to stay long enough to play House War. Still it was super cool that he stopped by.  

 

---

Anyway, I promised that if I had any promos left over I would find a way to give them to people who wanted and deserved them. Well it turns out I do happen to have a handful left over. It’s approaching 1:00am here right now though, and I’m beat, so I’ll figure out details for that later. If you’re interested, watch this space and/or the Mistborn House War Page over at boardgamegeek.com. 

 

EDIT: also, if you’re in the Salt Lake area, Game Night Games has two copies of Mistborn House War in stock, and they now also have an included Hoid promo card. They also have a copy of the Mistborn Adventure Game with one of the Warrior Vin cards that Brandon was handing out at Gencon.

Edited December 17, 2017 by Herowannabe

[Ldeprost]

On 12/17/2017 at 0:43 AM, Herowannabe said:

Thanks everyone who came out tonight! As always, it was fun to see and meet fellow sharders in real life.  Between all of us who came we got in 3 games of House War. The first two both ended with Unrest, and the last one was so close, with the player in first place having 31 points, second place 30 points, and third place 27 points (IIRC). 

I had a blast, and hope you guys did too. And of course, this guy showed up for a little bit: 

Isaac Stewart was with him too, and they played a few games of Magic beforehand but weren’t able to stay long enough to play House War. Still it was super cool that he stopped by.  

 

---

Anyway, I promised that if I had any promos left over I would find a way to give them to people who wanted and deserved them. Well it turns out I do happen to have a handful left over. It’s approaching 1:00am here right now though, and I’m beat, so I’ll figure out details for that later. If you’re interested, watch this space and/or the Mistborn House War Page over at boardgamegeek.com. 

 

EDIT: also, if you’re in the Salt Lake area, Game Night Games has two copies of Mistborn House War in stock, and they now also have an included Hoid promo card. They also have a copy of the Mistborn Adventure Game with one of the Warrior Vin cards that Brandon was handing out at Gencon.

Just wondering if you'd figured out how you were going to distribute the promo cards yet?  I'd gladly send you the money for the shipping cost as I'm sure many others on this forum would for a set of promo cards!

On a related note, I just got my prestige copy of the game in a week ago, is anyone else having the same issue as me that the game is just so gorgeous that you almost don't want to play it and risk having it get damaged at all?  I feel like when I finally play it this weekend I'm going to insist everyone be extra gentle with the board/cards!

[Herowannabe]

3 hours ago, Ldeprost said:

Just wondering if you'd figured out how you were going to distribute the promo cards yet?  I'd gladly send you the money for the shipping cost as I'm sure many others on this forum would for a set of promo cards!

I do have some ideas of how to distribute the handful of cards I have left, but I have decided to wait a little bit so that most/all of the backers outside of the US can get their copies of the game first. This should be happening within the next few weeks to a month or so, I'm guessing, so keep an eye on this space for more information to follow.

 

3 hours ago, Ldeprost said:

On a related note, I just got my prestige copy of the game in a week ago, is anyone else having the same issue as me that the game is just so gorgeous that you almost don't want to play it and risk having it get damaged at all?  I feel like when I finally play it this weekend I'm going to insist everyone be extra gentle with the board/cards!

Right? It really is a gorgeous game. I couldn't imagine playing it without sleeves on the cards (partially because the cards are so thin )

[Faceless Mist-Wraith]

On December 23, 2017 at 0:40 AM, Herowannabe said:

I do have some ideas of how to distribute the handful of cards I have left, but I have decided to wait a little bit so that most/all of the backers outside of the US can get their copies of the game first. This should be happening within the next few weeks to a month or so, I'm guessing, so keep an eye on this space for more information to follow.

Were you planning to distribute the cards only to backers, or is it possible for other people to ask?

Also is it okay if I ask about rule clarifications here? There are some specific situations/questions that came up while I was playing with friends, and I couldn't find explicit answers in the rulebook.

[Herowannabe]

1 hour ago, Faceless Mist-Wraith said:

Were you planning to distribute the cards only to backers, or is it possible for other people to ask?

