Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Abilities:

Joanna
Immune to Herods.  Negate special abilities on Evil Characters with toughness 2 or less.

Herod the Great
Search deck for Herod's Temple.  Return all but one Hero in battle to territory.  Prevent good banding abilities.  Cannot be prevented by a Hero.

Herod's Treachery
Place on a Herod.  That Herod may use evil Enhancements regardless of brigade.  You may discard this card to force X Heroes to withdraw from battle.


Now, on the ruling questions, I have always had it ruled that cards like this (Treachery, Unholy Writ, Magic Charms, etc.) can be played anytime a Dom could, essentially (that is, while there is normal initiative going back and forth but not during the completion of a special ability or special initiative).  So he could discard it first before Joanna's player could do anything.  Note that this would be "responding to your own action" (placing your character in battle) so I would assume that you'd get the preference if you both try to do something at the same time.

And yes, her immunity stops her from being affected by it as far as I know.  I could be wrong, but I'm almost certain they ruled that an EE that is placed on a character is still being played by that character, and so the immunity would stop her from being returned.  I will edit my post once I find the thread this came up in before.

EDIT: Can't find it, but I'm almost certain something similar has come up before...

I'm not 100% certain about this so please don't take it as an official ruling, but my initial impression is that Herod's Treachery is being used by the character it was originally played on. If that was a Herod then it's used by a Herod. If that was Uzzah, then it was used by Uzzah. Once it's placed on a Herod the ability is not being used by that Herod necessarily, only if it was originally played on him. This is the nature of placed cards as I understand them and there's nothing in the wording of Herod's Treachery that makes me think otherwise.

I agree with Gabe.

So based on that, Herod the Great could discard HT before giving initiative to Joanna, and her immunity would NOT stop HT assuming that it was originally played by an EC that was NOT a herod.

Of course I would recommend just using the HT from territory rather than putting Herod the Great into battle, because it makes it less likely for Joanna to be able to interrupt its ability.  This would be better unless you needed to activate Herod the Great's special ability to bring out Herod's Temple, in which case going into battle first would be better.

I'm not 100% certain about this so please don't take it as an official ruling, but my initial impression is that Herod's Treachery is being used by the character it was originally played on. If that was a Herod then it's used by a Herod. If that was Uzzah, then it was used by Uzzah. Once it's placed on a Herod the ability is not being used by that Herod necessarily, only if it was originally played on him. This is the nature of placed cards as I understand them and there's nothing in the wording of Herod's Treachery that makes me think otherwise.

Gabe is correct.