PLZ HELP! Automatically Defeated a monster??

[dragondoot]

We were playing Munchkin Cthulu last night and Ozathorth was played, the player fighting him then played Song Of Madness, (Automatically Defeats Ozathroth) This player then stated that the COMBAT was over because they had automatically defeated the monster and would not allow any "use during combat" items to effect combat. We were trying to play "Tricky Ichor" (replace the monster in combat with a monster from your hand) but the player did not have a monster card to replace it with so they used "cheat" to just remove the monster altogether.

Question 1: Can we even use Tricky Ichor with "CHEAT" because the player did not have a monster to replace it with?

Question 2: Does automatically defeating a monster automatically end combat or can you still play "use only during combat cards" after the automatic defeat.

Question 3 (new): Could we have used a legal "tricky ichor" if we had a monster to swap with

[snarky]

Originally Posted by dragondoot

We were playing Munchkin Cthulu last night and Ozathorth was played, the player fighting him then played Song Of Madness, (Automatically Defeats Ozathroth) This player then stated that the COMBAT was over because they had automatically defeated the monster and would not allow any "use during combat" items to effect combat. We were trying to play "Tricky Ichor" (replace the monster in combat with a monster from your hand) but the player did not have a monster card to replace it with so they used "cheat" to just remove the monster altogether.

Question 1: Can we even use Tricky Ichor with "CHEAT" because the player did not have a monster to replace it with?

Question 2: Does automatically defeating a monster automatically end combat or can you still play "use only during combat cards" after the automatic defeat.

1) CHEAT cards don't work like that - they allow you to play an item that you otherwise wouldn't be able to use (basically, there's a very detailed FAQ on them - http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/faq/).

2) If the monster is automatically defeated, the card is no longer in play. If nobody wanders in another monster at that point, the combat is over. As long as there's no monster in play, there isn't really "combat" happening.

[Mister Ed]

You cannot use Cheat! that way. Cheat doesn't change what a card does, it only makes it "legal" to use an item when it would not otherwise be. If the card requires you to have a monster to replace the other with, then you need to have one.

However, in this case I don't THINK you could play that card, anyway, because the Monster was already defeated, and the card targeted the Monster.

Generally, however, combat is NOT over just because the monster was automatically defeated. You could, for instance, have played a Wandering Monster (with accompanying Monster card) into the combat, if you had the necessary cards. Unless either the Song of Madness or Ozathorth cards explicitly state that combat ends immediately in that situation, it should be the same as any other combat where you eliminate all the monsters present, so combat doesn't end until your opponents have a reasonable chance to play something to stop you.

[MunchkinMan]

Let me try to clear things up here, especially since a new question got added on and I can't decide if it's been answered or not by stuff that was said earlier.

1. Cheat! has a very specific usage that, based on the card wording, only affects which Items you can't use or carry, but does not change the way the Item is used. There's a very specific explanation of how Cheat! works here. It really extends the FAQ information. However, what that says is that you can't use a card outside of the way it was intended, like the way it was played here.
2. Automatically defeating a Monster removes the Monster. Cards that rely on a Monster can't be played, but that doesn't mean that combat is over UNLESS the card that automatically defeated the Monster says otherwise. This is a situation where cards could be played, but not those that affected a non-existent Monster.
3. I'm not entirely sure which response your 3rd question is referring to, exactly, but I will say this: The only way anyone could have played Tricky Ichor was if there was a Monster still in the combat. In this case, there was no Monster, so regardless of whether one of the players had a Monster in his hand, Tricky Ichor could not be played because there was no original Monster to swap with.

Now, a scenario (with the same starting play) that would work:

Ozathoth appears, Song of Madness is played, Ozathoth is killed, and the player becomes a Cultist. The other players still have a chance to do something, so someone uses Wandering Monster to add a Monster to the combat, but it's a weak Monster that the main player could beat, but the player with Tricky Ichor has a better Monster (and no Wandering Monster), so he uses Tricky Ichor to swap in his Monster and takes the one in play into his hand.