I’m going to make the cards available to anyone willing to make the effort to earn them, regardless of whether they were a backer or not.

 

1 hour ago, Faceless Mist-Wraith said:

Also is it okay if I ask about rule clarifications here? There are some specific situations/questions that came up while I was playing with friends, and I couldn't find explicit answers in the rulebook.

 Sure, ask away!

You could also try the forums over at Crafty Games’ website and/or boardgamegeek.com, especially if you need an official answer from the creators. 

[Faceless Mist-Wraith]

All righty then. Here are all my questions/clarifications:

1. Personality cards that say "play any time". Does it actually mean anytime or is there some stipulation? I thought it meant any time, but I saw an earlier post that mentioned complications about "play any time but not really". I assume they meant the cards that say "play when a certain event happens" or "play during your turn" but I wanted to make sure.
2. What exactly does the "Steel Ministry" listing on some problem cards mean? What do you do if none of the players have the Steel Ministry as their house? So far I haven't played a game using this house because I can't say for certain what it does.
   1. Quick clarification with this. The way I think it works is that the Steel Ministry gets to ignore certain eruption effects/solved effects and decide who gets affected when a problem labeled Steel Ministry erupts.
   2. A specific question would be: There is a problem with a Steel Ministry label, but its eruption effect is that the Unrest goes up. How does this work? Unrest doesn't affect the player, so is the Steel Ministry just able to stop the Unrest from happening or does something else happen?
3. If a person plays a Seeker on a person, is it legal for that person to play their "play at any time" cards before handing them over? This is in the case where the person doesn't have a card that can stop or redirect the Seeker, but is trying to use cards they didn't want to lose. Similarly, is a person able to do this when a problem erupts that requires a player to discard personality cards?
4. In the event that a person uses a Smoker, are they able to redirect the effects to the player who is directing the Personality card or eruption effect? It says in the rules it can only be applied to a valid target that meets all of the conditions of the card or eruption effect, but it doesn't say whether the active player counts as a valid target.
5. If a person Riots a problem into eruption, can it be Soothed back into the 4 slot?
6. If the answer to the above question is yes: If a problem is in the 4 slot, can it be Rioted twice, and if it can does it require 2 Soothings to bring it back to the 4 slot?
7. If you play a personality card and a person plays a hazekiller, and then you play a hazekiller to kill the hazekiller, is the original card still discarded, or does it survive?
8. If a person has an excess of Soothers, can they Soothe a problem deeper into the deck, and if so how does this work? Such as if a problem is in the 1 slot and gets 2 Soothers put on it.
9. If a player plays a Seeker on another player, are they allowed to tell other players what cards that player has?

I'm sorry if some of these questions are a bit odd. Some of them came up as "what-if" scenarios during play, and I couldn't come up with/find a definitive answer either way.

 

EDIT: I added some specifics to #2 and added a question (#9).

Edited January 12, 2018 by Faceless Mist-Wraith

[Wyrmhero]

So I played a game of the House War board game yesterday, and while it mostly proceeded smoothly, I have just one thing I'd like to check, and that's the interactions between Sly cards and Hazekillers.

The rules state that after a deal is closed, only Sly cards can be played. This appears to be specifically calling out 'can be played at any time' cards, such as the Hazekiller. However, this means that Sly cards trump all others and cannot be responded to. Does anyone know if this is correct?

[Pagerunner]

3 hours ago, Wyrmhero said:

So I played a game of the House War board game yesterday, and while it mostly proceeded smoothly, I have just one thing I'd like to check, and that's the interactions between Sly cards and Hazekillers.

The rules state that after a deal is closed, only Sly cards can be played. This appears to be specifically calling out 'can be played at any time' cards, such as the Hazekiller. However, this means that Sly cards trump all others and cannot be responded to. Does anyone know if this is correct?

Merged with the main House War topic.

The only Sly cards are things that happen after a deal is concluded, so you're correct that you can't go back and play other Personality cards after a Sly card. (Something like: The deal succeeds. Oh, wait, you're playing a Slanderer (take disgrace instead of favor) on me? Never mind, I'm gonna increase the cost of this problem, so we can't solve it, and I get no disgrace.) That would be an illegal move; Sly cards are played after a deal is completed.

