Reanimation: Redux

[wallydubbs]

I appreciate you finding a way to work around the spell to make it work.
Not to rude, though, it's widely accepted that the EQP and BQP were never playtested. I think the spell means what it says, but the quests and cards weren't delved that far into depth. A lot of cards to quest need work in Mage of the Mirror:
Sky Orb saves the heroes mind points, but at no point in this quest pack are their mind points endangered.
Disappear has a cancellation effect between 9 and 12 on movement dice, but spells and Artifacts like Swift Wind and Elven Boots could cause movement exceed 12. Nor does it say anything about a hero with Plate Mail, is he allowed to stay invisible indefinitely? Does this spell allow heroes to move through monsters?
Ancient Staff, Elven Boots, Elven Bow of Vindication, Elven Cloak of Passage all express usage for the Elf, but give no indication whether any other hero can use them.
Ancient Staff makes no mention of weaponly use, does it need to be equipped like a weapon to use?
Twist Wood, how do we designate if the monsters have wood in their weapons? I know how they handle this on the app, but it seems like they were just being lazy because they didn't even know how to handle it.
Summon Wolves can be used by Sinestra despite her already having Giant Wolves present in her room. So we could be in a situation where the heroes are up against 5 Giant Wolves but only 3 come with the game.
Elven Cloak of Passage doesn't specify if the cloak can be used action free or not.
Would the Elven Boots ever dull out if the Elf is wearing Plate Mail?
Can't the Elven Bow of Vindication just 1-shot kill Sinestra?
There's not even a card for Elven Chainmail!

By all means, it's cool to find wiggle room and make Reanimation effective. But let's be real, the lack of playtesting is the reason this spell didn't find effective use, it's also the reason all the other cards weren't granted specificities and the reason Frozen Horror and Mage of the Mirror are broken.

[Kurgan]

Not rude at all but some of the issues are already resolved within the game itself, as crude as those solutions may be... (and whether testing might have improved those of course)

Sky Orb saves the heroes mind points, but at no point in this quest pack are their mind points endangered.

Poison cards were meant to be included in the Treasure deck as with FH, but they ran out of cards, and forgot about this, clearly, so it's just of benefit for future adventures.

Disappear has a cancellation effect between 9 and 12 on movement dice, but spells and Artifacts like Swift Wind and Elven Boots could cause movement exceed 12.
Zargon rules whether over 12 is the same as 12 or outside of that cancellation. Good call.

Nor does it say anything about a hero with Plate Mail, is he allowed to stay invisible indefinitely?

Wouldn't be a bad perk! Knight using Plate would still suffer the same potential cancellation effect as would anyone who was formerly using other means to boost their movement with that armor.

Does this spell allow heroes to move through monsters?

It doesn't say he can. I could imagine someone saying he should because of the use of "unseen" similar to Veil of Mist, but I would say no, other than Zargon's decision.

Ancient Staff, Elven Boots, Elven Bow of Vindication, Elven Cloak of Passage all express usage for the Elf, but give no indication whether any other hero can use them.

Bow says only an Elf can use it right on the card. While these other items don't say "only an Elf" the fact that they address the Elf to me indicates they intended them to be Elf only, as much as I prefer anyone to use them, personally.

Ancient Staff makes no mention of weaponly use, does it need to be equipped like a weapon to use?

Much like the "bracers over bracers" question people have I take it that this is simply a magical item, not a weapon. If you made it into one, okay, I guess it can also hit diagonally with 1 combat die if you want. But regardless, it only works 5 times then it becomes "useless." I think it was only intended as a magical effect object though.

Twist Wood, how do we designate if the monsters have wood in their weapons? I know how they handle this on the app, but it seems like they were just being lazy because they didn't even know how to handle it.

Zargon decides. I agree more detail should have been given, because now we're looking at models or card art and guessing for examples other than bows and staff. Though when the spell rebounds against the heroes we know which ones are wood based on Armory descriptions (though one might be pedantic and argue all of it has some wood in it, hence the App solution is correct... except when it works against monsters that fight bare-handed like the mummy). It's like a generally more useful version of Rust for the heroes...

Summon Wolves can be used by Sinestra despite her already having Giant Wolves present in her room. So we could be in a situation where the heroes are up against 5 Giant Wolves but only 3 come with the game.

Either she uses it once those are killed, or Zargon substitutes monsters of similar strength when he runs out of wolves.

Elven Cloak of Passage doesn't specify if the cloak can be used action free or not.

Doesn't say it uses an action, so it doesn't, just like Dust of Disappearance. I presume it works three times meaning 3 turns, not just 3 walls.

Would the Elven Boots ever dull out if the Elf is wearing Plate Mail?

Depends how you reckon it. Plate Mail declares you move with 1 red die. If you take that in an absolute sense you can never move any faster than 6 when wearing it
(unless the knight with no penalty). But if you take it that it merely subtracts one from your base movement, then you have 1 red die, and then do you reckon the boots
as giving you a fixed movement of 3 red dice, or simply adding 1 to your base movement? In the first case, yes you still can risk them wearing out... in the second you roll only 2 movement dice combined with plate mail so unless you boost them again with something else (like a Potion of Speed) there's no risk losing the boots. A pretty good deal (but only for the Elf, probably).

