Sinister Motives, Miles, and Gwen: My group was playing Mysterio scenario in Marvel Champions and stumbled on the interpretation of Maze of…

Question

My group was playing Mysterio scenario in Marvel Champions and stumbled on the interpretation of Maze of Mirrors forced interrupt.

What is the exact timing on this? As it is written, it doesn’t look like a replacement effect, but some of us believe the intention is exactly that.

Scenario 1: I have to draw back to my hand size (5) and I have 1 card in my hand. I would draw 4 cards. I take 4 cards simultaneously from the top of my deck and 1 of them is an encounter card. The Maze triggers, I put the encounter next to my hero and draw a card (which would be the 5th from the deck also counting the previous 4 I already picked but not yet put into my hand because the Maze interrupted that action). This card will go directly into my hand. Then the draw action resumes and I add the remaining 3 cards I previously took from the deck to my hand. I end up with 5 card in hand and one encounter next to my hero.

Scenario 2: I need to draw up to my hand size (5) and I already have 1 card in my hand. Because the forced interrupt on Maze of Mirrors says “when you WOULD draw from the deck”, this effect triggers even before picking cards off the top of the deck (which IMHO would be weird because you don’t even know if the cards underneath the top one are encounters or hero cards, so you wouldn’t know if the maze would trigger, but let’s get past this and see where it ends). The Maze looks among the cards you would draw and triggers for each encounter card. Let’s say one of the 4 you would draw is an encounter. The Maze triggers and puts it into play next to your hero. Then you draw a card which will be the top card of the deck because you haven’t drawn any yet, you just looked through them to see if any was an encounter. After resolving the Maze ability, you can then resolve the action that was interrupted (draw 4 cards), so you actually end up with 1 card more than your hand size for each encounter card you would have drawn if the maze hadn’t interrupted the draw action.

I personally think that scenario 2 is a very convoluted way of thinking, but I can see why some people may think that’s how the Maze works because it is actually interrupting the draw action, so until after it resolves, you haven’t drawn a single card from the deck, and when you finally do that, you draw the number you would have drawn before the action was interrupted.

My way of interpreting the card instead is that “when you would draw or discard cards from your deck” means that the action is initiated, so the cards are taken off the top of the deck, but the Maze triggers before they end up where they normally would (your hand or discard pile); so the cards you draw / discard are counted before the Maze triggers and those are the only ones that will interact with the triggering action (draw or discard).

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