and yet there is no up to date reference of the rules as they evolve, other than sifting through a bloated forum thread?
This could be a general ruling or a ruling linked to the effected cards.
Or there could be an updated rulebook.
Also, sharpobject described that ruling as “arbitrary.”
Is the “Active player decides” rule completely moot then? It’s already clear in the rules that the active player decides where the level “bounty” goes. Are there any cases other cases where an effect not controlled by the active player that requires a decision actually happens?
“Active player decides” is (mostly?) for events that happen as part of the rules, rather than effects on specific cards.
The wording is “Any effect requiring a decision.” Are there effects that are not on cards? I’m confused now.
The “active player decides” mostly arises when multiple abilities trigger from the same action, in which case the active player is the one that gets to choose the order they go into the queue. Rules As Written, it’s reasonable to think that with Bamstamper Lizzo, for example, if a player causes it to arrive during their turn while they’re not the controller of Bamstamper Lizzo, they could decide who it should deal damage to, but the decision was made that that isn’t really in the spirit of how the card should work, so the interpretation was made that for cards like that, only the controller can make that decision, and only the active player can make decisions, so if the active player is not also the controller, the decision can’t be made, and the behavior gets skipped because no decision can be made. You can generalize this logic to any triggered ability printed on a card that requires a decision (such as choosing a target for the ability) and doesn’t specifically say that the active player is allowed to make that decision.
In general, I would caution against adhering too strictly to the text in the rulebook. It’s a good starting point, but unfortunately, it was written with the goal of keeping the rules simple to avoid the extremely complicated legalese of e.g. MtG. With so many interesting card effects interacting in so many interesting ways, however, that decision didn’t fare well over time. There are some player-driven efforts to consolidate the rules updates into more conveniently readable forms than this giant rules thread, but I haven’t personally paid much attention to them, aside from the Codex Card Database. An official rulebook reprint is not likely to happen outside of a sequel release, however, in part because there are still occasionally new questions that arise which would render even the reprinted book out of date.
3 Likes
It seems not. Here are some relevant things sharpo said or agreed with when discussing things with Punf:
- If you have a Trojan Duck, and I have Lawbringer Gryphon and no tech buildings, you can’t attack me.
- If you have a Trojan Duck, and I have Lawbringer Gryphon, no tech buildings, and two 1/1 tokens, you obliterate the 1/1s. Then you have no valid attack targets, so the attack stops, no base damage.
2 Likes
If the obliterate can trigger, than the “attacks: deal 4 damage to a building” can trigger. Thats my logic, anyway. After that, you check for valid targets again and find none, so the attack stops. The steps for resolving an attack appear to be 1) delcare a target for the atack 2) check for triggered abilities (obliterate, create a skeleton, voidblocker, setsuki tax, etc) and do those 3) check for valid targets, redeclare if necessary, 4) check for any new attacks effects if they werent already trigered in step 2 5) deal combat damage (swift strike, then other types, sparkshot, overpower, tower, etc).
You can’t trigger voidblocker twice by declaring him the target in both step 1 and step 3, but the voidblockers effect would happen during step 4 if the voidblocker was not “attacked” in step 1.
2 Likes
From the linked thread, it seems obliterate is being treated as a replacement for the attack action that eventually (under most circumstances) culminates in an actual attack being performed, similar to how forecast replaces arrival but eventually results in an actual arrival (assuming enough time is allowed to pass). This seems reasonable to me, though I would never have inferred it from the card text alone.
1 Like
Oh, okay. So “Active Player Decides” has been effectively replaced my the more nuanced concept of queuing triggers and discarding decisions triggered from cards not controlled by the active player.
Since I’m coding this game’s logic, it’s pretty important to get things like this right, since it could be a significant architecture change to get it wrong.
I don’t see why an updated version of the downloadable PDF version of the rules couldn’t be published, even here by the community. The lack of any up to date rules source makes this game really hard to recommend to friends, no matter how much I love it.
I would say just strike the first sentence of the “Active Player Decides” section of the rulebook, and the rest of the paragraph still applies.
Specifying that “any trigger requiring a decision from a card not controlled by the active player will be ignored” is also necessary.
That’s not strictly accurate, because it doesn’t account for e.g. Orpal’s Maxband. I would instead say “any decision required by card text can only be made by the card’s controller, unless stated otherwise”, as it’s a more general statement which, in conjunction with “Active Player Decides” (modified) and “Do As Much As You Can”, logically implies the prescribed behavior. Going back to the Bamstamper Lizzo example, the active player can’t decide on a target because he’s not the Lizzo’s controller (added rule/clarification); the Lizzo’s controller can’t make the decision because he’s not the active player (“Active Player Decides”), so no player can choose the target. As it’s impossible to deal damage to a nonexistent target, that part of the card text is skipped and any remaining card text that can be performed (none in Lizzo’s case) would then proceed (“Do As Much As You Can”).
2 Likes
Obviously Orpal’s Maxband specifically mentions the active player, so it would “interrupt” the regular read of the rules. I’ll just add “unless stated otherwise.” Are there other situations that my version is, in your opinion, inaccurate?
Nonetheless, part of me thinks your wording might be clearer. However, I am suspicious of the value of making a more general statement. I would rather be clear about what we’re discussing, and avoid accidentally increasing our scope to add more bugs to the ruleset.
“any trigger requiring a decision from a card not controlled by the active player will be ignored, unless stated otherwise.”
“any decision required by card text can only be made by the card’s controller, unless stated otherwise”
Yeah, I have a strong preference for “trigger […] will be ignored” rather than “decision […] can only be made” because it is clearly prescriptive. I prefer the rules to clearly tell me what to do, not present a logic puzzle where I have to infer what might happen.
2 Likes
I can’t recall any other exceptions besides Orpal.
It may well be easier to code the way you’re conceptualizing it, but I encourage you to keep the more generalized rules in mind even if they don’t translate directly to code, because they might help you spot potential tricky behaviors in other scenarios earlier in the development process. You can always check/ask for specific rulings once you’ve identified a potential point of confusion, before implementing the associated code.
2 Likes
Just spitballing here:
It would be an interesting nerf to Vandy to specifically allow her maxband to be used by the active player. Unlike the cursed ghoul and stomper cases, Vandy’s maxband ability could thematically be understood as a daemonic force that could be difficult to control.
Hi all, can someone please validate, that summoning sickness takes priority over gargoyles effect to be able to attack after paying 1g?
The rules text is a bit misleading and I didn’t find a reference in this thread, even though there already is a ton of postings about gargoyle.
“Gargoyle’s activated ability that lets it attack and patrol and abilities that stop Gargoyle specifically from attacking or patrolling are applied in the order of their creation to find out if the Gargoyle can attack or patrol.”
It does, yes. With respect to the ruling, arrival fatigue isn’t an ability. I agree the rules are more confusing here than they could be: haste allows both attacking and exhausting on the arrival turn, so this would imply the Gargoyle could attack when it can’t exhaust.
4 Likes
But Gargoyle’s ability does beat Entangling Vines, because it’s the latest effect applied to the unit.
2 Likes
If Patriot Gryphon destroys Morningstar Pass, does the base take damage?
1 Like