Cactus Game Design Message Boards

The world explodes. Don't make the world explode.

Why doesn’t Auto go into your opponents hand?

Relevant Rules:

If a card is played that instructs a player to draw cards or otherwise place cards in their hand, they must stop at 16 regardless of the number of cards to be drawn or returned; additional cards over 16 are protected from being placed in their hand by any means.


In addition to switching locations, if either of the cards is targeted by other abilities or game rules when the exchange is carried out, the targets of those other abilities or game rules are also switched.

An exchange effect requires targets on both ends of the exchange. If a valid target for one end of the exchange is not found, the effect does nothing.

The way that I interpret these rules is that AUtO is protected from being exchanged because it is protected (targeted) by game rule from returning to your hand, thus making one side of the exchange invalid.

So if my deck is protected from opponent's they can't use my auto to exchange into their deck? Idk.. I believe the third paragraph is referring to a third party card exchanging things.

It does seem murky to have protect used as more of a colloquialism in the rules (protected from opponents by any means) and formally in abilities for the REG 5.0. I feel like Protect+any means= restrict. And on a side note is protecting from abilities treated the same way in the REG 5.0 (e.g., protect from discard= protect from discard by an opponent's card)? Because, for the sake of clarity, definitions should change with context as little as possible.

REG quote:
"An exchange effect requires targets on both ends of the exchange. If a valid target for one end of the exchange is not found, the effect does nothing."

 Targets on both ends of the exchange means, in this case, AUTO and a judge in the opponents hand exist (JM's opponent), because locations cannot be "on" themselves. if a card is "on" a location this also implies that he is "in" the location too. Then the exchange would have to target both locations as well as both cards. In this case however, "both" locations are the battle field and hand of the opponent. Even if the statement means that exchanging requires targeting on both ends of the exchange, in this case, the two ends are the battle field and hand. The exchange occurs because there are there are targets on both ends of the exchange. Technically, AUTO is in your opponent's hand for a moment because the REG quote addressing exchange and control uses the present tense of exchange. Then you apply the rule which sends AUTO to  JM's hand but cannot because the hand is being "Protected from going over 16 by any means". Then AUTO is still in the opponents hand I guess. By the wording, I think that's how the game rules of paragraph 1 and 3 sort out. But I'm done with Redemption metaphysics here ha.

Also if "instructs" should probably be replaced with "results in", because AUTO is exchanging not targeting JM's hand, the game rule is. Or "If card or gamerule" works too.

It does seem murky to have protect used as more of a colloquialism in the rules (protected from opponents by any means) and formally in abilities for the REG 5.0. I feel like Protect+any means= restrict. And on a side note is protecting from abilities treated the same way in the REG 5.0 (e.g., protect from discard= protect from discard by an opponent's card)? Because, for the sake of clarity, definitions should change with context as little as possible.

There's still a difference between protecting from abilities and protecting from cards (which includes numbers), so it's still protection from discard abilities.

Quote from: RedemptionAggie on January 05, 2018, 01:29:28 AM

Or, as more clearly explained in REG 5.0 - "protect X from opponent" means "protect X from opponent's cards"

Wait, is this a change to Protect?  So if I attack with AUTO - Gideon, and my opponent bands to one of my evil characters, Gideon is not protected from my evil character because it's not my opponent's card?  And if they happen to have one of my EEs in hand via Taking Egypt's Wealth and they play it on my evil character, they could target Gideon?

"Protect X from opponent's cards" is different than "Protect X from cards and abilities controlled by opponent", which is how bulletproof Gideon used to be played.

The bolded portions are both arguably valid interpretations of "protect X from opponent" - the second is easier to explain as a rule, though, because the first leaves holes like you mentioned. There's at least one instance of an unintended rule change from attempting to codify everything - which doesn't make this correct, just to point out that a change to the status quo isn't necessarily wrong.

My guess is that gets corrected with the next update, since we actually print cards as "protect X from opponent's cards" as well as "protect X from opponent". Not sure why I wrote it that way in the first place.