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There are already counters available

This is the most frequently-used, most heinous fallacy used when talking about OP or broken cards. Especially when said card doesn't even take a deckslot, while a counter does (and if you want to argue wanderer is a counter that also doesn't take a deckslot, FbtN is a counter to wanderer that also doesn't take a deckslot).

If Lost Souls is not a restrict, what is it?

What would make you think its "must be rescued twice" ability is a restrict? Some cards have special abilities that are unique or quasi-unique and can't be shoehorned into a glossary term. What is Ambush, a set-aside ability with a turner-downer ability? The Lost Souls' ability is just a unique ability in Redemption, not a restrict, a protect, or anything else.

And the current ruling on Lost Souls is that their abilities are not CBN even if they are "While in Play" or complete in previous phases, as they 'activate' each phase and can be therefore negated based on the reactivation.

That is patently false. If I get my Isaiah set aside with Shame, I can't flip up I Am Salvation on my turn and get him back instantly. LS abilities activate every phase, but that does not exempt them from the "on previous phase" rule.

Really, this kind of rule change would result in awful ruling quandaries

Not a single one. This would only be true if your mistaken impression of how LS can and cannot work were true.

At Natz, I was somewhat surprised to hear that the most commonly-reviled card was not TGT or NJ, but the Liner souls. I hadn't thought of it before, but now agree with the assessment.

-and-

Lost Souls is my least favorite card.  I told that to Rob at my first nationals.  It is still my least favorite card.

The liners have been out since the start of the game, and over the the fifteen plus years that the liners have been out ever heard anyone complain about it being OP or broken? Have there ever been enough complaints over fifteen plus years that any counters were designed for it? The PtB  don't even errata/change game rules when cards are obviously broken (NJ/TGT/Thaddeus). So why are you entertaining changing games rules to nerf a card simply because you don't like it?

If you really want to go down that path I have a number of cards that I really dislike; can they be next in line for similar changes?

I am strongly opposed to a rule change that makes the Hopper count as a LS for deckbuilding and does NOT count the 2-liner anymore.  That puts the Hopper in EVERY deck (which helps speed decks even more, when they are already dominant) and probably takes the 2-liner out of every deck (when it is a HUGE boost to defense currently).

About the only way I could get behind this would be if we switched to playing to 6 LSs to win the game with deck minimums of 60 cards (which keeps coming up over the years, but has yet to truly get enough traction to happen).

When I look at the SA on the Lost Souls cards (both of them) the information is providing playing instructions not playing abilities.  In this case it is true that the instructions give the card an ability, but the ability can not function without the instructions.  When the card was printed identifiers did not exist, had they existed this card would have had identifiers (as the errata currently shows).  If the errata was removed and the identifiers became the SA I think we would have the discussion in a year or two of how worthless the card is for playing.  All it would take is the creation of a card or two that becomes common in every deck that negates LSs to stop the playing of this card.  We already have Isaiah's Call.  Plus the dom cap forces you to choose dominates carefully now.  Burial takes up one of the dom slots in a deck and I think playing a liner without burial is a kind of stupid.  I believe the errata needs to stay as it is now, the card can be a pain, but it is far from the most troublesome card in existence.

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And the current ruling on Lost Souls is that their abilities are not CBN even if they are "While in Play" or complete in previous phases, as they 'activate' each phase and can be therefore negated based on the reactivation.

That is patently false. If I get my Isaiah set aside with Shame, I can't flip up I Am Salvation on my turn and get him back instantly. LS abilities activate every phase, but that does not exempt them from the "on previous phase" rule.

Everyone seems to confuse my statement, which is my fault.  When I said "Lost Souls" I meant the "Lost SoulS" card, though what I said applies to all lost soul abilities.  You countered with what is an 'instant' ability (the set-aside on Shame).  Of course you cannot stop instant abilities after that phase, no one argued that.  You would need to counter me with ongoing abilities which fit your definition, but all of those ongoing souls can be negated (except for the CBP soul, but that is due to a different rule entirely).

My first preference would be keeping the status quo. They are annoying, but they provide a risk/reward balance that is strategic.  My second would be to go with Pol's suggestion of removing the CBN.  I see no problems with that, and getting rid of erratas is always good when it can be justified.

