Does my Carbonite Cousin need feeding?

Question

For Christmas, I received Agricola - The Goodies. It's a fun expansion that provides new themed farm boards, shaped resources and animals, stickers for your people, and four interesting decks of cards. One of the decks is called the X-Deck, and adds random events that trigger when you take stone. Here's one of them:

Carbonite Cousin

The family member taking this Action is frozen in Carbonite. He will be rescued during the Returning Home phase 3 rounds from now. At that time, place a Claim marker on any Action space of your choice. At the beginning of the following round, put the Family member on that Action space and carry out the action before the starting player takes his or her first action.

I have three questions.

1. Does my Carbonite Cousin need feeding each harvest that he's not in my house?
2. Does he still take up a space in the house (e.g. for family growth)?
3. If the game ends before he is rescued, what is his status? Does he still count towards my people score at the end?

Answer 1

1 Does my Carbonite Cousin need feeding each harvest that he's not in my house?

No. He's frozen in carbonite. As Threepio says "He should be quite well-protected -- if he survives the freezing process, that is."

2 Does he still take up a space in the house (e.g. for family growth)?

No. As Han Solo said, the point is: "To freeze a being solid, then hang him on a wall like some trophy?". Wall art doesn't need a bedroom.

3 If the game ends before he is rescued, what is his status? Does he still count towards my people score at the end?

No, as Leia says: "He's trapped in that thing forever unless somebody releases him."

See the Wookiepedia for more information.

Answer 2

Yes to all three.

There would have to be exceptions listed on the card, or in the rules insert to do otherwise. There are none.

We can make assumptions based on what we "know" being frozen in carbonite means, however the current game rules do not support that.

Answer 3

I know The Goodies is "just a bit of fun" compared to, say, Farmers of the Moor, but I simply can't believe that Carbonite Cousin is meant to work as per the phrasing above. Losing a family member FOR THREE ROUNDS - four rounds, if the initial action taken stopped the family member from doing something actually useful - is in no way compensated for by a one-shot Taster-type action four rounds later.

Full disclosure: I don't actually own The Goodies yet. Am I missing a whole bunch of new rules that would help this card make any kind of sense in terms of the Agricola rules?

If not, here's how I would make this card remotely playable. Obviously, none of your Family Members are "cousins". The first two are man and wife, the others are their children, and marryin' cousins may be legal in some parts, but not in my neck of the woods. Ergo, the Carbonite Cousin cannot be an actual family member. I would rule that the Carbonite Cousin be represented by a Guest Token, that is rescued three turns later and carries out an action out of gratitude the turn after that, as per the card.

This eliminates any worries about whether the Cousin needs feeding and accommodating, whether he scores points at the end of the game, and whether he has to go to the Infirmary if his carbonite prison is not heated for a turn. Even more pertinently, it turns the card into something that might be playable by someone other than a total Star Wars obsessive!