Rules Questions thread

[sharpobject]

Hey, I’m glad to get back to this.

If you have 2 copies of Second Chances and you have n>1 units that leave play simultaneously such that they’re eligible for Second Chances, and you don’t let your Graveyard or Reteller move too many of them somewhere else, you’ll get exactly 2 back.

If you have 2 copies of Second Chances and you have 1 unit leave play such that it’s eligible for Second Chances, both copies of Second Chances will refuse to save any other units.

@Sniffnoy

In particular, here’s one problem that comes up if we go with that idea. The problem with this is, say this happens on your opponent’s turn. Then when that first unit of yours is brought back, it matters which copy of Second Chances brought it back, in case the opponent has upgrade removal – they’ll want to remove the copy that didn’t bring it back so it can’t act later. But how is it determined which one brought it back? You can’t decide; it’s your opponent’s turn. We could paper over this problem by saying that, since there’s nothing that modifies upgrades, the answer is irrelevant and it can be designated arbitrarily, and that kind of works, but that’s pretty icky.

Your opponent gets to choose the order of your simultaneous triggers during your opponent’s turn.

@Sniffnoy

Actually, on the subject of things that affect “the first time each turn” or “the first two times each turn” – I want to check if those work the way I think they do. I’d assumed these implicitly meant “the first time each turn since this card entered play”. So e.g., if you have two copies of Reteller of Truth on the board at the start of the turn, you can only save two Illusions; but if you start with one in play, it can save up to two, and then you play a second copy after that, it can save up to two, since it wasn’t in play for the earlier two and thus they didn’t count towards its ability. (Or if you had no copies, then you could have two of your Illusions die, then play Reteller of Truth, and it would save the next two.) Is that correct? Or do these cards “look back in time” even if they weren’t in play at the start of the turn? Or something else?

“Once per turn” like on Second Chances means the ability happens only once per turn per ability. So you could save 2 different units with Second Chances even if they left play at different times by playing your second copy of Second Chances in the middle.

“The first time X happens each turn” like on Reteller of Truths or Drakk Ramhorn is something you can miss if X happens before you have that ability around. So if you play a unit from your hand, then level Drakk to maxband, the next unit you play that turn won’t get haste. The first one won’t get haste either.

@Sniffnoy

When Plague Lord attacks, the ability happens after combat damage?

Plague Lord’s ability happens before combat damage. So do other abilities with the Attacks: timing and Obliterate.

@Sniffnoy

Plague Lab can’t be used on forecasted cards?

Right. Plague Lab doesn’t explicitly say it works on stuff in the future, so it doesn’t work on stuff in the future.

@Sniffnoy

Damage from flying over an anti-air unit isn’t considered “ability” damage for the purposes of Sentry?

Right. Actually Jadiel gave a better answer to this one.

@Sniffnoy

(BTW, pretty sure that in Magic, Crypt Crawler would work on Wandering Mimic, just due to timestamps, if I understand correctly. The conditional granting of flying would be one continuous effect and the removing it another, in the same layer, with no dependencies between them, so the removing it would win due to later timestamps. Not that we want to go importing Magic’s whole layer system into this, but…)

Sure, I agree about that in Magic.

I also agree with @Polari that you could get a derived state where Escaped Shapeshifter is the only creature with flying, but I’m only like 90% sure because it depends on the meaning of “changing how an effect applies”. We know from an example in the comprehensive rules that “gain X” and “lose X” have no dependency, and based on that it’s reasonable to think that Escaped Shapeshifter and Canopy Claws on another creature also have no dependency.

Getting a derived state where Escaped Shapeshifter is the only creature with flying seems like a bug to me. So I don’t think this setup is significantly better than the one we have in Codex.