"Immobile" Allies

[thanatos]

I bought FANG for my wife (who am I kidding, for both of us) as a Christmas gift and we finally got a chance to break into it last night. We absolutely loved it, but we had a question about one of the allies. I'm at work, so I don't have the ally's name, but he had a keyword of something like "Immobile" and provided an activated +3 Lore bonus.

It was the "Immobile" keyword that confused us, and we spent some time digging through the rules, but couldn't find any mention of the keyword. We decided to treat it as irrelevant and allowed him to provide the +3 bonus once per game round to his allied hero. No events or dangers came up that affected the allies, but I just wanted to find out if the "Immobile" keyword actually does affect the ally, or if, for now, it really is just irrelevant text that may become relevant with a later expansion?

[Pred]

Just thought I would post and say I have no clue as well.

[vikinglad]

I'm not 100%, but I would say that this entry from the rulebook says it means nothing unless something else says it means something. Eloquent, no? Well, that is why I don't write rulebooks. Here is how they say it, which is much better than my attempt:

Quote:Keywords
Most cards have Keywords associated with them, listed
just below the image. The Keywords do not have any
inherent meaning, but are occasionally referenced by other
cards and rules. Some important Keywords have an icon
associated with them that can be found in the upper right
corner of the text area (such as Gun, Sidekick, or Fire).

[munkymuddface]

It means that it is an ally that is not physically with you and is based out of the city listed for its Location. When you use their ability, you are "phoning a friend" but that is not really much different than using one that physically is with you. The only example I can think of where it is important is the Quicksand Danger/Cliffhanger.

Quicksand
Glory 3
Agility 5+ xx
If the Test is failed, do not flip to the Cliffhanger. Instead, discard an Ally that is with you and start the Test again. If you fail and have no Allies with you, flip to the Cliffhanger.

So if you have the Mechanic with you and you fail, then you would discard him and try the Test again. However, if your only Ally is the College Professor, who is based out of London, and you fail then you would go straight to the Cliffhanger.

So yeah, Vikinglad has the right of it with "it means nothing unless something else says it means something."

[vikinglad]

Nice munkymuddface. I don't think I would have caught that. I always just look for the specific keyword, so if it didn't say "discard one of your allies that is not immobile," I probably would have thrown him out. Thanks.

[thanatos]

Cool. Thanks for the explanation. I knew about that keyword quote, but if you look toward the back of the rulebook, there actually IS an icon for "immobile," which is what got me so curious, but that explanation makes perfect sense and means that we played the professor just right . Many thanks.

[Druff]

Played our first game of FANG last night, loved it! (it did take around 5hrs though!) The location text on the Allies card was the only thing that stumped us so we chose to ignore it. Thanks for clearing it up!

[Old Dwarf]

Hmmmmmm....F&G hasn't made the table that much
(it's a lot to break out)but we played this as the Immoible
Ally wasn't able to be used unless the Hero was in the same location.

OD

[mqstout]

Ran into this same thing during first game (finally!) last night. Reasonable interpretation. Similar cliffhangers on avalanche, poison darts and the stabbing silhouette one.