However, it's important to note that Hazekiller is not "Play at any time," so you can use a Hazekiller on a non-Lasting Sly card.

[Faceless Mist-Wraith]

I have a few more questions, but was unsure about whether to add them to my previous post since it has been a while, and other people have posted.

10. The Slanderer card says "Play when a player gains favor" does this include yourself?

11. Can a Slanderer be Hazekilled/Do play at any time cards work on sly cards?

12. Can personality cards be played at the end when people are tallying up their points from facedown cards? Ex: I have an heir and am about to receive 8 Favor, but someone plays a Slanderer.

13. This is covered by the above question, but I still wanted to check: Can you play a smoker on a Con artist?

14. When Renoux is solved it says to search the problem discard pile for a Rebel problem and place it in play. Does this mean the first Rebel problem card you find or is it up to the player?

Edited February 17, 2018 by Faceless Mist-Wraith
Forgot a question

[Kurkistan]

53 minutes ago, Faceless Mist-Wraith said:

I have a few more questions, but was unsure about whether to add them to my previous post since it has been a while, and other people have posted.

10. The Slanderer card says "Play when a player gains favor" does this include yourself?

11. Can a Slanderer be Hazekilled/Do play at any time cards work on sly cards?

Yes. Yes.

53 minutes ago, Faceless Mist-Wraith said:

12. Can personality cards be played at the end when people are tallying up their points from facedown cards? Ex: I have an heir and am about to receive 8 Favor, but someone plays a Slanderer.

Of "Sly" Personalities the rulebook (pg 21) says "These are the only cards that may be played after a deal is closed. Sly card effects are applied during Step 3 of closing a deal." So since the end game step isn't part of "closing a deal" I'd say no.

53 minutes ago, Faceless Mist-Wraith said:

13. This is covered by the above question, but I still wanted to check: Can you play a smoker on a Con artist?

No. The Smoker can't change who "You" is, and the Con Artist says "You gain all Favor from solving this problem."

I can't find it at the moment, but I believe @Herowannabe offered me a relevant example: If Smokers could change who "you" was for a card, then you'd be able to respond to a Seeker such that you end up looking at and stealing a card from your own hand. If Smokers can change who "You" is then they just become strictly better Hazekillers

53 minutes ago, Faceless Mist-Wraith said:

14. When Renoux is solved it says to search the problem discard pile for a Rebel problem and place it in play. Does this mean the first Rebel problem card you find or is it up to the player?

Up to the player.

[Faceless Mist-Wraith]

@Kurkistan Thanks! That really clears things up.

Do you have any idea for the answers to my previous questions (1-9)?

Edited February 17, 2018 by Faceless Mist-Wraith

[Kurkistan]

On 1/6/2018 at 11:14 PM, Faceless Mist-Wraith said:

All righty then. Here are all my questions/clarifications:

Personality cards that say "play any time". Does it actually mean anytime or is there some stipulation? I thought it meant any time, but I saw an earlier post that mentioned complications about "play any time but not really". I assume they meant the cards that say "play when a certain event happens" or "play during your turn" but I wanted to make sure.

I'd need some specific examples.

Quote

What exactly does the "Steel Ministry" listing on some problem cards mean? What do you do if none of the players have the Steel Ministry as their house? So far I haven't played a game using this house because I can't say for certain what it does.

--Quick clarification with this. The way I think it works is that the Steel Ministry gets to ignore certain eruption effects/solved effects and decide who gets affected when a problem labeled Steel Ministry erupts.

--A specific question would be: There is a problem with a Steel Ministry label, but its eruption effect is that the Unrest goes up. How does this work? Unrest doesn't affect the player, so is the Steel Ministry just able to stop the Unrest from happening or does something else happen?

It's laid out in the Steel Ministry faction card: "When a problem card with the STEEL MINISTRY trait erupts or is solved, you may ignore any effects that apply directly to you." So if a STEEL MINISTRY card says "Ruin 1 resource" then you can still target the Steel Ministry player, but they can choose to ignore it. Similarly for any other eruption/solution effect that could be applied to the Steel Ministry player. It's a powerful in-game effect to balance out the relative weakness of their resources.

