So, when a hero dies, the 2 level “bounty” is applied instantly, as a “statebased action.”
Do the abilities triggered from a hero maxbanding by these “bounty” levels happen instantly also, or are they queued?
The “Max Level:” triggered abilities are put into the queue instantly, to be resolved when prior queued abilities have finished as normal. Those abilities that require the owner to make a decision, however, do not function, but I believe even they still go into the queue, and just fail to function on resolution because of Do As Much As You Can, though I don’t think that distinction actually matters in any practical way.
But, for something like Rook’s Two Lives, his acquisition of that ability does not occur in response to a trigger, so if an action somehow caused Rook to maxband and simultaneously put an ability into the stack that would cause Rook to die, the active player would not be able to choose an order of events such that Rook took the lethal damage before acquiring Two Lives.
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Oh really? So a strategy to deal with Vandy or Garth could include suiciding a hero to force them to maxband not on their turn and waste their triggered ability?
Or would the active player make the choice on the Vandy maxband? Obviously nothing could happen on Garth, because the opposing player doesn’t have access to his controller’s discard pile, but for Vandy it’s not really explicit that the owner does it, is it?
I think that’s it for applicable edge cases… though I suppose Zane’s maxband could also trigger in more than 2 player games as well. Ah, seems appropriately anarchy for that to get out of the owners control in a FFA or whatever.
Yeah, that’s right. It’s especially useful for stopping Garth fetching something nasty.
If an ability requires a choice, that choice is implied to be made by the controller of the thing with the ability, unless stated otherwise (e.g. Orpal Gloor’s maxband). But since player’s can’t make off-turn choices, these abilities don’t do anything when triggered off-turn, and not only for maxbanding heroes, but also for units e.g. Bamstamper Lizzo.
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Do you have a reference for this opinion? It seems to contradict the rulebook. p18.
Any effect requiring a decision always refers to the active player.
…
In the unusual event that an effect specifically asks an opponent to make a decision on your turn, instead nothing happens.
The language here is “specifically asks,” not “implied to be made by the controller.” I cannot imagine how a mandatory [arrives: damage a unit] trigger from Bamstamper Lizzo “specifically asks” the decision be made by the controller.
Are you asserting that the wording on Orpal’s maxband proves that the rulebook is false in this case? I’m looking for an official correction on this and cannot find one.
sharpobject is the official rules adjudicator, and if you search this thread for Bamstamper Lizzo and pick out the first (and only) post by sharpobject, you’ll find what you’re looking for. This is one of many cases where the rules kind of evolved over time as questions about card interactions arose.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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”).
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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.
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