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How are other folks playing the Devourers "you can't move" rule? Card 480 if you want to reference an actual card.

I think all will agree that you can't with a Devourer on your space.

I think most will probably agree that you can resolve effects like dungeon entrances and Tribal Stool, that say to return the board and the past and then put a terrain card into play and each player places their figures on it. The Devourers cards say nothing about not being allowed to take actions or not being allowed to return the board or not being allowed to place your figure or anything like that, AND you return the board before placing your figures (so the Devourer is already gone), AND these effect don't even use the word move. So to me, it seems pretty cut-and-dried to me that you can use e.g. Tribal Stool to escape -- but I can easily imagine someone interpreting the "spirit" of the rule to be that you can't leave a tile with a Devourer on it whatsoever.

Whether Devourers block bridge movement is fairly ambiguous and extremely important. Devourers usually spawn on adjacent terrain cards and can be routed around or unloaded by saving before you get 'stuck' on them. The main way for them to spawn right on top you and trap you immediately is if their fog tries to spawn them on an event instead of a terrain card, and almost all fogs that are replaced by events are replaced by bridges. So, the question of whether you can escape devourers by crossing bridges matters a lot -- if there's a devourer on your space and you didn't choose to move there to encounter it, 99% of the time there's a bridge option.

Bridges do use the word "move" to describe what you do with to your character figure, and they don't return the Devourer before they do it, so it's entirely possible they are blocked by Devourers. On the other hand, Move nearly always means and I think the rulebook might even explicitly define it as such.

RAW principle would dictate it only blocks .

Thematically I would say you cannot use anything that allows you to leave the tile.

Interesting answer!

How have you actually been playing? Are you happy with it?

Actually, if I'm not mistaken, the French text on the Devourers card is "you can't leave the terrain card where the rock worm figure is" (well, in French, obviously ).

This solves a lot of doubts on which actions the worms interfere with: every time your figure would leave the terrain where a worm is, you can’t take that action, you have to deal with the worm first. So exploring adjacent exploration cards: yes. Doing stuff on the terrain (that won’t make you leave the terrain card): yes. Doing stuff from items or cards in hand (that won’t make you leave the terrain you’re in): yes. Taking action on adjacent events that let you move away from your current terrain card (aka: bridges): no. Boarding the balloon and heading for the sky: no (you actually remove the terrain card and move onto another, so, you can’t). IIRC you can’t even save if a worm is on the same terrain as you. You could only “trick” it by saving from a different terrain, so that when the terrain where the worm is gets removed, the worm figurine is put away.

I play the strict way, the worms aren't much of a threat otherwise. I also consider getting in the balloon to be banned too.

Now that I think about it: how does moving through a terrain containing a devourer work?
The worms forbid you to leave the terrain you are on, but if you are just passing through, do their ability trigger? Is any terrain card you move through when taking the move action considered as you are leaving it (save for the one you stop on, obviously)?

Some good thoughts here.

Interesting that people consider the balloon to be banned, I think that's one the most clear -- it returns the board and the past, including the rockworm, before it does anything that the rockworm could possibly be thought to block. No more worm, no more block -- so even if you do think "place" would be blocked, the worm's gone... That's my thinking anyway.

Moving past them's an interesting notion. I think the rulebook's pretty clear that you pick a reachable terrain card and then move directly to it, nothing about the movement rules suggests any sort of interaction with intervening cards, you don't have to decide what path you take, just pick a destination for which paths exist. So that'd say you can move directly past them. But flavor rules might say otherwise. Notably, if it does work this way, leaving Weather figures probably does too.

I haven't encountered many weather figures yet, just two, but

The idea that each terrain tile covers a vast area coupled with the fact that you don't technically travel through tiles when moving may be the best explanation to why you don't confront the worms unless you start moving from their tile.

As for boarding the balloon, I didn't remember the exact wording on that card, but now I checked and yes,

You only move to the space you enter, everything in between is ignored, as long as it is open terrain. As neither weather nor devourers tell you that the card changes it’s type, they are ignored while moving past them.

That is my interpretation as well, as interesting as it is to digress into the other one.