The Steel Ministry player doesn't control anything besides whether s/he is affected by such cards. They can't "decide who gets affected" by them or the like.

Note that the STEEL MINISTRY ability applies to both eruptions and solution effects: Minor Revolt adds 1 Unrest when solved (so nothing directly applying to the Steel Ministry player), but has an Eruption effect of "Each House destroys 1 of their resources" which the Steel Ministry can simply ignore while everyone else suffers.

Quote

If a person plays a Seeker on a person, is it legal for that person to play their "play at any time" cards before handing them over? This is in the case where the person doesn't have a card that can stop or redirect the Seeker, but is trying to use cards they didn't want to lose. Similarly, is a person able to do this when a problem erupts that requires a player to discard personality cards?

No on the Seeker, but I think maybe(?) you're fine last-chance casting cards before resolving eruptions.

On page 20 they use Seekers as the example of why you can't just use all your cards in response to someone Seeking you:

Quote

Example: A player targed with a Seeker—a Personality that lets you look at another player's hand and steal one of their cards—cannot play any of their cards before one is stolen. [Hazekillers excepted]

This game doesn't have a stack like Magic the Gathering, it has a queue. Kind of: while any cards you've said you're playing are queued up and will be resolved after the other Personalities ahead of it, they're still technically in your hand in the interim.

Quote

In the event that a person uses a Smoker, are they able to redirect the effects to the player who is directing the Personality card or eruption effect? It says in the rules it can only be applied to a valid target that meets all of the conditions of the card or eruption effect, but it doesn't say whether the active player counts as a valid target.

Yes.

Quote

If a person Riots a problem into eruption, can it be Soothed back into the 4 slot?

No, this going back to the "Personality cards are resolved in the order they are played, and each must be resolved completely before another Personality card is applied." By the time your Soother would be affecting the problem, it's already erupted.

Quote

If you play a personality card and a person plays a hazekiller, and then you play a hazekiller to kill the hazekiller, is the original card still discarded, or does it survive?

It survives. Hazekillers and Smokers reverse the queue and turn it into a stack, so the most recent Hazekiller haze-kills the older one, which then isn't there anymore to resolve and counter the original Personality card. See page 21.

Quote

If a person has an excess of Soothers, can they Soothe a problem deeper into the deck, and if so how does this work? Such as if a problem is in the 1 slot and gets 2 Soothers put on it.

No. Since each card resolves completely before the last, by the time you tried to resolve the second Soother the problem is gone and it either fizzles or goes back to the player's hand, depending on generous you're feeling. Though in this case the second player would probably just choose not to play their Soother after seeing the first do it for them.

Quote

If a player plays a Seeker on another player, are they allowed to tell other players what cards that player has?

There's nothing in the rules saying you can't, that I recall. You just can't show the rest of the table to prove you're not a lying liar who lies. Page 15 goes into "May I Show my Hand" and calls out the hand-looking from Seekers as being unique in that it's private between the two players.

It's likely more of a strategy and/or House Rules thing, as it may not be to your advantage to share that info and/or your playgroup might get annoyed at you.

[Herowannabe]

Thanks @Kurkistan! I agree with all of Kurk’s answers. 

Quote

If a person plays a Seeker on a person, is it legal for that person to play their "play at any time" cards before handing them over? This is in the case where the person doesn't have a card that can stop or redirect the Seeker, but is trying to use cards they didn't want to lose. Similarly, is a person able to do this when a problem erupts that requires a player to discard personality cards?

 

16 hours ago, Kurkistan said:

No on the Seeker, but I think maybe(?) you're fine last-chance casting cards before resolving eruptions.

Yes you can (EDIT: yes you can play last chance cards before a card erupts, that is), but note the “before.” Once the problem card erupts it’s too late, but if you see that a card is about to erupt you can hurry and play cards before it does. 