The problem with this idea is that removing the CBN results in a lot of very confusion ruling situations.  I've pointed those out in previous posts.  It would make things more difficult for judges (who have to know and rule correctly on the ruling...other thread on why that is hard), for new players (seriously, no matter how it ended up, it'd be more confusing than "You have to rescue it twice, period"), and for consistency in the rules.

About the only way I could get behind this would be if we switched to playing to 6 LSs to win the game with deck minimums of 60 cards (which keeps coming up over the years, but has yet to truly get enough traction to happen).

I'm working on getting T3 going, probably as an unofficial Multi category, this year.  It has equal good-evil, deck size 60, rescue 6 to win.  Stay tuned

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You countered with what is an 'instant' ability (the set-aside on Shame).  Of course you cannot stop instant abilities after that phase, no one argued that.

Good, then we're in agreement that Lost Souls' instant ability to be rescued a second time before counting, then counting twice cannot be negated in a later phase.

No, we are not.  Instant abilities are resolved, like set-aside.  Ongoing abilities are ongoing.  Lost Souls is protected/restricted from rescue unless it is rescued twice.  That is ongoing.  Nice try though.

Basically, it is ongoing and continuously updating.  Therefore, it can be negated.  Therefore, you introduce a problem to the rules regarding this card.

Having to look up errata on a secondary source (which is hard to find, incomplete and not perfectly reliable) is always more difficult for new players than having the card do exactly what it says on the card. Cards being unable to be negated in a later phase is a basic game rule, and if someone has a problem remembering that they're likely to not understand a whole host of things, Lost Souls being the least of the worries.

I've already shown that the rules would be complicated and confusing for this card.  Having an errata hasn't been a problem for this card for the many years it has had one, so your argument holds no water.

You are just wrong about whether it could be negated on a later phase than its initial rescue.

Just to clarify, the 2-liner can NOT be negated on a later phase because the ability is an identifier a CBN SA, and those are never negated.

This thread is about the possibility of changing that, but I didn't want anyone coming in late to be confused.

edit:  Oops, forgot about that.  Thanks for the catch guys

Thanks for posting that Drrek. Lost Souls "identifier" was changed to a CBN SA when we decided we wanted to make it abundantly clear that 50 card decks with 7 copies of Lost Souls were not legal; thus it has to have a Special Ability.

So the issue here is whether or not the CBN errata should remain. Pol has argued that it can (and should) be removed. Essentially, with Pol's viewpoint, the Play As for the two liner Lost Souls would read, "If this Lost Soul is rescued once, it does not go to rescuer's Land of Redemption. It must be rescued a second time to count as two Redeemed Souls, otherwise this card remains in your Land of Bondage." Once the trigger is activated by being rescued once, and the phase of that trigger has passed, we have a situation where an ability activated in a previous phase, and does not reactivate each phase, thus negating it after the first rescue would have no effect.  The 3-Liner would be similar, with the additional "Protect this card from a second rescue by any player who did not make the first rescue." This part would be able to be negated, but that is probably alright in my view.

On the one hand, I like this idea, because it removes errata that is probably not necessary. On the other hand, there are some mostly superficial but possibly important changes in the way the card is dealt with. First, if the special ability is negated before the first rescue, you now have a liner in your LoR that is worth only one LS. This would cause people to have to take care when they observe how many LSs an opponent has and make decisions accordingly. Like I said, superficial, but I'd hate to be the guy who makes a risky block in multiplayer based on the fact that I see Lost Souls and two other Redeemed Souls in an opponent's territory and think he is going for the win when in fact he only has three redeemed, and another player has 4. The second issue is the interaction with Falling Away. I'm fairly certain that if you used Falling Away on a liner that was rescued twice while the FBTN soul is out, then it would still just be tapped based on my above logic, but that would probably have to be considered before making a final judgment.

