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Q: If a Keeper has the ability to “detach and discard” a Creeper, does that Creeper need to be attached in order for them to discard the Creeper?

A: There are a handful of cards which are able to get rid of certain Attaching Creepers, and the language about how this happens varies.

In Star Fluxx, both the Doctor and the Engineer say they can “detach and discard” Brain Parasites and Malfunction respectively. The “detach and discard” language does mean that the Creeper must be attached in order for them to discard it. Let’s use Malfunction as our example, for reasons we’ll discuss in a sec.

If you have Malfunction, and it’s not attached to anything, there isn’t anything Malfunctioning. Nothing is broken, so the Engineer has nothing to fix. Thematically this works perfectly, though it’s a bit harder to justify why the “floating possibility of a Malfunction” could prevent you from winning, but that’s the way it goes. Maybe you just have bad luck hovering over you, waiting to happen, and that’s enough to do it.

Note that it’s actually impossible to have the Doctor available to cure unattached Brain Parasites. If the Doctor is there, then the Brain Parasites will attach to him, and he won’t be curing anyone (of Brain Parasites, the only known health issue in the universe… or, well, the deck)

Interestingly enough, in all four of the Trek Fluxxen (Original Series, TNG, DS9, and Voyager) the language on the Engineer’s card says simply. “If you have a Malfunction, you may discard it.” With this wording, there’s no question about whether Malfunction must be attached; clearly it doesn’t have to be.

Ironically, however, without the “detach” language, technically any afflicted Keeper should be discarded with its Malfunction. However, we all know that the Engineer is supposed to fix things, not just toss them when they break, so we hope that nobody has been doing that. (So wasteful!) Just in case, though, we have an FAQ specifically for that instance. Obviously, we should have used the same language on the Trek Engineers as we did in Star Fluxx… but we didn’t. Oh well.

Finally, in Cthulhu Fluxx, we have two Keepers which can remove attached Creepers. One is the Sanitarium, which says, “you can discard Nightmares and/or Madness if they are attached to one of your other cards.” Though it doesn’t mention detaching, like the Trek engineers, nobody seems to question that the Sanitarium isn’t going to kill its denizens (though this is Cthulhu Fluxx, so…).

Lastly, there’s The Dreamer, which says, “you can detach and discard Nightmares if they are in play.” It uses the “detach and discard” language, which we’ve clarified above. (You can only discard them if they’re attached.) What’s interesting about The Dreamer is that it’s the only card like this which would let you cure someone else’s Keepers if you wanted to. This would seem to be counter-productive, but there are, of course, Goals which call for certain Creepers, so it’s conceivable that you might want to get rid of an opponent’s Creeper.

Q: Attaching Creepers say “both cards stay together until discarded.” Are there exceptions to this rule?

A: While one of the most obvious ways to get rid of a Creeper attached to one of your Keepers is to destroy them both (or move them both), there ARE ways that you can destroy the Creeper while still retaining the Keeper. The key things here are 1) explicit wording, and 2) thematic appropriateness.

In Star Fluxx*, the exceptions are the Doctor, who can cure Brain Parasites, and the Engineer*, who can fix a Malfunction. In both cases they detach the Creeper, and the Keeper is left, good as new. Creeper Reassignment also specifically states that you detach the Creeper to move it. In Cthulhu Fluxx, the Dreamer states that he can detach Nightmares and discard it. Meanwhile the Sanitarium logically can cure an afflicted Keeper of Nightmares or Insanity. In Anatomy Fluxx, special actions allow you to “cure” yourself.

Some examples where the Creepers DO stay attached would be, in Star Fluxx, the weapons Laser Sword and Laser Pistol, which, again, quite logically, destroy the Keeper in order to destroy the attached Creeper. And while the Phaser in Star Trek or TNG Fluxx targets just the Creeper, it doesn’t say anything about detaching the Keeper either, so if you use it to get rid of an attached Creeper, the Keeper it’s attached to will also be destroyed. The Teleporter will move a Keeper… and its attached Creeper. If a Keeper or Creeper goes into the trash, then it’s attached card goes along.