Note that, as Kurk pointed out with the “Queue,” you could use this to your advantage by playing a rioter to cause a problem to erupt prematurely, and the other players wouldn’t be able to play cards in response (other than playing a hazekiller or smoker on your rioter). 

19 hours ago, Kurkistan said:

No. The Smoker can't change who "You" is, and the Con Artist says "You gain all Favor from solving this problem."

I can't find it at the moment, but I believe @Herowannabe offered me a relevant example: If Smokers could change who "you" was for a card, then you'd be able to respond to a Seeker such that you end up looking at and stealing a card from your own hand. If Smokers can change who "You" is then they just become strictly better Hazekillers

I don’t remember where it was either, but the question was whether or not you could play a Smoker on a Seeker to changes who gets to look at the hand and steal a card. The answer was no. You can play a smoker to change which player’s hand gets looked at, but you can’t change who does the looking/stealing. 

Edited February 18, 2018 by Herowannabe

[Faceless Mist-Wraith]

@Kurkistan and @Herowannabe, thank you for your help! Just one clarification: You said that the STEEL MINISTRY ability applies to both eruption and solution effects, and that it can only be used for effects that directly affect you. Does this also include neutral problem effects? Ex: For the "Visit from an Inquisitor" and "Attack on the Pits of Hathsin" problems, it states that "Personalities may not be played when making or closing a deal to solve this Problem". Would a player with the Steel Ministry house be able to play personality cards on this problem?

I don't think so since it says "when a problem is solved or erupts" but I wanted to make sure.

[Kurkistan]

I'm not sure. Probably not, I don't think, as they don't apply "directly to you", more temporarily change the rules of the game. Like when TLR comes out and doubles all Favor/Disgrace gains.

[Faceless Mist-Wraith]

@KurkistanThank you for all the clarifications, they've really helped!

[Wyndlerunner]

Would y'all recommend this for a novice board gamer? Because this looks fun, I just don't want to bite off more than I can chew.

[Kurkistan]

8 minutes ago, Wyndlerunner said:

Would y'all recommend this for a novice board gamer? Because this looks fun, I just don't want to bite off more than I can chew.

Yeah it's fine, not too heavy.

Just make sure at least one person at the table knows the rules back-to-front before you sit down, and be prepared for a game or two before your group hits its stride (I'd recommend Short games). Though that advice goes for just about any game, to be fair.

[Herowannabe]

1 hour ago, Wyndlerunner said:

Would y'all recommend this for a novice board gamer? Because this looks fun, I just don't want to bite off more than I can chew.

I second what @Kurkistan said. The rules themselves aren’t too complicated, you should be fine. I believe there is a playthrough video or two floating around or there, you can watch those to get a handle on the gameplay before your first game. 

[Herowannabe]

On 12/17/2017 at 0:43 AM, Herowannabe said:

Anyway, I promised that if I had any promos left over I would find a way to give them to people who wanted and deserved them. Well it turns out I do happen to have a handful left over. It’s approaching 1:00am here right now though, and I’m beat, so I’ll figure out details for that later. If you’re interested, watch this space and/or the Mistborn House War Page over at boardgamegeek.com. 

I've had a few people ask me about these promo cards- fear not, I haven't forgotten about them or about you! I have spoken with the guys at @Crafty Games about my plans for distributing the extra Hoid promos, and they are on board, but we're going to wait until the launch of the custom card creator before we can announce anything. They said that they're currently focused on getting the Siege of Luthadel expansion developed (yay!) but they're scheduled to look at the custom card creator around the end of April. So there won't be any news until at least that time. 

[Pagerunner]

Custom card creator is live!

http://www.drivethrucards.com/builder/mistbornhousewar

I've had a cycle of custom cards I thought up during the Kickstarter campaign, based on various other magic systems (including worldhopping). I've just gotta make some Lego illustrations for them, first...

[Herowannabe]

For those of you still waiting for a chance to get ahold of one of the Hoid promo cards, Crafty Games and I have been hammering out the details behind the scenes. Look for an announcement soon on the kickstarter page and/or Crafty’s site and/or this forum.  

Edited July 9, 2018 by Herowannabe