How is repeating a phase good? At the end of the investigator phase, all investigators are exhausted, so repeating this phase is pointless since they'd just start the phase exhausted. Repeating the mythos and enemy damage phases is just not in the investigators interest. So that leave the upkeep phase. Getting an extra resource and card just doesn't seem worth it for this card.

I don't think investigators are exhausted at the end of each turn.

The rules suggest flipping the mini-investigator card to its grey side to mark that you have already had your turn, but that has no game effect.

Not only don]t they exhaust, but I don't see how they would care if they were exhausted, none have exhaust effects on them so they would continue to work the same.

Repeating the investigator phase gets everyone a new set of actions, and for most characters that a pretty damn good thing to have.

 

I think the main play of this will be to delete a mythos phase, but if you have this with many enemies on the table, or during or just before a boss fight, a double investigator phase might be just what is needed to kill them before they can attack or things get worse.

Yea, we finally played this one last night and after some discussion decided it was generally best to just skip the Mythos phase - so you still get an investigator phase and refresh phase.  There are situational times where it would be better to do the Investigator phase however, like Richard mentions - to kill a boss enemy or host of enemies before they get a chance to attack during the Monster Phase.

I didn't mean the harder definition of exhausting a card (tapping it), I meant it more as a shorthand for saying the investigator has spent all their actions and is now completely done doing things. The dilemma I see is whether the number of actions resets when you restart the investigator phase or it's the upkeep phase doing the "action reset." After looking at the rules reference for investigator and upkeep phases, they say the mini card indicates which investigator have/doesn't have any actions left, but it explicitly says the upkeep is when the mini card flips over indicating a reset in the number of investigator actions. There's no language in the investigator phase suggesting a reset in actions, just that this is the phase to spend actions. So, how does restarting the investigator phase reset actions when resetting the number of actions happens in the upkeep phase?

I agree the rules are not wonderfully clear on this.

If you look at the learn to play guide, it says: "During this phase, each investigator takes a separate turn.", Turn are three actions, and the effect of the pocket watch seems pretty clearly going to give everyone another turn or three actions.

This is complciated by the main rules, which add "Each investigator takes one turn each round.", and then "If there is an investigator who has not yet taken a turn this round, return to 2.2". The use of 'round' rather than phase introduces interpretive conflict, supporting your theory that you don't get a new set of actions, and we know that the Rules trumps the intro guide.

But I would argue that this still has to be read in a context. The fact is that without card shenanigans they are equivalent, and it seems unlikely the wording was selected with care with respect to a card produced so much later.

Does a once-per-round line of rules text inside a once-per-round phase stand, when that phase gets repeated by a rule-breaking card? I can see an arguement for yes, but I can't imagine the FAQ coming down on that side of the discussion.

My group will be giving players an extra set of turns/actions should the occasion arise, until someone offical says we shouldn't.

I found on page 23 of the rules reference in the upkeep phase timing window that 4.2 is the time when actions are reset. This pretty obviously means to me that repeating the investigator phase after everyone took all of this actions doesn't reset their actions. Thus using pocket watch at the end of the investigator phase to replay that phase wouldn't allow investigators to play a new set of actions; they would just start the phase with zero available actions and move straight to investigator end phase.

Greetings, The “reset actions” step of the upkeep phase and the mini-cards are mostly there as a convenience in order to give players a way of tracking who has taken a turn and who has not. Generally, investigators have 3 actions to take whenever they take a turn, and each investigator takes one turn during the investigation phase. If a card effect grants you a new turn, either explicitly or in this case by allowing you to repeat the investigation phase, the investigators should be granted a full turn’s worth of actions once again. Likewise, if the upkeep phase is skipped, this doesn’t prevent the players from being able to take their turn during the next round. Cheers, ------------------------------------------------ Matthew Newman