Long range overpower… the stories one could tell.
Sorry, I got confused. Since your point of reference was an forum post 5 years ago, I got triggered by how hard it is to learn to play this game “correctly” when the point of reference is frequently some meandering discussion several years ago on this single thread.
On reflection, I don’t think adding the overpower restriction on triggering things would be a special case for blooming elm. No cards that have overpower without blooming elm have triggering abilities. The combat damage system is already something that has enough exceptions and weirdness to it that restricting what overpower can trigger wouldn’t feel out of place. From what I know of the initial balance testing process these kinds of interactions weren’t a major focus for balance testing. I know it’s suggesting a change, but the other suggestions for how to resolve the issue are pretty problematic in my opinion, as I’ve outlined above.
Because the reference for the rules are meandering discussions with unresolved issues, it seems natural to suggest ways to resolve the issues. The game, specifically multi-colour decks, feels unfinished until the docs are clear. I believe the mono-colour game is clear enough.
Yeah, maybe working on the sequel would be a more productive use of my energy. I’ll look into that.
I agree with Nekoatl re: overhauling game rules. I sympathise with anyone trying to implement Codex’s rules, and all the rulings, in a way that doesn’t cause massive headaches, but if you change the rules to make it easier to implement, what will actually happen is that you now have two competing versions of the same game, where someone asking about the rules has to make clear which version they’re asking about. From what I’ve heard, Codex 2 will be more streamlined and easier to implement (although, personally, hearing it’s streamlined is a bit of a turn-off).
2 Likes
Thanks to people answering my previous questions! But now I have some more of them:
- Do patrolling fliers automatically deal damage to ground foos who walk past them and attack targets on the ground, like anti-air patrollers automatically deal damage to fliers who fly past them?
- When an invisible unit is patrolling, is it untargetable to an opponent without a detector anymore?
- When abomination gives other units -1/-1, does it do so in the form of -1/-1 runes? If so, does grounded guide’s buff counts as giving virtuosos +1/+1 runes? Do might of leaf and claw or death and decay give things +1/+1 and -1/-1 runes?
- How do you understand “hits something else this could attack” in overpower? For example, When an overpower unit kills a squad leader and attempts to deal OP damage, can that unit deal OP damage to a technician because the technician is “something else it could attack”, or it cannot because a technician is not “something it could attack” while the attack is declared?
- When you use jurisdiction to play a non-law non-channeling spell, do you need a corresponding hero to let the spell successfully resolve?
- Extension from the gigadon question I asked last time: Say I control a debilitator alpha as a squad leader and another debilitator alpha in the back row. When my opponent attacks the one in my back row with a flying foo, does that thing get -1 attack because it’s attacking a debilitator alpha, and I control a debilitator alpha as a squad leader?
- Is the attack loss by attacking debilitator alpha permanent? Is the loss applied before calculating the damage?
1 Like
- No.
- Yes, but it can be attacked as though it were not invisible.
- No, unless something explicitly says “rune”, it’s not talking about runes.
- “could attack” means “could attack if the original attack target were already dead”.
- No, as long it’s a spell in your codex that is not an ultimate spell, you can play it with Jurisdiction. Even channeling spells are no exception to this, they just get destroyed immediately if their corresponding hero is not present, but this might still be worth doing, e.g. in the case of Bird’s Nest you would get 2 Bird tokens by doing so.
- It would get the -1 from the SQL, and presumably would not get another -1 from the other Alpha, per the same reasoning as before.
- The way it’s worded makes it sound like the effect is temporary, otherwise I would have worded it as “units that attack … get …”. But, there doesn’t seem to be an official ruling on this question.
2 Likes
Some additional notes to Nekoatl’s answer:
- Overpower lets the attacker reassign extra damage to anything they could have attacked if the original target wasn’t there. In your example, they can go on to damage the Technician. An odd example is that they can overpower onto a backline Setsuki only if you have the gold you could have spent to attack her, but you don’t then need to spend it to overpower into her.
- As with Gigadon, when a card’s name appears in its own text, that part of the text only refers to itself. Compare “happens if X is in Squad Leader” to “happens if an X is in Squad Leader”.
- I think the intent is that it’s temporary. However, other cards are inconsistent on whether “gets” does something permanently, so I’m not sure about this. For example, compare Drakk’s midband with his maxband: the midband only applies while Drakk is alive, while the haste gained from his maxband is permanent (only relevant in the presence of Wandering Mimics).
3 Likes
re: Spy overpower interaction.
I think a proposed solution that everybody might be happy with is to put it under the “active player decides” category.
Part of what I’m resistant to is the idea that we have to have a ruling on the relative speed of damage here. This is a level of complexity that makes the game harder to teach or understand. This spy issue is a race condition. The principle of the game’s design is that “active player decides” is the solution to race conditions.
Then we can have a solution that is part of a coherent framework without changing the rules.
1 Like
re: 7.
The wording is “Units attacking … get -1 attack”
My read is that the tense of “attacking” implies that this effect is only happening while the unit is attacking it.
In a practical sense, if this were a permanent effect one would expect a rune to keep track of it. The only reason Drakk doesn’t have a rune for his permanent effect is that it’s a rare situation where it matters.
1 Like
I should note that currently there is nothing available for actual playtesting, since Sirlin Games has been busy with Puzzle Strike II and a still-in-development game based on Yomi, though there have been some discussions in the patrons-only channel about some changes that may happen in a Codex sequel.
