Rules Questions thread

Lost Temple: Players ignore all tech building requirements and don’t need heroes to cast spells.

Free Speech: Silence an opponent. (Their heroes can’t cast spells and lose all abilities until after that opponent’s next turn.)

The wording here seems like it could go either way. On the one hand, the help text on Free Speech claims that it only affects heroes, so the player would be fine if they have any non-hero method of casting spells. On the other hand, Free Speech says that it silences the opponent, which implies that it would still prevent that opponent from casting spells.

The rulings don’t seem to give any definitive answer either. No rulings exist for Lost Temple (or any map card as far as I know), but here are the most relevant rulings on Free Speech:

If you use Free Speech on an opponent and that opponent plays a new hero on their next turn (in which they are still silenced), that new hero loses all abilities and can’t cast spells. — Sirlin

A silenced opponent can still play spells using Cinderblast Dragon or Guargum, Eternal Sentinel — sharpo

The first one implies that the effect of silence is applied to the player, since it affects heroes who aren’t even in play yet, whereas the second one (which you referenced in your question) introduces an exception, setting a precedent that could potentially allow for more exceptions. Thus, I conclude that if this is going to be relevant to you in a real game, you’ll need to tag sharpo so he can clarify.

For what it’s worth, I would be inclined to say that Free Speech would still prevent spells from working in the Lost Temple (unless you had a spellcasting unit). Free Speech does say that it silences an opponent, and there have already been discussions about how the text on the cards was written without accounting for the map cards. For example, Rich Earth technically reduces the cost of workers by 1, but that’s functionally identical to making them free unless a specific map is being used, so they wrote the card’s text to say “free” for simplicity. This looks like a similar case to me.

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I think Free Speech just doesn’t work on Lost Temple.

The clarifying ruling on Free Speech indicates that the “no spellcasting” part only affects heroes, not units that allow you to cast spells. So “silence an opponent” doesn’t actually give us much information, other than “this effect only affects one opponent of your choosing” and the effect is “all of the targetted heroes that this player has are unable to cast spells and have no abilities until the end of that player’s next turn.”

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RAW, I’d have to agree, but after giving it some thought, I’m torn between the two possible interpretations as Hobusu excellently explained. Since I picked Truth and Lost Temple for my latest attempt at Map King, I’d like to get an official ruling before getting into a game, if possible. @sharpobject, any help, please?

There’s some structure that we might extrapolate from the rules we know. Normally, heroes cast spells. Any hero grants you the ability to cast all the spells of its spec, any max level hero grants you the ability to cast its ultimate if it was max level at the start of the turn, and any hero grants you the ability to cast minor spells, but some of them will cost extra. When you have multiple ways to cast a spell, you are sort of forced by the game to use the best one. That is, if you control Orpal and River, you cannot choose to pay 3 to cast Sacrifice the Weak. To add some interpretation to this, we could say you have one StW-capability with a +1 cost penalty, and 1 StW-capability without the penalty, and the game makes you use the better one.

Lost Temple reads, in part, “Players don’t need heroes to cast spells.” A reasonable interpretation rules wise would be that the map card lets everyone cast every spell (with no cost penalty). So if you have Orpal and River and Lost Temple, you now have 3 StW-capabilities. A card that says “Your heroes can’t cast spells” should only get rid of 2 of those, the ones that actually come from heroes (the ones which you can safely ignore anyway when playing on Lost Temple).

So to me it seems like you can use Free Speech on Lost Temple to remove abilities from your opponent’s heroes, but your opponent will still be able to cast whatever spells they like. Also, it seems like Lost Temple is a very silly map.

@Sirlin what do you think?

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The rulebook says “You really did lose control of the lent patroller while it was away and they really did gain control of it while it was helping them.” So stuff like Battle Suits and Midori’s midband stops applying units that you lend to other players as patrollers, in the same way that they would stop applying if your opponent took the units with Mind Control.

Edit: on the other hand, if you do not control a Battle Suits and your opponent does control a Battle Suits, your Argonaut will be benefit from your opponent’s Battle Suits while blocking for that opponent.

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Regarding multiplayer :

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Query, If I have a void star and my opponents Patrol/board consists of a Liberty Gryphon in SL and a Spectral Roc in Lookout, Does my Void Star’s Overpower only hit the Liberty Gryphon when the Roc dies from the attack?

Overpower damage is all applied at once, the board state doesn’t change in between assigning damage to the roc and assigning damage to something else. Because the roc is in play, the liberty gryphon is unattackable, so the voidstar overpower could hit something else it could attack. In other words, the roc doesn’t leave play until all the damage is assigned.

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My opponent has Mind controlled one of my units. If I trash it with prynn, when it comes back it says it is on my opponents side of the board, If I understand correctly it would then stay with them until it died?

That would be correct.

I have a question about Flying.

If there is only a single Flying unit in the patrol zone and If I have a non anti-air unit I can ignore that flying unit and go attack the base.

Does the flying unit automatically do damage to my non anti-air unit as is passed under it when combat damage is resolved?

if the only patrolling unit is a flying one, the non flying/non anti air units just ignore it, and do not take any dmg, they are as unstoppable by a flying unit.
An anti air unit, instead, can either ignore the patroller or attack it ad take dmg back tho.

Is it just me or is anti-air SUPER powerful? Anti-air units always do combat damage to flying units that fly over.

I don’t understand the design choice here. :frowning:

no is not. Consider that a flying unit that flies over a AA one yes gets dmg, but is not blocked by it, so for example a boosted void star can kill the opponent base/kill a maxb hero that has a dangerous ultimate (vandi, draak, etc). u may lose the unit, but destroy/kill something strategical

What I am talking about here though is defending your base with a flying unit that is patrolling. Why wouldn’t a patrolling flying unit nuke ground targets that pass under it?

Just like anti-air why wouldn’t they shoot a target flying over. To me its the same scenario.

no it’s not. U can think of a flier as a fighter jet. it does not see a single human soldier, unless is ordered to. An AA unit is just like an anti aircraft weapon. it can shoot down soldiers that come close and shot down aircrafts when they come close enough for being intercepted.

Logically, you would expect flying patrollers to be able to take shots at ground-based attackers, but that’s just not how the game was designed (probably for balance reasons, as flying attackers are very powerful).

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@Legion Thanks for helping me with the rules clarification. I still disagree with the logic being used here. I’ll go with @Nekoatl here and submit it was probably for balance reasons not logic reasons.

I personally think flying units are not a good choice as a patrol unit unless your opponents has a flying unit and you have no AA. What good is a defender that can’t defend?

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I agree, but sometimes it’s still worth putting a flying unit that can’t attack in a patrol slot for the slot bonus, even if you know it won’t be attacked directly. Conversely, in some cases becoming a patroller makes a unit vulnerable to spells or effects that it otherwise wouldn’t be eligible for.

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The rulebook says:

The game ends when any player’s base is destroyed. At that moment, whoever’s base has the most hit points wins the game. If there’s a tie for highest base hit points, then the tied players each take one more turn and see if the tie is broken. Repeat this process if there’s still a tie at the end of those turns (though usually you won’t have to).

This doesn’t mention getting rid of the stuff that belongs to any players. So it seems like at least the Bugblatters belonging to players who whose bases didn’t die are still around. I would say to remove everything controlled by the player whose base was destroyed from play before proceeding, but I’m not sure if that’s right. @Sirlin what do you think?

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