Baba Yaga F.A.Q.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Do I have to move on my turn?
A: No. You can chose to move as much or as little as your Move stat allows, and “none at all” is perfectly acceptable.
Q: What do I do about Hut/Horseman movement if I’m instructed to shuffle an encounter card back into the deck?
A: If an encounter card gets shuffled back into the deck, then don’t move the Hut or Horseman token.
Q: When a card tells me to draw a particular card from one of the encounter decks do I shuffle the deck afterwards?
A: Yes, including the cards that you had to go through in order to get the card that you were looking for.
Q: Marya Morevna gets to begin play with an Ally card and the Koshchey the Deathless Quest requires obtaining an Ally card as its first step. Does Marya Morevna automatically complete the first step of that quest?
A: She does not. Marya Morevna gets her Ally before game play begins while completing quest steps is done after the game begins, therefore she must “obtain” a second Ally for the purposes of the quest.
Q: My quest requires that I “have an encounter” at a certain location, does that mean I have to win the encounter?
A: No. Not all encounters even have a “win” condition, you just need to draw a card and follow what it says. Losing the challenges on a normal encounter do not automatically prevent you from completing whatever quest step that you are on. However, sometimes a quest requires that you remain on a certain location after your normal encounter and there are both win and lose conditions that might require moving your token. Just watch the wording on your quest, it should specify.
Q: When I spend a point of Rep to reroll, does my difficulty change?
A: No. Until that challenge is resolved, you continue to roll the same number of dice at the same difficulty, regardless of how many Rep cards you discard.
Q: If there are multiple challenges on a single encounter and I spent some Rep on the first challenge, does that affect my difficulty on the other challenges?
A: Treat every challenge separately when it comes to calculating the number of dice you roll and the difficulty. So, if you had two Rep, and you spent one on the first challenge of an encounter, then any later challenges on that encounter will be at a lower difficulty than the first.
Q: If the result of an encounter moves me to a new location do I have a new encounter there?
A: Only if it is specified that you do so in the win/lose result. Otherwise, your turn is over.
Q: Can I move through a location containing Baba Yaga, the Hut, or the Horseman?
A: No, your movement stops and you must encounter the game element. This is true of the Wolves or Solovey as well. There are certain Items and Allies that can circumvent this, though. If you do not actually move through a location (as with the Eagle), then you do not encounter game elements.
Q: Will there be a Russian language version of Baba Yaga?
A: Not in the foreseeable future, but it is a distinct possibility that has been discussed several times with some Russian-speaking friends of ours.
Q: What is the answer to the “Tsar’s Riddle”?
A: MWA HA HA HA HA HA I’ll never tell!
Q: Just how does the Winter Wolves card work?
A: Unfortunately, the Winter Wolves (a Wilderness encounter card) was a late addition to the game and therefore didn’t get as much playtesting as most of the other cards. Here are some things to keep in mind:
- When you move into the location where the Wolves token is you must stop moving and you take the encounter card just as if you had drawn it from the deck that turn. If there are other game elements on that location or a quest encounter to complete, then those are also dealt with on that turn, but no new encounters from the Wilderness deck are drawn.
- You don’t make the move challenge roll on the turn that you first encounter the Wolves; just at the start of every turn thereafter until your character leaves them outside of a town, dies, or otherwise leaves them behind. This means that someone who draws the Wolves when right outside of a town location will only have to make a single challenge before getting a chance to leave them behind.
- If the Wolves token is on your location at the start of your turn (for whatever reason), then it is assumed that you have already drawn the card and you must make the move challenge as dictated by the card before any other action.
- The card reads “move the Wolves [token] with your character.” This should be interpreted to mean that when you move your character, using his Move stat, in the normal fashion as dictated under “Turn Order” in the Basic Game Play section of the rule book, then the Wolves token is moved along with your character. If your character token is moved by some other means, such as the result of an encounter, a quest, or dying, then the Wolves token stays where it was. Additonally, the Giant Eagle (Ally) and the Magical Carriage (Item) allow you to move your token in a way not dictated by your Move stat, which also causes you to leave the Wolves behind.
- If two or more players are on the same location as the Wolves then the token follows whichever one moves away from the location first.
