Rules Questions thread

No to both.

If opponent had Jail, the arrive ability doesnt trigger after you get him out of jail right?

Arrival abilities trigger once the unit is released from Jail.

ETA: Yes, you’re right I’d missed which card you were talking about. Zarramonde’s arrive ability doesn’t trigger either when it goes to Jail, or when it’s released from Jail and arrives in play, because it didn’t arrive from your hand.

I think you missed the ability text

Arrives: If you played Zarramonde from your hand, destroy a unit, hero, worker, upgrade, or ongoing spell.

From earlier in the Rules Qustions thread:

I encourage searching up potential rules questions in this thread to see if they came up in the past before posting. On that note, though, this ruling isn’t found in either the card list or the rulings spreadsheet and should be added.

Agreed. While we don’t add “rulings” that are just a restatement of the card text, in this case we should clarify that big Z doesn’t remember that it was originally played from hand after spending some time in Jail.

Out of curiosity, why doesn’t Z remember that he was played from hand after Jail? Intuitively Zarramonde’s ability does not have explicit requirements of zone transfering. In Drakk’s case the wording was “arrives from hand” which is nullified by Jail because the zone transfer became Jail -> In play instead of Hand -> In play. Z’s ability however only states that he had to be “played” from hand without any requirement for the destination. Is it a function of Jail to erase any remembered states a unit has upon entering it?

Another quasi-related question, more for the funsies than anything: what happens when two or more Jails are played in a FFA game?

I think the intention was to only let Z’s ability trigger when it was played from hand and arrived immediately, but there isn’t a nice way to say that. “Arrived from hand” doesn’t work, because we don’t want the ability to trigger from an ability which puts Z into play from hand (e.g. Feral Strike). Also, we want to avoid as much book-keeping as possible, and track as much as we can with runes, so having to remember where a card was played from is something we’d rather avoid. In summary “Played from hand” means “the unit moved from hand to in play due to being summoned, not any other ability or effect”.

In FFA, active player chooses which Jail their unit goes to.

Interestingly though, drill sergeant and garrison still draw you a card when the unit is played and enters jail, despite the same wording.

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That’s true, but those aren’t ‘Arrives:’ triggers. The condition specifies that you have to play the unit from hand, the ability type means that it has to be coming into play. So the end result is that you have to play the card, resulting in it moving from hand to ‘in play’.

Ok, so this seems really rules-lawyery, but I think it probably should be clarified.

From my reading of RAW, heroes aren’t actually required to be max-level in order to cast their ultimates. They only need to have been max-level at the start of the turn. Is it actually intended that they need to both be max-level when casting and have been max-level at the start of the turn? Or is it legal to cast an ultimate spell with a non-max-level hero, as long as they were max level at the start of your turn?

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Nether Drain causes interesting edge cases…

The rulebook really doesn’t address a hero losing levels during your own turn, but there is only 1 way that could ever happen, and its Nether Drain. It is also not clear to me what sequence of events would make casting nether drain before casting the ultimate would be beneficial.

Page 3
To cast a hero’s ultimate spell, that hero had to be under your control AND max level at the start of your turn (heroes can’t cast ultimate spells the turn they arrive)

Page 21

  • Need a hero that was max level at the start of the turn to cast an Ultimate Spell.

“When it’s released from Jail (from another unit entering), it will arrive and trigger any “arrive” effects at that time.”

Zarramode was played from hand. It just went through jail. What is the hubbubb?

I suspect that the ruling was made without considering Nether Drain and that it was worded the way it was for conciseness or it may have been intentional with the idea that it can be used as part of some combo. While I feel that the spirit of the ruling should require a hero to be at max level when casting an ultimate spell in addition to the other requirements stated in the rules I will follow what is written rather what I feel. Strictly following the language on the cards and in the rules, I’d say that a hero can cast an ultimate spell as long as it was max level when the turn started. So to sum things up, until there is an official ruling stating otherwise, I’m going to go with what is written as if that is what is truly intended.

I think it’s pretty easy to come up with scenarios where you might want to do this. Just in Mono-black You might want to Metamorphosis Vandy and Orpal, but currently have L5 Garth in play (and only have the capability to summon 2 heroes). You Nether Drain levels from Vandy to Garth, grab a unit with maxband, then suicide him into one of your opponent’s units before summoning Orpal and casting Metamorphosis.

It’s admittedly an edge-case, but it would be nice to get a ruling.

The garth maxband would be inefficient, as meta would then kill it, and Vandy would be a lvl 3 after metamorphosis because of nether drains cant gain levels effect. Seems pretty weak overall.

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Vandy being a level 3 is pretty irrelevant, as she is still a 5/6 invisible ready demon, who has max band she can use next turn. I’d forgotten about Meta destroying everything, but the example maybe works better the other way round. I want levels on orpal so I can sac a unit to kill one of my opponent’s units, and then bring max Garth in to get a unit from discard. The point is, it’s pretty easy to construct a situation where it might be beneficial…

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I can agree to disagree on the merits of these scenarios :smiley:

Are you sure?
This contradicts Z ruling

Drill Sergeant’s effect triggers when a unit is played, not when it arrives. Jail only triggers when a unit is played, so that trigger must be satisfied.

Basically, you play a unit from your hand, then at the same time, it goes to Jail, Flagstone Garrison draws you a card, and Drill Sergeant generates a rune.