Can't the Elven Bow of Vindication just 1-shot kill Sinestra?

Yes, unless she rolls 1 black shield on a single combat die.

There's not even a card for Elven Chainmail!

There's also no card for Sinestra herself. The reason is because they were limited how many cards to include in each expansion pack in the 90's. AH didn't see fit to create new cards, however. But we have many examples of items that don't have a card and are simply mentioned in the notes... you just write it on your character sheet. I agree, cards are cool.

By all means, it's cool to find wiggle room and make Reanimation effective. But let's be real, the lack of playtesting is the reason this spell didn't find effective use, it's also the reason all the other cards weren't granted specificities and the reason Frozen Horror and Mage of the Mirror are broken.

I grant there are issues, hence Zargon makes a decision, either to just never use it, or come up with a solution which is what we're doing here!

So what is your opinion... did they just forget it was supposed to bring undead back to life that had died during the boss fight, and they just forgot and put other monsters in that room instead? Seems like a more boring version of "Summon Undead," except that the undead get to attack the heroes again rather than just standing there as gnarly meat shields until Zargon's next turn to get to fight.

In any case I think it's a happy accident that you can still make something out of it rather than just tossing it away. AH's nerfing of the Ogres does make restore chaos less useful. I would say either allow Sinestra to have a "death save" with it (not normally allowed for monsters) or else just have the final Ogre be a 10 pointer as in the original (and yes, you could one shot him too, assuming he doesn't roll a black shield when you fire at him).

[wallydubbs]

Honestly, in the interview with Kathlyn Conners admits she never got to playtest it and it seemed like Milton Bradley couldn't've cared less.

She put a lot of work into this expansion, as it seemed like she was doing this while managing 2 kids. For 1 person and no time to playtest, I'd say she did really well. I think she did a lot of planning but didn't get to throw it all together. She even said in the interview that she wanted to make an extra armory but never got around to it.

I think she put a lot of work into it but didn't get to carry over all her planning. She probably made the Reanimation Spell and wanted to have a Necromancer, but in assembling the 9 quests she didn't have room and probably just forgot about the spells she made. The Bone Wand would've made a great artifact to counteract a Necromancer. She had a lot of bright ideas but maybe a little too many and didn't get to implement them all. Reanimation just slipped through the cracks. Maybe she had a different versions of the spell in the brainstorming stage, like reanimating all dead monsters to come back as undead versions of themselves, but handed in the wrong Spell card. I've done this before, where I have an idea set in my head , but later found what I wrote was completely different. There's a lot of things that could've happened and I wish I had the opportunity to interview her.

The point I'm making is that this would've been caught had it been playtested along with a bunch of little bugs I've pointed out as well as the difficulty level.
I'm not saying your interpretation is a bad idea, on the contrary, it works for what we're left with. But I just feel this was more likely an error then a misinterpretation. All types of problems would've been caught had they taken an extra month to playtest it

[Kurgan]

If she intended it to work as a stronger version of Summon Undead, then yes, she forgot, because she didn't put any undead monsters in the same room with any of the users of the spell. It would be fun to ask her if she remembers, as she remembered a lot of other details (like the Elven Chainmail being Elf only and the Prospector being a human).

As far as the spell changes I can look back at the drafts to see if there were any other versions, but I kind of think what we see is what was written down. I'll get back to you on that.

More work was done on all the expansions, but that never saw the light of day for the published versions. It could have been that the released versions were the best they could come up with, but I somehow doubt it, I think there just probably wasn't time or space to implement the other changes they discussed, like the Yeti hug breaks for FH or the extra jumping mechanics, the furniture treasure searches, etc.

I agree it could cause some confusion and explanation was needed. Some things like the Elven Chainmail were never glitches and are easy to understand once you realize they were limited to a certain number of cards per box.

[Kurgan]

Ok, maybe you guys were right all along... first draft of EQP indicates:

Reanimate Undead
A pack of undead monsters picture
This spell allows the caster to reanimate any and all undead
monsters that have been defeated in this room
Discard after use.

Editorial markings indicate the editor (probably Mike Gray) wanted it changed to "Reanimation,"...
changes "caster" to "spellcaster" says to "list undead monsters" after reanimate...
and circles "this" and adds "the same room as the spellcaster."

With no comma it looks like it's saying only the undead monsters that were defeated in the room where the spell is cast get to come back (and come back into that room). Or you could read it as saying any (and all) undead monsters defeated get brought to the room where the spell caster is casting.

So it seems like the intention was where the undead were defeated... and that's where they come back. So under that idea, the undead need to head to that room to get killed (or else the caster needs to flee to the room where there are undead, taking at least 3 turns of movement to do so!). My interpretation allows a lot more flexibility unless you just edit the map so there are undead in each room from the beginning.

The first draft revision version reads just like the published 1992 version except it says that the creatures have their mind points also restored (with an editorial note reminding that undead don't have mind points to restore). It introduced the "or" upon which my whole interpretation relies.

Another work around would be to keep the spell as-is... and just add Summon Undead to the spell caster's arsenal. That means they get to bring in a bunch of undead monsters... and when they are killed, bring them back AGAIN (though only one type of monster, so if it was a mixed group they can bring back the zombies or the mummies, not both) under Reanimation... but on the second time they get to attack immediately.