Are there places in the rulebook we can consult for stuff like this, or is this just all rulings?
The only text difference on the cards between “becomes a Demon” and “becomes a dance partner” is the difference of upper and lower case.
Is it a rule somewhere that gained subtypes are all caplitalized and special relationships are lower case?
Would this not be better as “Best for the active player”?
Hey, I’d like to prepare a comprehensive rulebook maybe before FSX this year. Some other users have done a lot of work on this so I will probably start there.
This would be a more complex set of rules for unclear benefits imo
It would align the rules with how people assume/expect/hope/think it works.
I assumed it worked along the lines of how sharpo said, so don’t lump everyone in with you on this, OK? 
You assumed that Safe Attacking is useless in the case I mentioned above? Never when reading that card has it occurred to me that the armor gained from SA would be useless up until the point where the unit took the 1st point of damage.
I clearly failed the ‘play the card how it makes sense’ part then.
I don’t know, I’m kind of convinced. Compare it to having an affect that just increases the amount of health a unit has (like Two Step):
Imagine that you have a 2/2 that you then Two Step to another unit, so it becomes a 4/4. Then you kill another 2/2 with it so your unit goes down to 4/2. Then you trade the other Two Stepped unit away so Two Step ends.
You as the active played should of course prefer to say that the 2 health that it lost was the 2 health that Two Step was giving it so that your unit just goes back down to 2/2, but that would be inconsistent with the fact that all health is treated equally. Two Step adds 2 health when it comes in, then removes 2 health when it leaves. Just like armor.
I can see this line of reasoning, because its why damage ‘chits’ are used to track damage, preventing this from being an issue.
Armor can follow the same philosophy, and just become (or, I guess it already was?) much worse than it appears (in my opinion) to have been designed for. As well as becoming overly complicated, as you need the same type of system in place (tracking armor gained/lost with chits, etc) or people will screw this up(guaranteed for sure since I already have).
i.e. +armor appears that it should be just that, plus armor, rather than oh, this rule over here that isn’t mentioned anywhere screws you.
This doesn’t seem like it would come up that often, though? For one thing, Safe Attacking is mutually exclusive with Rampant Growth unless you’ve assimilated it, and for another, how does your Argonaut get to attack twice in one turn? I’m not saying your example is impossible, but it relies on pretty specific circumstances that would be unlikely to be an issue with 99% of games.
Using just the white starter you can have aged sensei + safe attacking, but you still have to try pretty hard to attack twice in one turn (and of course you have to attack something that hits for exactly 1 for this to matter)
If it was my intent for safe attacking to work that way, I would have opted to use verbage similar to Sentry (prevent the first damage dealt to your tech 0 or tech 1 attacker each combat) rather than giving it armor and letting it be confusing.
I don’t think I could ever arrive at a scenario where I’d want the active player to cast rampant growth and art of war both on General Omu (in the same turn), and have the art of war armor not go to the next turn if General Omu took 2 damage later that turn. i.e. the rampant growth armor is ‘wasted’ because other ‘better’ armor was used instead.
The reason for my asking the question is that it is seems unintuitive that the General would have no armor on the opp turn in this case (as well as other cases, which apparently aren’t up for discussion due to their likelihood of occurring…strange in a forum where people discuss Calamandra putting a Tiger Cub into play with her max band ability)
Weird scenarios are always up for discussion.
Most possible proposed rule changes are not useful things to discuss right now. They were 1-3 years ago in the Sirlin IRC channel.
It’s not that they aren’t up for discussion. At least for me, it’s more a case of “Other than Art of War + other armor, why do you care so much if this isn’t going to come up in normal play?”
On Calamandra summoning Tiger Cub: It’s not a good comparison, because no one was ever suggesting that doing that would be a good idea (in other words, it’s just for fun). The current issue, however, has you arguing with the official rules keeper for a more complicated interaction to be able to improve your ability to win.
You mistake ‘improve your ability to win’ with ‘playing the cards in the way that makes sense’. Does that mean my IQ level must be near zero (for assuming that safe attacking would not be the last point of damage prevented)?
I guess the natural conclusion is yes, therefore I am apparently to dumb to play this game.
The game is really complicated and I don’t expect anybody to get everything right. Currently we have a web site where people can look up rulings about particular cards to help out with this. In the future I’d like to also have a comprehensive rules doc that I can point to for every possible question.
X creature has armor that lasts through the end of your turn and armor that lasts through the end of the opponent’s turn.
Why would it make sense to get rid of the opponent’s turn armor first?
Do people really assume it works like that?
I get that the game is complicated and that making the cards sound cool takes precedence over things like proper templating, but I feel like this is common sense atm that we are talking about.
That’s kind of the point of the example I posted above. Just like a unit’s health, a unit’s armor is interchangeable.
So don’t think of it like “Give a unit +X armor that lasts either until it breaks or until the end of turn.”
Instead, think of it like “Give a unit +X armor, and then at the end of turn, give that same unit -X armor.”
I’m not trying to insult your intelligence at all. I’m just saying why it matters for this issue, as opposed to some of the silly interactions that come up. Sorry if I or anyone else has offended you, but that wasn’t our intent.
Pretending Codex was RL, I call my friend Tenderfoot over and give her two real physical shields.
I tell her that one of those shields will vanish into thin air in 15 minutes time if it’s not broken before that and that the other will vanish into thin air in 30 minutes time if it’s not broken before that.
Which one would she hold first as she rushes into battle and which one would she strap to her back for subsequent use?
Rewinding and I get to make the choice for her about which order she uses them in… Which order would I tell her to use them in?
How is it that I rationalize a hit on the 15 min shield causes the 30 min shield to be destroyed after 15 min instead of the regular 30
OR
How do I rationalize my friend Tenderfoot using the 30 min shield first
OR
How do I rationalize anything about how it works in game using the above example?
In RL-Codex, you give your friend Tenderfoot two identical fungible shields. You let her know that in 15 minutes you’d like her to return one shield if she can, and in 30 minutes you’d also like her to return one shield if she can.