The other option is to leave it as is. The idea that it has a special ability that is more like an identifier but is a special ability nonetheless has not caused a ton of problems, especially with the errata. However, it also causes the card to be very powerful in certain situations, such as having Lost Souls and the FBTN LS work in tandem to stop wanderer and thorns, which means it can be tapped and shuffled/topdecked/underdecked multiple times in one game. I recall one particular T1 game in which I forced my opponent to make 8 successful rescues; I won that game 5-4. I agree that it has probably caused the most annoyance of any other card in the history of Redemption, and I often would rather suffer having my big two shuffled by Mayhem than be forced to use my SoG/NJ before my opponent's liner is half rescued. It also affects big decks too. In my last TEAMS matchup at Nats, my opponents made a good play by exchanging for two of our liners then using SoG/NJ on the exchangers. But at that point I knew that they would never get to 5, because both my Teammate and I had 3 3-Liners in our decks with Gates of Hell, which meant we could give up 4 more successful rescues without handing them a soul. The Liners are single-handedly responsible for the deck limit in T1, when there were theoretical, RTS based 1000 card decks with 20 copies of the liners, and 20 Gates of Hells. That kind of deck would be absolutely unbeatable (not to mention unplayable in tournaments, but even a more reasonably sized 200-250 card deck with 4-5 of the liners would be nearly impossible to beat in the hands of skilled players.

So far I lean a little toward status quo, because while it is annoying, at this point I don't believe it is broken. And as the saying goes, if it ain't baroque, it might just be classical. Or whatever that saying is. It has worked ok for the last several years, it has fallen a bit out of favor in many decks due to the SoG/NJ rescue rule (since your opponent can't rescue their own souls it no longer forces you to give up a possible soul drought block by making you rescue one or both halves), and by using it you sometimes run the risk of it getting stuck in your opponent's Land of Bondage.

However, if the majority movement is in favor of changing it, I have no real qualms about it and would support the change following an analysis on what exact changes to current gameplay it would entail. The last few days have seen the playtesters working fairly busily on the new set so that it can be released sooner than later, but hopefully once that is wrapped up, and before the Fall tourney season gets too advanced, we can deal with issues like these.

This is honestly ridiculous all of whining over some thing that just takes a little thought to over come. Use a lamp stand make one more rescue, it's not that hard and dose not required.

I've seen whining, and this is not whining. It's an earnest discussion about a potential issue with the game. If it were as simple as you say, then it wouldn't be possible to force an opponent to have 8 successful rescue attempts in a game and still lose.

I understand the "status quo" argument, but remember we're talking about removing an errata, not making one.

An interesting point that's been brought up: why is the liner half-rescued when hit by Falling Away? I don't really see anything on the language of either card that would allow that, and it seems like one of the last remaining bottom-up rules. The only way it could be is if I am right about how the card actually functions and is further proof that there is no cause to worry about later negation.

I agree that the Falling Away vs. Liner ruling that has been around for as long as I can remember is somewhat "bottom up", but I think it's more to do with how the card is worded than out of some sort of necessity (or maybe it's both).  Falling Away says "subtract the rescue", which seems to specify that it only subtracts one rescue from the card. The wording and ability of Falling Away is unique enough to probably warrant a bottom-up ruling of some sort. I believe it should definitely stay the way it is (it's harmful enough now when an opponent uses FA on a Liner, if it came back untapped, it would be even more powerful).

IMO, the "special ability" on Lost Souls is not and should not be considered a special ability.  The card represents 2 lost souls.  That is why it has that title.  You can't negate the fact that two people exist and treat them as one person (marriage notwithstanding).  Rather, the text on the card is an identifier.  It explains the card title, the same as the text on Silly Women explains the stats.  The only "errata" issued for the card should be that the Lost Souls card is limited to one per 50 in deck building.

Just to clarify, regardless of what your opinion is, the Lost Souls card's ability is, in fact, a CBN special ability; not an identifier. I just want to dispel any confusion with Elders going against each other.

Quote from: Soundman2 on August 20, 2012, 02:23:34 PM

This is honestly ridiculous all of whining over some thing that just takes a little thought to over come. Use a lamp stand make one more rescue, it's not that hard and dose not required.

I've seen whining, and this is not whining. It's an earnest discussion about a potential issue with the game. If it were as simple as you say, then it wouldn't be possible to force an opponent to have 8 successful rescue attempts in a game and still lose.

With or with out evil characters?  Is this still a game of strategy right? So think and plan a head