Life-Draining (Monster Enhancers) question

[tremorlaine]

In a truly whacked game of Munchkin tonight was ran into a little bit of a game-stopper.

One of the players decided he wanted to die. During his turn he played Bullrog (won't chase lvl 4 or below) and Life-Draining (if you lose the monster returns along with the next card during the Kick Down the Door phase. The player died and since everyone except for one player was below lvl 5 the Bullrog wouldn't chase the rest of us. Needless to say this card combo went around and around the table for a good 10 cycles if not more and all but one of us was willing to call a draw because of the extended nothingness.

During this time a couple issues arose.

a) Do you still Kick Down a Door card as usual along with the Bullrog?

b) If a monster is flipped the player now has to fight both the Bullrog and the other monster?

c) If a non-monster/non-curse is drawn that card still goes to the player's hand even if it is a Monster Enhancer or such other combat card?

d) If a player, in a fit of pure sadism, decided to Mate the enhanced Bullrog does both the Bullrog and it's Mate keep returning?

e) If another player plays one of the enhance and enhancer cards does the added bonus/treasures keep returning as well?

f) If so and I finally draw the Friendly card do I really get 18 treasures? (that was the tally at the time of me playing it)

As you can tell we ruled yes in all of those instances. Needless to say I went from a lvl 1 nobody to a lvl 7 (combat lvl 21) somebody just to have me lose it all on the very next players turn when I got King Tut'd. Alas, I still won by way of Divine Intervention. Needless to say a very interesting evening that took 4 hours to play.

[Blazinjsin]

Sounds like that was a pretty fun game

[Clipper]

Originally Posted by tremorlaine

a) Do you still Kick Down a Door card as usual along with the Bullrog?

Yes, you do.

b) If a monster is flipped the player now has to fight both the Bullrog and the other monster?

Yes.

c) If a non-monster/non-curse is drawn that card still goes to the player's hand even if it is a Monster Enhancer or such other combat card?

Yes.

d) If a player, in a fit of pure sadism, decided to Mate the enhanced Bullrog does both the Bullrog and it's Mate keep returning?

That's a tough one, but I don't think so. Level-Draining is a Monster Enhancer, so the Mate is considered to duplicate it, so it could be argued that it does come back too, though...

e) If another player plays one of the enhance and enhancer cards does the added bonus/treasures keep returning as well?

I'm almost certain that other Monster Enhancers don't come back. Level-Draining only mentions the monster and Level-Draining, so I reckon they are the only two cards to come back.

f) If so and I finally draw the Friendly card do I really get 18 treasures? (that was the tally at the time of me playing it)

Wow, you really did have them all coming back at once? That would have been crazy! I'm not sure how you managed to get 18, though... That's 9 from each monster, with 2 being from the Bullrog, 1 being from Level-Draining and 1 or 2 from your other Monster Enhancer. Where are the other 4-5 Treasures per monster coming from?

[MunchkinMan]

Clipper is generally correct on this one. I'm iffy about the Mate coming back, so I might decide to confer with Andrew to see if he has any internal insight, or I might just boldly say, "No, it doesn't," just to take Level-Draining at its strictest interpretation. Also, only the Monster and Level-Draining come back, not any other Monster Enhancers.

[tremorlaine]

Yeah we weren't sure about the enhancers but since they specifically say that they enhance the enhancer, in the case Level-Draining, we had ruled that the enhanced Level-Draining was in fact returning each time. Same thing for the Mate since it is an exact duplicate with enhancers.

Clipper - Bullrog gives 5 treasures, Level-Draining is 1, there were additional enhancer enhancers that were +10 and +5 (giving 2 and 1 extra treasure each) for a total of 9 doubled because of Mate. Really crazy I know. They were essentially impossible to beat because they were a total combined strength of 76. Wizard, Friendly, and Out To Lunch were the only 3 cards that I knew of that would stop the insanity. We were playing with just the Core Set, Unnatural Axe, Monster Enhancers, and the Warehouse 23 2011 boosters

[Clipper]

Yeah, that Mate is a tough one. I'm still leaning to the side that it doesn't come back, but there was that minor doubt that only you guys can really deal with. I'm glad to see I'm leaning to the right side with my gut instinct on this one, though.

And thanks for the explanation tremorlaine, I somehow took the levels to be the base amount of Treasure. Silly me. Note that a Wizard would need two battles to get rid of both monsters, though...

Edit: Oh, and now I get what you are saying. You didn't have two other Monster Enhancers on the monster, you had two Enhancer Enhancers on Level-Draining. So you were fighting something like the (Really, Really, Unspeakably Level-Draining) Bullrog and its Mate each turn. That is a slightly different question, but I guess that the Enhancer Enhancers don't return in the same way the other Monster Enhancers attached to the monster don't come back.

[tremorlaine]

Yeah unless I hear differently from MunchkinMan or Andrew that's how I'm going to play it from now on. I didn't have the Enhancer enhancers in front of my to say the name but yeah they were supposed to be enhancing the Life-Draining and not the Bullrog.

And yeah I'm learning my gut is only 50/50 in line with the official posts. In our games if someone can lawyer up and have a clear argument that doesn't break the known rules I tend to let it pass until I get official responses that say otherwise.

[Andrew Hackard]

Originally Posted by tremorlaine

In our games if someone can lawyer up and have a clear argument that doesn't break the known rules I tend to let it pass until I get official responses that say otherwise.

Good! That's how you SHOULD play - if you don't know the rule for sure, but you have an idea that sounds right, run with it!

(That's for home games, of course. Tournament games need to be consistent in their rulings.)

[Bearget]

Originally Posted by MunchkinMan

Clipper is generally correct on this one. I'm iffy about the Mate coming back, so I might decide to confer with Andrew to see if he has any internal insight, or I might just boldly say, "No, it doesn't," just to take Level-Draining at its strictest interpretation. Also, only the Monster and Level-Draining come back, not any other Monster Enhancers.

Just to confirm: this contradicts Andrew's ruling here. Does your post supplant his ruling?

[MunchkinMan]

Since I missed Andrew's post at some point, and he missed that I contradicted him, I'm not sure what to take away from all that. . .

However, no, I'll reverse my ruling since I didn't see that older ruling and I'll take it to mean that on any given day, we miss stuff from time to time.

That Clipper missed pointing out to us that one of us had screwed something up, now that's something that I'm truly confused by. . . ;-)