It appears there has been no official clarification of how cards that can target multiple things (Ember Sparks, Burning Volley, Tricycloid, any others?) interact with the resist mechanic. For example:
Say you would like to kill an opponent’s hero with 3hp, who is patrolled in lookout, with any of these spells or abilities. The desired target has resist 1 from lookout. How much extra do you pay? Just 1, despite the 3 damage (so you’re calling it one instance of targeting)? Or 1 per point of damage you’re assigning (as each damage is an instance of targeting)? Is the Tricycloid’s case different from the Jaina spells?
I believe so. My understanding is that the Elite bonus applies after all other modifiers, ensuring an Elite patroller always has at least 1 attack, but that is all resolved before anything that cares about what the attack of a unit is can see it.
But at least 1 attack is not true, nothing says a unit cant have negative attack. It is possible to put something in elite and still have 0 attack from -1 runes or deteriorate for example.
I don’t think we even have a rule saying “Every unit or hero has at least 0 attack” so your Elite bonus might bring your Corpse Catapult with 3 -1/-1 runes on it from -2/1 all the way up to -1/1.
But that can lead to situations where someone interpretts the attack value as not being able to go below 0, which isnt true. Even if you say …“after all modifiers” some people can still get confused.
My best guess: Obliterate happens when you declare an attack. Voidblocker’s ability occurs when it is declared the target of an attack. I think “declaring an attack” and “declaring the target of an attack” are different steps in the attack sequence. So obliterate would happen, and then the target would be declared, something other than the voidblocker that has already been obliterated.
To attack, exhaust your attacker and say what it attacks
My gut reaction was that “Declaring an attack” and “Declaring a target for an attack” happen at the same time so there’s no window for Obliterate resolution between them. Obliterate then allows you to redeclare attack target if your former target dies to Obliterate. But I might be wrong; your version certainly seems reasonable.
I’d love to see an official ruling on this one, we have an offline tournament encroaching =P
I believe Metalize’s interpretation is correct. If declaring an attack occurred before declaring a target for the attack, then Obliterate should claim its victims before an attack target gets selected, meaning there would be no need to retarget. But, the description in the rulebook says “If the first thing you attacked is now gone, you may select a new thing to attack.”
You do have to exhaust Vandy. You’ll get the Obliterate and Voidblocker triggers at the same time after attacking Voidblocker, then Obliterate will let you pick a different target after it kills Voidblocker.
I wanted to clarify here, if I Sacrifice the Weak with nothing on board but a ready (but unactivated) Gargoyle (or anything that’s Indestructible) , does anything happen to the Gargoyle? I really don’t want to get it exhausted
Indestructible includes immune to sacrifice in its definition. It wouldn’t make sense for a sacrifice weakest effect to exhaust each thing it skips that can’t be sacrificed while looking for something that can.
