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Can you make a Battle Challenge in T2 (even if LS are out that your hero has access to) if Burial Shroud is up?

This issue has not been resolved from the following thread, which Gabe posted in a year ago to bring back up an old ruling that battle challenges can be made in T2 even if your hero has access to a Lost Soul.

Unresolved thread from last Feb
Thread Gabe references in above thread that shows old ruling of BCs allowable in T2 with rescue-able souls out.

The top thread shows Gabe posting historical threads and then Jordan posting a potential for changes - but nothing is ever confirmed as being changed later.

This impacts cards such as Joshua, who can snipe a site if a BC is successful (while Burial Shroud is active).

I sent messages to Bryon and Mark and got conflicting responses. Can we get an official determination on this?

It seems from the comments in those threads that in Type 2, rescuer's choice means that you declare "Rescue Attempt for that lost soul" or "battle challenge" before you make a hero enter battle.  So, you would be able to make a BC even while a lost soul is available to which one of your heroes has access.

Since Burial Shroud does not disallow your own battle challenges, you can make a battle challenge in Type 2 even when you could have selected a lost soul and begun a RA.

This assumes that there are not more recent threads that counter the above.  I have not seen any, but I am not up to date in the Rulings section.  I do know that the elders side of the board has had no recent discussions about it, since I read every thread there.

The easy answer to this question is "yes".  The hard part of the question is "when exactly are you allowed to do this?"

I'm confident that you can make a battle challenge with BS active if there are no LSs in your opponent's LoB.

I'm also confident that you can make a battle challenge with BS active if the only LSs in play are ones that your hero lacks access to (ie. NT only LS while you have only OT heroes) or are in sites that your heroes lack access to.

So really the only questionable thing is whether you can make a battle challenge with BS active in T2 by purposefully choosing to try to rescue a LS that you aren't able to.

Quote from: The Guardian on January 27, 2011, 01:19:33 PM

Quote from: Minister Polarius on January 27, 2011, 01:17:58 PM

Be aware, however, that you can't make a battle challenge if the Hero you are attacking with has access to LS's.

to both.

According to this post (which is much more recent than the 2009 thread referring to something Rob said in 2008), it would seem that the answer would be "no".  It seems to say that if a hero has access to LSs, then you couldn't choose 1 of them that you don't have access in order to force it to be a battle challenge.  The only problem is that the thread doesn't make it clear whether it is ONLY talking about T1, or if it also includes T2.

Quote from: Professoralstad on February 17, 2012, 12:46:02 AM

As for Burial Shroud in T2, I think the same idea as 4 would apply, regardless of which LS you picked. I.e, if your opponent has the Female only and NT only out, you cannot pick the NT only then BC with Rachel, similarly you cannot pick the NT only and BC with Adam banded to Eve.

This is another recent quote that seems to back up the same interpretation.  The idea is that if an attacking hero CAN choose a accessible LS, then they are not allowed to purposefully choose an inaccessible LS to make a battle challenge while BS is active.

I also checked the other side of the boards, and unfortunately the only recent discussion over there about BS basically went unresolved.  A few people (including myself) responded, but nothing ended up resulting from the discussion.

So if I had to make a ruling at the T2-Only this weekend, I would say that you can NOT make a bc while BS is active if you attack with a hero who COULD choose an accessible LS.

Joshua - Play As: ""If a rescue or battle challenge is successful, take one unoccupied single color Lost Soul site from your opponent and add it to your territory."
Burial Shroud - Play As: "Prevent holder from making a rescue attempt. Protect holder from being attachedk. May be used twice."

Thanks,
Kirk

In Type 2, the steps go like this:

1) choose the only lost soul your heroes will be allowed to rescue this turn (or declare a battle challenge)

2) place a hero in battle

That's it. 

The only tricky part is whether you can do the part in parentheses.  If there is one lost soul available, MUST you choose it, even if you know you cannot rescue it?  What if you just don't WANT to rescue it yet?  I think that rescuer's choice means that you pick a lost soul or declare a battle challenge, and it doesn't matter about access or not.  Hero abilities are not active in territory, so you can't be forced to take site access into account.  I think it is just simpler to say:

1. Pick a lost soul or say battle challenge.
2. Put a hero in battle.

Now I don't have a copy of Jacobs Ladder in front of me but would the same ruling apply to Jacobs Ladder in Type 1?

I'm away from my compy so sorry for asking you guys to do my dirty work :p

And just because im curious how does the rule book / reg word rescuers choice?

In Type 2, the steps go like this:

1) choose the only lost soul your heroes will be allowed to rescue this turn (or declare a battle challenge)

2) place a hero in battle

That's it. 

So if my opponent places a hero in battle (step 2) without declaring which lost soul his hero is attempting to rescue (step 1), what happens then?  It the battle automatically a battle challenge? It it mooted?

It was told to me this weekend at the T2 only that after I declare my RA my opponent could play Burial on the LS I was going or before I could push my hero in battle. I had never heard of this.

I've never heard this either.  If a player can respond to an opponent declaring their LS intention by playing a dominant, then I would think that the opponent could also then respond to the playing of a dominant by choosing to not enter battle.

The more we get into these questions the more I think we need to iron out the timing of all this stuff for the next rulebook so that everyone everywhere plays T2 the same.

so could you declare a battle challenge even if there is a soul you have access to?

All this is telling me (especially that last post) is that we desperately need to get the BC-RA thing hammered out and update the rules on Rescuer's Choice in the new REG.