Cactus Game Design Message Boards

TgotW - Protect Evil Characters from conversion. If an opponent would draw because of his special ability, he draws 1 less.

This can be rewritten as "Protect Evil Characters from conversion. If an opponent would draw because of his special ability, he instead draws 0, and opponent must draw X-1 cards, where X is the amount of cards that would have been drawn."  It's clunky, I know, but shows how TgotW + Iron Pan makes your opponent unable to draw ever, and how his ability is not a cost-benefit ability.

Herod's Temple - If your N.T. human is discarded by a special ability used by an opponent, you may discard a card of matching brigade from hand and the top X cards of your deck instead. Put Lost Souls in play instead.

This can be rewritten as "If your N.T. human would be discarded by a special ability used by an opponent, you may discard a card of matching brigade from hand and the top X cards of your deck (put Lost Souls in play instead) to keep the character from being discarded instead."  Once again, clunkier than the original wording, but this is how the ability was designed to work; it's an "Instead" ability, and to get the benefit of the "Instead" ability, you have to pay a cost first.

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The abilities are the same, except that TgotW has a costless instead, and HT does not.

I'm honestly not too familiar here, with Redemption yet, or Instead abilities, but I think I understand and I think I can help. It sounds like a few people still have a hard time understanding how this exactly works. It helped me to imagine a different Instead ability in the situation. So let's pretend I have an evil character like this:

Zach's Bad Guy - If an Opponent would draw any number of cards, you draw 1 instead.

Iron Pan - If a Babylonian is in play, negate all protect, immune, ignore, draw and play abilities. Opponent may discard a good Fortress from territory to discard this card. May be activated on Ezekiel.

(Assume a Babylonian in play along with both of these cards)

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Here's how it flows:

- Opponent attacks with a card with a draw ability ("draw X amount of cards, cannot be negated") - it cannot be negated, so Iron Pan indeed does not negate it. But it tried
- Because opponent has a draw ability, Zach's Bad Guy "insteads" the ability. (If I'm understanding it right, this means that the ability triggered by opponent's card is pretty much ignored and an ability on my card is triggered instead.) So no ability is coming from opponent's card, and a "draw 1" ability comes from my card. Yay! I get to draw 1!
- Not so fast! The Iron Pan card is on the lookout for any draw abilities that are triggered, and now we finally have one that can be negated. Wah wah. My draw ability ends right there and I do not draw. If Zach's Bad Guy said ".. you draw 1 instead, cannot be negated," then I would have been able to.


Imagining the ability a little differently helped me. But it's really the same with The God of This World: the draw ability triggers and is negated. I hope this helps.

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As for the Herod's Temple question, that could be moved into a new thread. There may need to be an official ruling on how costs work. My questions are: Is Herod's Temple officially a cost? Is a cost of discarding treated as a "discard ability" that could even be negated? Is a cost just a regular ability like that? (This may have an answer somewhere. If so I'd be interested in reading it.)

(Brief thoughts: Without too much thought, I would assume that a cost would be something that needs to be met, and I'm not sure if it could be negated or not. I suppose a card could say, "Opponent may not discard to pay a cost." so you could prevent opponent from doing certain things that require a discard cost.)

Poisoned Minds andCenturion's Proclamation.

Maybe optional ("may") Insteads are cost-benefit, and others ("Put LS in play instead", TgoTW, etc.) are not?

This is not being ignored, just for the record.  There is no update to give beyond the rulings given at this time, however.

Update: the rulings in this thread have been overturned and/or clarified in REG 3.0.0:

If the 'new' ability to be done by Instead is prevented or cannot be completed entirely, the 'original' ability remains
10. An instead ability replaces a completed action or ability with another effect.  If this new effect is prevented, or cannot otherwise be completed in its entirety, then the original effect is still applied because the other effect did not happen 'instead'.

So if TgotW's draw is prevented, then the original effect still happens, because nothing happened 'instead' of the original effect.

priest of zeus and god of this world are both in a territory.
the opponent plays mayhem.

In this case, The Priest of Zeus is an ongoing trigger, and is therefore pending and unable to insert between other abilities.  The god of this World is a mandatory instead ability, and its draw happens "instead" of the original effect immediately; the original draw 'never happened' and now TgotW is the source of the draw.  You do not get to trigger Priest, since it was not your opponent's ability that let them draw.

I know I'm new but I would say that AUTO would still draw 2 since he is CBN. If CBN is both cannot be interrupted and cannot be prevented,  the essence of those would be violated if Tgotw could limit his draw which is essentially is preventing/interrupting his draw 2 and the instead isn't included in Tgotw ability.

Furthermore, I would say that Iron pan would negate Tgotw's ability because, although it isn't the typical draw ability, it still uses the word "draw".

Praeceps is correct, Instead can still work on a CBN target because it isn't 'undoing' or 'stopping' it but rather having something else happen "instead."

However, as noted in my post, the previous ruling is not still in effect; that is, if you prevent TgotW's draw ability, he cannot have the draw happen "instead" and so AutO would not have his draw insteaded (it still happens).

Hope this all makes sense.

Does this mean you can draw through RBD with 4-Drachma Coin active?

It used to be no, as you would reveal and replace, but with the new wording (4DC protects from the discard and thus the instead can't be completed in its entirety) then yes, with 4DC you can draw through RBD.

Quote from: Red on October 22, 2015, 08:09:38 PM

Does this mean you can draw through RBD with 4-Drachma Coin active?

It used to be no, as you would reveal and replace, but with the new wording (4DC protects from the discard and thus the instead can't be completed in its entirety) then yes, with 4DC you can draw through RBD.

Praeceps, as I answered in this thread, your statement is incorrect (Pol is using the same reasoning here).

You cannot draw through RBD with 4DC because the reveal is what is happening instead.  The additional effects are not tied to the instead, but defines what to do with the revealed cards; they are still revealed, so you did accomplish the instead.

You do realize... my response here is over 3 weeks old and was made before your post there where you corrected me?

No, I must have missed this the first go-around (looking back, I was out on my anniversary that extended weekend and I think I might have missed a few threads as a result).  Pol's response lit back up this thread for me.  Sorry about that.

for clarification does this mean that the god of this world is now considered a draw ability and not an instead therefore being negated all together by pan?

What he is has not changed at all.  He has an "instead" that triggers a draw ability.  The latter is negated by Pan, and so by the way instead now works, cannot be used to "instead" the draw on another card into nothing.