3 Likes
I think this is the only interpretation that makes sense. Damage and overpower damage happen simultaneously, then the patroller dies instantly, then both gold event triggers go on the queue at the same time, giving the active player the choice of which to resolve first.
I don’t agree that it’s the only interpretation that makes sense, but I do think it’s the interpretation that’s most consistent with other rulings.
1 Like
From Discord (cleaned up for clarity):
sharpobject
A summary of today’s rules:There is now a cleanup step at the end of the end of your turn, inside of your turn. Don’t phrase it that way. Units that die from MT expiring die at that moment in your turn, which is the last moment other than moments involving triggers that happen because of that moment, and it much later than “at the end of your turn.” This applies to “until end of turn” effects in general, so it’s the same timing as “this turn” for cards like Now!. Which means it probably has lots of implications I have forgotten, so please let us know if any of them are really huge.
Also: some people wonder if you can play Spirit of the Panda while there are 0 units in play to have it hang around and give you Healing 1 passively. “If they don’t attach to anything” in that text is meant to apply to ongoing spells that don’t say “attach to X”, not to ongoing spells that say “attach to X” that you play while there are no X in play.
In a prior episode of rules debauchery, a guy named “pointy thing” ruled that you can generally play spells if you have enough gold and you have the right hero around (and the requirements for ultimates, if it’s an ultimate). For example, this means you can play Spark to do nothing if there are no patrollers, and maybe you’ll get a dancer for that. So my question for now is, can you pay 4 to play Spirit of the Panda straight into your discard pile if there are no units? Seems like probably yes.
Since there was some confusion about queues, I would like to stress one more point. In some other unrelated game, the resolution of a spell or triggered ability creates a sort of shroud of simultaneity so that if you have a spell that reads “sacrifice a creature.
gain 1 life.repair 1 damage from your base” and you have two triggered abilities with triggers “when you sacrifice a creature” and “when yougain liferepair damage from your base” you can choose the order of those. We do not have such a thing. In our game, if you play that spell and you have those two triggered abilities, you do not have any choices to make about the ordering of those two triggers.
Regarding the first point: the context was that Manufactured Truth turns Spectral Aven into a Brave Knight, who attacks and takes 2 damage, then goes into Scavenger. When it turns back into an Aven and dies, do you get the gold bonus? The above ruling says no.
Point brought up later: under this change to “until end of turn” timings, if you cast Death Rites, then later your MT’d unit dies when it turns back to its original, Death Rites wouldn’t kill something, since it ends at the same time as Manufactured Truth. Sirlin and Sharpo were discussing whether Death Rites should have an exception so that it still triggers here, I don’t think they came to an agreement.
Regarding queues, something else related that I asked: when two things are triggered simultaneously, you choose in which order they go onto the queue. They do not go onto the queue simultaneously, to let you choose the order to resolve them when you get to them. For example, the queue contains A, then B. Resolving A triggers C and D. You must choose the order C and D will get resolved in before resolving B.
1 Like
Interesting!
I’m a bit curious about that Death Rites end-of-turn timing. It makes sense, but also, it’s a similar situation to the bugblatter on-death trigger ruling, but an opposite result. Curious.
Regarding queues, that does represent a significant amount of re-coding for my project to work like that, but actually would probably flow better to pick the orders of triggers from things that just happened.
It means the player needs to be asked “pick the order” in a way that makes it harder to not mention the queue to them explicitly, but on the other hand you don’t need to worry about tracking multiple-trigger epochs in the queue. So a little give-and-take, I suppose.
Honestly, tracking batches of multiple triggers was pretty straight forward.
Having to interrupt the flow of execution at… any time time multiple triggers can happen… to get a user choice in there is going to be a challenge. But, it’s also a challenge that is inevitable to implement because the hero bounty also interrupts the flow of execution from anywhere a hero could die… but I was hoping to delay that feature for the single-faction mode.
And I’ll almost certainly have to have some clear UI and explainers about the queue.
But then I’ll have clear UI and explainers. Seems worth it.
Dothram Horselord question: does he suffer arrival fatigue when changing sides?
My understand me (correct me if I’m wrong) is that Mind Control causes arrival fatigue. Likewise, Kidnapping causes arrival fatigue, but it’s mitigated by adding a temporary Haste. These are both situations where a change of control causes arrival fatigue.
Reasonable to infer that Dothram Horselord would also suffer arrival fatigue when changing sides?
1 Like
Interesting question. I’ve never seen a situation where it’s relevant, since you never want to end your turn in a situation where your Horselord would change sides, but it could technically happen.
I tend to agree with your conclusion, because arrival fatigue says units and heroes can’t exhaust the turn they come under your control, and your upkeep is part of your turn.
1 Like
See the discussion starting here, with the same conclusion if you take your Horselord back later in the turn:
I’m sorry, I can’t see a relevant discussion at the link you gave. I see discussions mostly about FFA mode and the need for a comprehensive rulebook, but I only see one relevant reply after reading a dozen or more.
It sounds like I’m correct that arrival fatigue happens whenever a creature arrives into a player’s control, whether it was from hand, the void, or from another player’s control.
Also, I am making plans to solve the comprehensive rulebook problem. If anyone is interested in helping me with this, let me know.
Sorry, maybe that wasn’t clear: it’s that post, and the three just after. You are correct, it happens whenever a creature arrives into a player’s control. The point was that the rulebook’s wording is a little off: a creature has arrival fatigue unless you’ve owned controlled it since the start of the turn, not at the start of the turn.
2 Likes