In Cthulhu Fluxx, The Feds are pretty much the equivalent, though they also destroy themselves in the process. The Necronomicon lets you move any Creeper… and says nothing about detaching it, so you’d have to move any attendant Keeper (and extra Creepers if more than one is attached).

Trash Something is the generic Action version of what the weapons allow you to do. You could trash a Keeper, and it’s Creeper will go along, or you could trash a Creeper, and it’s attached Keeper would go along. There’s no logical reason or explicit wording that lets you detach connected Creeper-Keeper combos for this Action.

*In various Star Trek Fluxxen, there are specific Engineer analogues: Scotty, Geordi, O’Brien that work the same way with respect to Malfunction.

Q: Can the Doctor cure a holographic projection of a Keeper with Brain Parasites?

A: The Holographic Projector duplicates any one Keeper on the table, complete with any modifying Creeper effects, so it’s as if that Keeper were in front of you, afflicted with it’s Creeper, however, the Doctor cannot cure a Holographic Projection of something – the card clearly states that the Doctor can only cure your own Keepers.

Q: The Captain has a choice of four Keepers he can steal, but one is the Expendable Crewman, does he have a choice, or must he take the red shirt?

To elaborate: The Captain can steal “Doctor, Engineer, Scientist, or Expendable Crewman.” The Expendable Crewman’s card states that any time a player takes away one of your Keepers, “they MUST take this one instead.” So, does the Captain have a choice or MUST the Captain take the Expendable Crewman first?

A: Well, The Captain can steal any of those cards, but they might not all be owned by the same player. You are only forced to take the Expendable Crewman if the person you are stealing from has that card.

So if Player A has the Captain,
and Player B has the Doctor,
and Player C has the Engineer and the Expendable Crewman

…then player A can take the Doctor from player B, but they cannot take the Engineer from C – they must take the Expendable Crewman instead.

Of course, if Player A takes the Expendable Crewman on their first try, then on their NEXT turn, they can take the Engineer if they want (assuming they still have The Captain).

Note that in Star Trek Fluxx, Ensign Smith functions as the Expendable Crewman, while in TNG Fluxx, Tasha Yar has that special ability.

Q: Why don’t Brain Parasites impair the Keeper? And if they don’t impair, why can’t the Doctor cure himself?

A: No. Brain Parasites don’t inhibit their host Keeper’s power, but in the case of the Doctor, he cannot treat himself. As the card says, he can only discard Brain Parasites if attached to one of your other cards.” Of course, if you have the promo card The Android Doctor, then he can cure the Doctor of Brain Parasites, and vice versa (the Doctor could cure the Robo-Doc). Like the Doctor himself, however, the Robo-Doc can’t cure himself either.

Here’s the full thematic explanation of why Brain Parasites don’t inhibit Keepers’ abilities, but they DO keep the Doctor from healing himself:

The reason is not due to the fact that he’s lost his curative powers. If you have Brain Parasites, then your every action will be subject to the whims of these aliens who have invaded your head. The Brain Parasites might WANT the Engineer to repair that computer. They might WANT the Captain to steal the Scientist. After all, they don’t want to do stuff that’s bad for their host, right?

But it simply doesn’t make sense for them to ever allow the Doctor to use his curative powers to evict themselves from his own cozy cranium. In fact, if there were multiple Brain Parasite Creepers in the game, the Brain Parasites would, logically, bar the Doc from curing anyone of Brain Parasites (which would effectively nullify the Doctor, since in this game that’s apparently the only curable disease in known space.)

PS: The real question in my mind is why the Brain Parasites don’t nullify the powers of The Expendable Crewman, since his “power” is that he frequently gets himself kidnapped or killed. Kidnapped is fine… I can totally imagine a scenario where the Brain Parasite might want it’s host to get stolen and taken to another ship (“Oh goody, we shall spread to a whole new crew!”). But one of the possible (though perhaps drastic) ways to get rid of an attaching Creeper is to destroy the host Keeper, and the Expendable Crewman’s power is to somehow step into the line of fire, even when he’s not the intended target. Maybe the “power” of the Expendable Crewman is just so strong that even having his mind controlled by an alien being can’t keep him from being a hot-headed klutz.