Rules Questions

[prj]

Demon Roach King supports Mr Demon as per rule quoted above.

That's where you're deviating from the example. I think you're right, and this is a mistake in the example.

There's another snag in the example, depending on how you interpret the Henchman ability of the Demon Roach King. It says "Moves to the bottom of any battle stack", but there are different ways that could be done, and I don't know of any official examples the demonstrate which way is supposed to be standard. This example seems to ignore that part of the Henchman ability entirely.

The way I play, a Henchman goes to the bottom, and stays there, immediately when they are played. Any further monsters are played into the middle of the stack--below the previous non-Henchman monsters, but above the Henchmen. Alternatively, you might play all the monsters in order, and once the stack is complete, only then pull out the Henchmen and move them to the bottom. Depending on which method you choose, you could get a different battle size in some cases.

So I would play the example like this:

• Player 1 plays Mr. Demon.
• Player 2 plays Demon Roach King under Mr. Demon. The two monsters support each other, so the King's Horde raises the battle size to 3.
• Player 3 plays Orc Summoner between Mr. Demon and the King. Now Mr. Demon supports the Summoner instead of the King, while the King still supports Mr. Demon. The King has no support. The battle size increases again because the Summoner is a Leader.
• Player 4 plays Demon Roaches, who support Mr. Demon. The battle stack is now finished.

Using the other interpretation of Henchman, we get the same end result in this case. The first two steps work the same way, and then:

• Player 3 plays Orc Summoner under the Demon Roach King. The Summoner supports no one and is supported by no one. The battle size increases again because the Summoner is a Leader.
• Player 4 plays Demon Roaches, who support Mr. Demon. The battle stack is finished.
• Now we move the King and Roaches to the bottom. Mr. Demon now supports the Summoner instead of the King, while the King and Roaches still supports Mr. Demon. The King has no support.

With this second Henchman interpretation, it's possible in some cases that the battle size might increase after the rearrangement, but I wouldn't play any additional monsters at that point.

It looks like when the example was written, they forgot that Mr. Demon gets support. So just pretend it's Hellpuppy instead of Mr. Demon, and then the example would almost work. It's still missing the movement of the Henchmen to the bottom of the stack, but that could be done after all the monsters are played, depending on your interpretation of Henchman.