Loving the flavour of this content Daniel. The kafkaesque insanity of the lawyerly Arkham rule-set is a big part of the fun as far as we're concerned.

The Duke Investigate makes sense to me. You're still doing the investigation action and piecing the clues together. You just get a higher detection rating (i.e. base intellect) from leveraging Duke's dog senses.

Congrats on the effort you make the rules of this beloved game clearer! 👏

Playing a relevant TFA scenario today with guard dogs and vipers so thank you!

Coming from a LOTR LCG background, the ruling is in line with this other LCG philosophy.

The other fun related sort of related topic that can get people confused on a similar issue is Key of Ys. You can have other assets you control soak horror for Key of Ys, avoiding its first Forced ability, because the wording is "When any amount of horror would be placed on you: Place 1 of that horror on Key of Ys". That wording is one of the reasons Key of Ys is so strong, because if it said "When any amount of horror is dealt to you...", then you would be forced to place a horror on the key even if you soaked the rest of it on allies. However, "placing" damage or horror is the final step of damage taking, occuring after the assigning phase, where you physically "place" the damage/horror token on cards. Therefore, the FAQ section relating to being "dealt" damage/horror (where "you" includes assets you control) doesn't apply, and "you" is instead your investigator card, as clarified in a rules FAQ for Key of Ys ages ago (and also as applicable for other effects that refer to "you", such as healing cards that heal "you"). These edge cases can get pretty confusing in Arkham and I think some of the templating doesn't help! The guard dog/Pit Viper ruling actually does make sense though in the framing of the when/if/after timings. I think some other recent rulings that have been submitted by email have been a little bit more counterintuitive and I'm tending towards ignoring email/discord rulings mostly now until they hit an official FAQ publication. See recent rulings on Quick Learner (your namesake!) and Plan of Action for some spicy interpretations that directly contradict previous rules clarifications! These edge case rules can be a real messy rabbit hole.

Love this format! Please make this a series

Thank you so much for this Daniel. Am really interested in game design and would love to see more content about such rules interactions, understanding the framework, timing structures etc. I've seen most all, I think, of your rules videos, and they were informative and helpful.

May the Outer Gods bless you for making these fantastic videos.

Great video, thank you

looooove your arkham content

Yes more esoteric rules video!

I applaud your courage putting up rules explanations at this era of the game. With FFG recently issuing rulings that directly contradict previous rulings (Quick Learner, Survival Knife) or that seem to conflict the spirit of the game in general (Rod of Carnamagos) it's a lot harder than it used to be to feel certain of rules interactions in Arkham.

i think the knife answer just refer to the effect of the knife only. It just says that the react effect aplies when the damage its aplied to you, and as the damage its aplied to other player or player asset, then you cant react. If A Viper Bites a friend in your location, and you Have a Tetsuo Mori and a survival knife, then you should also react stab the pit viper....

I would like to see a video on some of the most confusing and/or badly templated cards. I think some cards simply have wording mistakes that make the card do something unintended and rather than errata the card, the designers just went with it. For example, you can "float" Charles Ross's fast trigger ability over multiple turns and it will still take effect if Charles is not in play.

I had understood that You == Your cards. So when "you take X damage" that X damage is allocated anywhere among your cards. In the case of Hank taking a few points for me (but not all of them) I would assume we both get poisoned, since we both took damage. This seems consistent with both the rulings in the video but I might be thinking about this too simplistically and missing another interaction!

Thank you for your content! I really enjoy it and it gives a lot of perspective on the framework. Especially as a non native speaker. I think this game deserves some kind of of 2nd Edition, at some point. FFG managed to drastically improve the ruling of the Game of Thrones LCG in the 2nd Edition (at least as far as I'm concerned). I would love to see a similar treatment for Arkham Horror as well. Which means consistent wording and intuitive rules; getting rid of stuff might help as well. I for one don't know, if there is any reason, why events use the "fast" keyword instead of the reaction and lightning bolt symbol. Is there any rule that would make a difference? My look on the rules comes from the perspective of more of a euro gamer. And as such, I can't help but feel that they're way to bloated and/or unintuitive. On the other hand, a 2nd edition could make some fixes on cards and put their power level in line with other cards (buffs and nerfs respectively).

The when/if/after triggering is pretty simple. While you do have to learn it, it doesn't really cause problems, it's just learning the order things happen in. Compared to how "when" and "if" happen in MtG, and how cards that give you an option that can cause a bonus effect now have to be phrased "You may do X effect, when you do Y effect" rather than "...if you do Y effect" in order to work well. "During" is the time rule I really wish Arkham Horror would get better. They shouldn't have nested actions from other cards be considered during, it's keeps causing cards to work in bad ways.

Perhaps the pit viper should have been worded differently. Something about “damage placed” instead of “deals damage”.

Before your first turn seems to trip me up quite a bit

People are interpretting the theme wrong. You didn't actually bring the mall cop with you into the wild jungles with Ichtaca. Allies represent resource management. So for example you have a cop back in the city sending you supplies via mail or contacting people for information you might find useful etc. That's the thematic interpretation of having an ally asset in your deck. They're people, not items you can just use, it's a metaphor.

is it correct to say that you are not the investigator only, but the sum of all the cards you play?

AH certainly is not the first game that has interactions calling for a clear rules engine to unambiguously resolve questions. What puzzles me is that - from a game design and game management perspective - the lessons learned from other games are seemingly ignored. Magic:TG has a well developed rules engine and fairly clean card templating. Why do games such as AH feel like they have to reinvent the wheel and make stuff up as the games develops further? Also in reference to the negative commends you shared: It’s ok to be frustrated by stuff not working as you would like them to. Insisting that everyone who disagrees with your preferred interpretation is wrong is a different story. It’s just a game. The rules are not perfect and sometimes there is no clearly defined right answer. Why not just accept this and go with what feels right (or apply the grim rule) in that case? No crusade against non-believers is needed.

I wouldn't have ever considered Pit Viper & Tetsuo/Hank interaction. To me, it reads clearly. If Tetsuo takes damage from the Pit Viper, the owner of Tetsuo takes a poison weakness. Likewise, if Hank takes the Pit Viper damage for me, he'll become poisoned. The Forced is always there on the card. It doesn't just magically appear for you because you are being attacked. Pit Viper is just a more honest Oprah. Did it deal you damage from its attack? You get a poison, you get a poison, everyone gets a poison (that was attacked and dealt damage)!

Oh my God, those comments are so ridiuclous. It didn't have to literally bite the guard dog. Maybe it caused the damage when it lunged at the dog and the dog had to maneuver to avoid and counter attack it. Maybe it scratched it with the edge of a tooth where the poisonous vein didn't reach. People can get really whiny about really simple thematic issues that can be perfectly reasoned with just a little imagination.

I will probably pretty much always do what's most thematic. if I can figure out what that would be. Lol. That's what this game is about, to me. it is a mechanical game, and I certainly enjoy that part, but it's also a storytelling game. Great video!

I mean, it honestly seems like the triggering condition for Pit Viper and Guard Dog aren't supposed to be the same, as Pit Viper's ability would trigger as soon as damage is assigned to you, and the Dog's would only trigger after you decide what to do with the damage assigned to you (and put it on the dog). So I don't think it should matter how the abilities are worded, but the rules team said it should go this way so I suppose it should (the rules team seem to be trying their best to screw as many interactions as they possibly can lately and make things as unintuitive as possible).