Having target be both a special keyword and ‘the word we use to describe the things selected by a spell or ability’ makes it a bit confusing.
Replace all instances of ‘target - the keyword’ with ‘Bullseye’ makes it a bit clearer what’s going on, maybe. “Quince’s mid-band doesn’t Bullseye. You can’t target Invisible units with Bullseye effects. So can I target an Invisible unit with Quince’s mid-band?”
Alternatively, replace non-keyword instances of “target” with “select” and that also reduces the ambiguity. “Quince’s mid-band doesn’t target. You can’t select Invisible units with targeting effects. So can I select an Invisible unit with Quince’s mid-band?”
I can respect this for a game the size of, say, Yomi or Flash Duel. I would also say that the length of this thread demonstrates that this philosophy doesn’t scale well to more complicated rulesets. Especially the “come on” aspect.
Actually, it’s bordering on off-topic, but I’d like to expand on the “come on” aspect.
Most of the significant answers to rules questions in the thread fall into two categories:
Many questions arise in the first place because, frankly, some parts of the rulebook / card texts are just wrong, and it’s not always clear which of these two situations we’re in, especially for people not trawling the card database or the questions thread. Can you imagine working out some of these rulings yourself, if you’re not aware of the queue? Or that “you” usually refers to the controller, rather than the owner?
In this context, a “come on” argument takes the approach that one or the other situation is “just common sense”. This assumes that everyone will come in with the same idea of what the “common sense” case will be, which I doubt is true: not all of us have played games like this before, for example. It also implies, I’m sure unintentionally, that the question is either disingenuous or unnecessary, as it’s obvious whether the text is correct or not. It’s insulting. Please don’t use it.
The controller/owner thing is actually spelled out in the rulebook. But yeah, whether chain triggers should be handled as a stack or a queue is not something that players should be expected to all automatically think the same way about, and there are games that use each approach.
The biggest danger with relying on common sense, IMO, is that it’s not easy to know whether something that seems obvious will reliably be perceived as such by other people.
I agree, and I’ll avoid doing it again in the future.
You make a good point. This game really is complicated enough that such an argument isn’t even going to be valid in a fair number of cases, and even if it was I hadn’t considered that the person on the other end might perceive it as insulting (this was never my intent at any point, and I’m sorry if it came across that way to anyone). I’ll also be making an effort to not do that in the future.
Can someone confirm that this is really how the queue works? I thought that, since A and B happen at the same time, C and D would go on to occur at the same time as well, rather than entering the queue in the order you resolve the simultaneous A and B. So like this:
A | C
B | D
time →
rather than like this:
A | C | D
B |… |
time →
Might need to contrive a more concrete example to get a ruling.
@charnel, I think you’re misunderstanding that quote. From what you wrote, it’s:
(A and B) then (C and D)
… but from the quote, it’s:
A then (B and C) then D
… because “one action (A) causes 2 abilities to trigger, (B) and (C)”.
Whoops, I quoted the wrong part:
I would have expected this to go
B | D
C | E
time →
The issue is that 2 effects can’t actually resolve at the same time (allowing them to do so would open a Pandora’s box of confusing rules questions), so if they both trigger at the same time, the active player has to choose an order for them. In this example, D and E don’t trigger at the same time, and the one triggered first will be the one triggered by whichever (B or C) was chosen to resolve first.
What happens when Orpal’s maxband is triggered during the turn of a player who doesn’t control Orpal but does control 2 units with Resist?
The source of the ability is a card controlled by an opponent but it is the active player who chooses and places the runes. This is one of these situations where my common sense and codex intuitions are in conflict.
As an aside, it seems really counter intuitive that this ability targets at all. Initially I had thought it must be to ensure consistent mechanics, but then I noticed that Metamorphosis doesn’t target so it would seem that placing runes doesn’t inherently imply targeting.
That would somewhat depend on who controlled the dying unit that triggered the ability. But, in either case, the active player is the one choosing targets and placing runes, and you don’t have to pay resist costs to target units you control. If the dying unit belonged to Orpal’s controller, then the active player would have to pay resist costs to target units with resist, however… or so I assume, given that no one contested this interpretation when I asked about it previously.
D’oh! I was trying to be concise but obviously sacrificed some clarity. Yes I had meant the active player to be in control of the dying unit.
Thanks for getting back to me, I figured that was how it would work but just wanted to check.
Some of the choices on [target] seem to be made more for balance reasons, or to let Blue do stuff like copying illusions.
I’m kind of shocked I didn’t find any asks in this thread thus far about how Swift Strike w/ a Tower works… If I attack with something on 4hp against a 3 attack swift striker backed by a tower, do I get to kill it? Does the tower damage happen before or after things dealing damage to each other? Does a tower effectively +1 the damage of a swift strike defender?
The tower deals damage at the same time as the attacker. In this case, the defender swiftly deals three, then the attacker and the tower deal damage, killing both combatants.
Do we play things wrong with Orpal, then? I feel like Orpal + tower has collectively been agreed as adding a -1/1 to something attacking, but is that wrong and it should be 1 damage + -1/1s from Orpal?
I’d say so, and didn’t know it had been agreed otherwise.