Churninator vs Stars are wrong

[Myranda]

Hi,

Yesterday we played a mammoth game of Munchkin Cthulhu (it lasted AAAAGES!) and a scenario occurred:

I was at lvl 9
I had the Churninator (so churning any lvl 1 or 2 monster automatically - no cards to help the monster)
I drew a level 1 monster
Soo... declare that it's churninated and so I wins!
But then someone played Stars Are Wrong to discard a monster from combat.

Initially I thought "well, it's automatically defeated so there's no monsters left, so no combat... so you're not playing it during combat"
But the rest of the group didn't want me to win so argued that it can be played as the combat begins, so to speak...

After a minute or two, I agreed with them - life's too short to argue over games right? And then three turns later the game ended in a 5 way win as everyone but one player was at lvl 9 and all players were cultists...

But I did wonder what the consensus opinion would be on this scenario (in case it comes up again)

Thanks in advance

[MunchkinMan]

Because The Churninator actually removes the Monster from combat, there's no Monster to discard, so The Stars are Wrong can't be used. If someone had wandered in a Monster, then it could have been used, but that doesn't solve the problem, since you would still get the kill, and the win, from the first Monster.