Warning: Wall of Text about needlessly detailed stuff
Okay, now you guys have made me curious about the details of resolving attacks… Turns out it gets really confusing when you think about it too hard.
In particular: When does the check happen when something is dead? Is “dies” a triggered effect from having too much damage or does the “attack” event read: 1) Both Combatants deal combat damage 2) Check if anything died (like it is worded in the rulebook) and so has to instruct you specifically to look for dead things?
But that doesn’t say anything about other sources of damage like Shadow Blade - and Shadow Blade basically needs the target to die before resolving the second part of its ability, so in this case “dies” would need to be a triggered effect that can happen between the two effects on Shadow Blade.
I think it would make the most sense if “dies” is a triggered effect and the “attack” effect reads:
A deals its combat damage to B and B deals its combat damage to A. (one event, only after this single event is resolved do we check if something is triggered)
So to take the example from the game:
I have: Gunpoint Taxman [1 damage, Frenzy from Drakk]
Opponent has: Argagarg Lvl.5 [+1/+1 rune, 2 damage] patrolling in Scavenger. 0 gold.
- Gunpoint Taxman attacks Argagarg.
– Queue: Gunpoint Taxman deals 4 damage and Argagarg deals 2 damage (Order can be chosen, but doesn’t matter because both need to resolve before something else can happen). - Gunpoint Taxman deals 4 damage to Argagarg and Argagarg deals 2 damage to Gunpoint Taxman. Now we check if anything has been triggered. Two things have been triggered:“Argagarg dies” and “Gunpoint Taxman dies”. As active player I get to choose which gets resolved first.
– Queue: Argagarg dies, Gunpoint Taxman dies. - Argagarg dies and returns to the command zone. This triggers “Scavenger Bonus” and “Gunpoint Taxman ability” at the same time so I choose the order to resolve them. Since these are triggered abilities they can insert themselves at the front of the queue.
– Queue: Scavenger bonus, Gunpoint Taxman ability, Gunpoint Taxman dies - Opponent gets 1 gold from Scavenger
– Queue: Gunpoint Taxman ability, Gunpoint Taxman dies - Gunpoint Taxman ability steals 1 gold from my opponent.
– Queue: Gunpoint Taxman dies - Gunpoint Taxman dies and gets moved to my Discard.
– Queue:
This raises the question though, that if I choose that Gunpoint Taxman dies first, does the Gunpoint Taxman ability get triggered at all (regardless of whether the opponent has gold or not)? If Gunpoint Taxman is already dead then can something on it trigger?
Also how does the “dies” effect know, that Gunpoint Taxman was the killer so that information can be checked by the Gunpoint Taxman ability trigger? Is the Gunpoint Taxman ability not a trigger after all but something like “Attacks: Add this effect to the end of the queue: If the target of the attack died, steal 1 gold from that opponent.”?