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Victory: X is a part of the enemy's printed text box. If you cast Mind Wipe on an enemy with victory points, and defeat that enemy, it will go into the discard pile, not into your victory display.
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Q: Does Mind Wipe blank the damage and horror icons of an enemy? A: Damage and horror icons are not part of the enemy’s text box, so they are not blanked by Mind Wipe.
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"As If": This was added to the FAQ (v.1.7, March 2020) and then amended (v.1.8, October 2020). You can read the October ruling on the ArkhamDB rules page here. (I'm adding a hyperlink rather than retyping the rules in case in future the ruling is changed or amended - at that point, the rules page will be updated and all ArkhamDB FAQ entries will link to the correct ruling.)
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Q: I was wondering if you could provide an official ruling on how Swarm cards interact with Mind Wipe. Mind Wipe says to treat the text box of the enemy as if it were blank. Therefore, if an enemy has the text "hunter", that would be ignored. For "swarm", would this effect discard the swarm cards (on the grounds the host has no text to maintain them) or would it mean the host enemy can now be attacked directly (since it's host cards are no longer considered a swarm textually) or would simply nothing happen because swarms are treated as enemies and thus unaffected? Or perhaps something we have overlooked? A: Generally speaking, the rules for the swarming keyword only apply when the enemy enters play. Once it has entered play with the indicated number of swarm cards, the existence of the swarming keyword no longer really matters; all of the rules pertaining to swarm cards apply regardless (kind of like how the “fast” keyword doesn’t matter once the card in question has been played). So, in other words, no, Mind Wipe will not cause swarm cards to suddenly fall off or stop existing, nor would it allow you to attack the host directly. It may however affect other card effects that only refer to enemies with the swarming keyword (such as an effect like “Add 1 swarm card to each enemy with the swarming keyword”).
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Q: There's an old ruling that says if you use Mind Wipe on Swamp Leech and attempt to evade it, the evade value of '-' is treated as 0. If another card, like Sharpshooter or Delilah O'Rourke, references the evade value of something with a '-', like Swamp Leech or Vulnerable Heart, is it treated as 0 for those purposes as well? Or is the ability just unable to fire? What about investigating the Hidden Tunnel in City of the Elder Things (for something like Searching for Izzie, Call of the Unknown, or Buried Secrets)? A: After re-examining these cards and the direction our game has taken, we are going to override the previous ruling. Even if Swamp Leech were blanked with Mind Wipe, its Evade value would still be a “-“, which can be thought of as “null” or a “non-number.” You could not use this non-number as the basis for a skill test with Sharpshooter. It’s, as you said, unable to fire. This also means that you could not investigate at Hidden Tunnel.
Event
Spell.
Cost: 1. XP: 1.
Fast. Play after a phase begins.
Choose a non-Elite enemy at your location. Treat the chosen enemy's printed text box as if it were blank (except for Traits) until the end of the phase.
FAQs
(from the official FAQ or responses to the official rules question form)Reviews
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This card seems really useful in forgotten age, as it removes "Vengeance X" from non-elite Monsters plus some other terrifying effects they have (retaliate, alert,...)
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However with more players, there's a chance such a card is drawn again after shuffling the encounter deck
- As a spell, it can also be searched with Arcane Initiate
Mind Wipe was quite bad card. Most enemy with annoying effect has Victory X, and Mind Wipe remove Victory. I believe most of you don't want to forget Victory to avoid annoying effect. Thus, in many cases, Mind Wipe is adopted to counter annoying weakness enemies such as Your Worst Nightmare, The Thing That Follows, or (friend's) Tommy Malloy. Sometimes, Mind Wipe is utilized as single target Taunt to make auto-engage against aloof enemy.
As the time is gone, some of enemy have annoying effect without Victory point. In this reason, Mind Wipe become considerable card in some campaign. Nevertheless, the play timing of Mind Wipe is quite bad, and we need to consider to counter enemy. You can only play Wind Wipe to the enemy with you at the start of phase. You cannot play for hunter enemy moved to you during enemy phase. You cannot play for just spawned enemy during mythos phase. You cannot play Mind Wipe after you move during your turn.
The below contains spoiler about many campaign.
Forgotten Age: As the other review said, you can remove annoying Vengeance X. Additionally, there are some more target such as Brood of Yig, Brotherhood Cultist or lots of aloof enemies.
Innsmouth Conspiracy: Commonly, you cannot ignore engage effects of enemies. However, Deep One Nursemaid is good target (during mythos phase or investigator phase).
Edge of the Earth: EotE has many enemies for Mind Wipe. Skittering Nonsense, Primordial Evil not to get Tekeli-li card. Lost Researcher, Frenzied Explorer to remove doom with defeating. Horrifiying Shape, Giant Albino Penguin for auto-engagement. Guardian Elder Thing to avoid milling your deck. Constricting Elder Thing to instant kill (in my opinion and it may wrong ruling). In fact, I determine writing this review because of Edge of the Earth campaign. There are many targets for Mind Wipe, and I think you have a chance to playing Mind Wipe for all scenarios.
With Undimensioned and Unseen, we might have seen the first real target for Mind Wipe. And man is it a big one. Spoilers ahead:
Taking down a Brood of Yog-Sothoth is no easy task. First, you need to find the Esoteric Formula before you can even attack it. Then, you are faced with making a combat check against 6 to damage it - made easier by clues you can put on it, but 6 is nevertheless the highest combat we've seen on an enemy thus far. Even if you succeed, you only deal one damage to it, whereas it has 2-5 health depending on how many investigators you are playing with.
Or, you can skip all that and play Mind Wipe. Better yet, since you are probably playing Agnes Baker anyway and have Forbidden Knowledge, immediately follow up with taking 1 horror using Forbidden Knowledge and kill a house sized invisible monstrosity without breaking a sweat.
Oh, but you don't get its Victory I. But I think that's a fair price to pay for the amount of effort you save.
As has been pointed out by MrGoldbee's review comment in the upgraded version, this card can and should also be used to specifically blank (and therefore counter) the Victory keyword.
To avoid spoilers, let's just say that there exist a number of scenarios which punish you for having certain enemies in the victory display, almost always having "Victory 0".
Oh, and then there is that revenge plot fantasy of mine against Stubborn Detective - blankception!
Somehow I do not see any scenario with use for this core card unfortunately :( There are always MUCH more better cards for mystic. Do you use this card in your decks? When and for which monsters is it helpful?
This could be a very good card in Dream Eaters with all the "Swarming X" monsters. Getting to 200 characters and think I'm gonna give this a try. Am I at 200 characters now? No? Well if I have xp to spare I'll try the upgraded version too, how's that?