The Last Homely House
Middle-Earth => Archives of Minas Tirith => Topic started by: menace64 on August 07, 2018, 10:57:24 PM
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So I’m rereading the Comprehensive Rules in preparation of my first online game in years, and I hit a snag because of this:
”Your fellowship begins with a character bearing The One Ring. This can be any character with the ringed resistance icon, or any version of Frodo. That character gains the keywords Ring-bearer and Ring-bound, if he does not already have them.”
That was damning enough to stop me. The language specifically allows for Frenzied Fighter to be used as a Ring-bearer! But before I got too excited I had to find a ruling made post-Bloodlines. I didn’t seriously think there’d be one since this is predicated on a perversion of words anyways; but I opened the CRD and:
”This version of Frodo cannot become the Ring-bearer.”
Frenzied Fighter cannot become the Ring-bearer, but as the rules stipulate the fellowship begins with a character already bearing the Ring, thus he cannot become what he already is: a Ring-bearer!
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English is not my first language, so I may be wrong, but the way I'm interpreting it is that okay, yeh, one character is bearing The One Ring from the start (it doesn't state, that he begins the game as a Ring-bearer). However then (not actually "then", because it happens simultaneously, but just for the sake of an argument), he "gains" the keywords Ring-bearer and Ring-bound and "becomes" the Ring-bearer. I think "gaining the keyword Ring-bearer" and "becoming the Ring-bearer" are two phrasings of the same thing in this case. So in my head, what would happen is the following. Frodo would be able to start the game with the Ring, but would then be unable to gain the keyword Ring-bearer and would therefor not be a legal pick.
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Close, but you've assumed what you want to prove. Note that the ruling does not say
Any character with the ringed resistance icon, or any version of Frodo, gains the keywords Ring-bearer and Ring-bound, if he does not already have them.
In order for a character to gain the keywords Ring-Bearer and Ring-bound, you begin the game with that character bearing the ring. The second snippet prevents that action from happening for Frenzied Fighter, so he cannot gain those keywords. A catch-22 of sorts. The last line of your first snippet is to clarify that the alternate Ring-bearers have those keywords only when bearing The One Ring.
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Id rather say that decipher messed up, and didn't check the wording of this rule when they released frenzied fighter, which they never intended to be a ringbearer. Then updated the ruling to clarify it.
Going completely off the rulebook the way it's written, I sounds pretty clear that he can be a ring-bearer, but that they've made an exception for this card because it wasn't intended to be used that way.
I.E. I'm just gonna go with the explanation "rulebook is incomplete and wrong" on this one. I'm not sure why they wouldn't add an exception for this card in the rulebook. The way they've done it is in no way a ruling on or interpretation of the rules as written currently. It's an exception that isn't included.