@OffKilter I think there’s been a miscommunication here.
If I have a Wisp with Spirit of the Panda attached to it, and you use Forgotten Fighter on it, then the Wisp is removed from play (and “destroyed”), and the Spirit of the Panda goes to my discard. The Spirit of the Panda does not stick around after the Wisp is gone.
What @charnel_mouse was talking about was playing Spirit of the Panda without attaching it to any unit in the first place. In that case, it won’t go to discard until some effect is used on the spell itself. It sticks around.
What makes this confusing is that you can play attachment spells without actually attaching them to any unit, and they don’t immediately go to discard. What makes SotP specifically an “edge case” is that there’s actually some benefit to doing so: the Healing part of the spell works even when it’s not attached to any unit.
When Forgotten Fighter is used on a Token, the Token leaves play, and attempts to return to its owner’s hand.
I understand this is the ruling and it makes intuitive sense.
It’s not what the card says.
In order for it to make sense you have to replace the concept of
Return to hand.
With
Remove from play, then return to hand.
I was thinking the ruling about attachments had it as
Remove from play, then return to hand. Any attachments remain in play.
Which, if true, should have been printed on the card. For something that weird and specific to happen and have to find out by legal gymnastics in the rulebook would be downright disrespectful of the players, especially when there’s plenty of room on the card.
I wanted to propose that, since you’re adding words to the card anyways, you might as well add them so that it at least makes sense:
Discard any attachments on the target, then remove it from play, then return it to hand.
Which would be only necessary because the rulebook says that thing about attachments only getting discarded if the creature is “destroyed” not “destroyed or otherwise removed from play.” Sloppy writing that.
Returning to hand necessitates removing from play.
This is because “in play” specifically refers to cards on the field right now, and does not mean every card that is in the game, no matter the zone (hand, deck, discard, codex, trashed, etc.).
So something returning to hand moves from the “in play” zone to the “hand” zone. When the token leaves the “in play” zone on the way to the “hand zone” it gets there, then is immediately trashed, because it can’t exist outside the “in play” zone (other than “totally outside of the game completely”).
I agree the rulebook leaves much to be desired. Sirlin deliberately went with “works in 98% of situations with simple text, more complex rulings can be looked up if required”, but then never made a comprehensive rules document like MTG did. Instead, we got the Rulings Thread.
Which… is exactly why this website is a good idea.
Notably, this is wrong. The Wisp is not destroyed by any measure. It attempts to return to hand and is then trashed, which still causes attachments to leave. That is a problem with the wording of how attachments work, not forgotten fighter interacting with tokens.
I’m still unclear on the reasoning behind allowing attachments to be cast without targets. Doesn’t that clash with the ruling that bamstamper Lizzo and hired stomper must deal damage with their abilities that trigger on arrival?
If so, wouldn’t it be simpler to disallow this edge case rather than maintain it for the board state where Argagarg is one a board with no creatures and nonetheless the player can afford to spend 4 gold on healing 1.
It also feels against the philosophy of counters. That healing is normally countered by killing the attached creature, just like vital tree can be killed.
I don’t think there’s a clash. Both are cases of the general rule saying ‘Do as much as you can’.
In the Lizzo and Stomper cases, you can always target a unit because you just played one (and there’s nothing in the game which makes them untargetable to your own abilities).
A closer comparison to SotP is Troq’s ult Final Smash: if there’s a tech 0 unit in play, you have to bounce it (even if it’s yours and you wouldn’t want to), but if there are no tech 0 units, you can still cast the spell and get the other effects. You could even play it if there are no units in play at all, and have it do nothing, if for some reason you really wanted to cast a spell and use up 6 gold.
The general ‘Do as much as you can’ rule is the reason you can do these things, not the tiny benefit you could get from playing SotP without a unit to attach it to.
To be clear, you’re clarifying that attachment spells must attach if there’s a valid target, but can otherwise be cast without a target.
Is this the same in any other game though? Like, Magic: The Gathering has Enchant Creature cards, as well as presumably a “do as much as you can”. Does it also allow you to enchant thin air with out a valid creature?
Maybe I’m biased because I use statically-typed programming languages. Invalid arguments are a no-go. For me, this is why an overly literal reading of Forgotten Fighter would just look at a token as an invalid argument to the Return To Hand operation, and not have an impulse to go anywhere. Full stop. However, I do prefer the interpretation being used here, as long as there’s clarification.
Isn’t there a qualitative difference between Troq’s Final Smash, where some of the targets are going to be valid, and allowing a spell to be cast that has no valid targets.
It’s a matter of interpretation whether to allow “do as much as you can” to include the “no valid targets” case. For me, casting spells with no valid target like this breaks immersion in the game’s simulated reality. It doesn’t seem to add value to the game strategically. I am asking you to reconsider this interpretation.
There’s no qualitative difference for Final Smash, because each effect on a spell looks for targets in isolation from the others. There’s never anything stopping you from playing a card that won’t do anything. This is in official rulings, so asking us to reconsider it is moot.
In times of statically-typed languages, any time a card needs to affect something, that target can be nothing (Option / Maybe). Depending on how you implemented “if you do, …” effects, you might have to do this anyway.
Maybe this is something to discuss in the rules thread instead?
Yeah you’re always allowed to play a card for “no effect” within Codex rules. I think ti’s easier to say that and also say “do as much as you can” than try and create a complete list of conditions of when you’re “not allowed to play a card”.
My 2 cents is that @charnel_mouse 's version is more in line with how Gunpoint Taxman and midband Zane abilities work, and that makes it attractive.
I think I understand the mechanism in the latter interpretation, with the only difference I see is whether a death trigger is processed before moving onto the next part of the action or after the whole card. I’m not clear how this mechanism would also allow Gunpoint Taxman to work, or any reason why this mechanism would apply to Shadow Blade but not Gunpoint Taxman.
Okay, that makes great sense and addresses my last point. Gunpoint Taxman and Scavenger effectively give the Older Brother (or whoever) 2 additional death triggers, and the active player gets to choose which order they resolve.
Still seems like it would be beneficial to be a similar feel with Shadow Blade and Gunpoint taxman, if possible. Furthermore the description of how Forgotten Fighter works on tokens indicates a bias towards maximum granularity, which would also be surprising to be different for Shadow Blade.
I’m stating a preference here, perhaps in absence of the big picture.
I did a bit of research, reading through the “unofficial rulebook” here: Codex - Google Docs
Based on this I updated the “sad robot” x/0 indestructible case to discard attachments.
I think I need help with the Section 4 part about cloning abilities interactions. It sure sounds like there’s some good candidates for my project in there, but I can’t really wrap my head around it. Are there clearer examples somewhere?
Trivial thing to probably add here:
Things that are triggering in the upkeep all trigger simultaneously. If then something arrives (in the example I researched it was a Rememberer arriving from a Rememberer removing a time rune due to fading) that also has an upkeep trigger, this new trigger does NOT trigger in this same upkeep. You’ll have to wait for your next upkeep.
Well the ruling is about upkeep triggers in general, Prynn could be used to return anything else to the game in your upkeep. These things then also don’t get their trigger resolved.
Another thing: things with fading don’t die when the last time rune is removed. Your fading things only die if it is you yourself to remove the rune. If the opponent removes the last rune, the cards stay in game until they leave due to another cause.
