Cactus Game Design Message Boards

This came up in a tournament recently and between the judge, my opponent, and myself, we could not agree on how it was supposed to work.
Simply put, if a Territory-Class Character is being Negated (ongoing) and becomes CBN, does it reactivate immediately or is there a trigger that needs to happen?

The long version:
I have Music Leader out.

(Territory-Class)
If an opponent uses a draw or search ability (except on a musician), you may search deck or discard pile for up to 2 good cards that involve music.

My opponent plays Three Woes as Evil and selects Music Leader to be Negated.

Place in territory: Negate a card of a different alignment than this card for one round.  Each upkeep, you may negate a card of a different alignment than this card for one round.

I want to use Joy to make Music Leader CBN.

Place on your clay or white Hero: Increase Hero 7/0.  That Hero's special ability cannot by negated.  Protect clay and white Heroes from decrease.

My view: T-Class is active "while in territory."  While Negated it doesn't work of course, but once it's CBN it's in territory and should reactivate.

Opponent's view: T-Class only activates when the character enters territory.  In this case, Music Leader can only reactivate (even once CBN) if it enters battle and then returns to territory.

Judge's ruling: Even CBN, Music Leader's ability can only activate once it's "clean" - in this case, even though Joy is active, ML can only reactivate once Three Woes is removed from play.

Territory Class Character
Territory class characters have abilities that activate when put in battle in the same way as all
other characters. The abilities also activate each time the character is put in a territory.
Territory class character abilities that are active outside of battle are active while the
character remains in the territory. Territory class characters are distinguished by a tan icon
with a tent and palm trees below the icon box.

How does this actually work?

Correct. This is due to the following from REG (in section "Cannot be negated"):

An ability cannot gain cannot be negated retroactively; it has cannot be negated when the card it is on is played or not at all.

So when e.g. your ML wearing Joy enters battle it would become effective or when you set him with Joy aside and he returns with Joy on him it would become effective too.

So in other words Joy + T-Class is much weaker than I thought?

If you thought it makes TC CBN immediatelly when played in territory - then yes unfortunately (not 100% intuitive - but explainable with the "Cannot be negated" section).

Obligatory complaint that the game rules should lean towards being intuitive instead of needing to be researched.

Usually I say the same thing. But in this case I also already had some exchange with RedemptionAggie (and maybe also others IIRC) and it would complicate things a lot to introduce modifier being changed resp. added/remover retroactively. For example imagine a lot of activities happened during one phase (e.g. battled) which would have triggered let's say a ML in territory - but that guy got negated by a 3 Woes of an opponent. Now Joy could be played during battle on that ML - what should happen? Should all the missed triggers be catched  up now since they happened in the same phase? If so what if opponents would have triggered effects too that trigger after a ML used his SA and if in those cases they would have gotten other cards they could play in battle? Or with the catched up triggers what if controller of that ML would draw cards he/she could have used better in battle? This would make things incredible complicated what has been tried to reduced while getting rid of cascading negate (while the example given here might not be the most complicated one).
Maybe RedemptionAggie or others more firm in the rules and their evolvement can explain this even better. Maybe there are chances to get things more intuitive - but all this need a lot of work and thinking through (hopefully) all cases. And AFAIK the game is currently driven just by a handful guys doing a really great job voluntarily!

But in general I am of the same opinion: The game and its rules should be as intuitive as possible (or like another community member once said in turn: Knowing the rules and their "possibilities" better shouldn't be an advantage when playing Redemption (or not that one who knows the rules better should be winning but the one who plays better - can not reproduce it so well right now).

What about between phases, though?  It avoids complicated battle messes b/c anything that "might have happened" happened in a previous phase so it's done and gone anyway.  Meanwhile, T-Class uses aren't getting absolutely shredded for something that's not their fault.

What do you mean here in particular? Maybe you can elaborate on that a little more (especially the "between phases" part)? Do you mean that placed enhancements should reactivate beginning at every new phase? If so then other impacts might occur and need to be checked since as of today place effects are instant and

An ongoing ability paired with a place effect has an implied condition of “while the placed card remains in the placed location”

- so no retriggering, no re-checks etc.

While IMO erratas are even more hard to be kept in mind (how many do we have already BTW?) and make fluent gameplay also more complicated. Maybe some day "the egg of Columbus" will be found and we'll find ways to make some or even several rules and regulations more intuitive!

Regarding such an errata of joy: This would then finally work with the CoW version of Moses - wouldn't it?

@Aggie: Do you have an example for the complication of the negate/prevent and the dynamic modifiers by chance? Not 100% sure whether I got the thinking behind already ...

IMO the "blink" happens when a character changes areas (e.g. going from territory to battle or vice versa). Hence it might depend on the activation order of the abilities meaning whether the character's abilities activate before the ones of the placed enhancements activate. But maybe someone more experienced can comment on this - tried to figure it from the REG, but not 100% sure though.

Also what would happen if CoW Moses wearing Joy would enter battle then? Does his SA regarding TC stuff "bllink" at all and if so I assume that his SA activates before the one of Joy, right?

So when e.g. your ML wearing Joy enters battle it would become effective or when you set him with Joy aside and he returns with Joy on him it would become effective too.

So, theoretically:
-Music Leader is in territory during prep phase.
-Play Joy on ML.
-Play Sleep to set ML aside.

Set Hero aside. Hero gains 1/1 for every turn Hero sleeps. Discard after Hero awakes.

-Immediately return ML from set aside.

If the set-aside effect specifies a duration, the targets return immediately when the duration is reached. If the
set-aside effect does not specify a duration, the controller of the cards that are set aside can choose to return
them during their Preparation Phase.

-ML returns from Set-Aside and is now CBN from Joy.

Does that work?

Quote from: ArmedKevin117 on May 04, 2021, 07:01:11 PM

Quote from: Reth on May 02, 2021, 12:16:06 PM

So when e.g. your ML wearing Joy enters battle it would become effective or when you set him with Joy aside and he returns with Joy on him it would become effective too.

So, theoretically:
-Music Leader is in territory during prep phase.
-Play Joy on ML.
-Play Sleep to set ML aside.

Quote from: Sleep

Set Hero aside. Hero gains 1/1 for every turn Hero sleeps. Discard after Hero awakes.

-Immediately return ML from set aside.

Quote from: REG: Set-Aside

If the set-aside effect specifies a duration, the targets return immediately when the duration is reached. If the
set-aside effect does not specify a duration, the controller of the cards that are set aside can choose to return
them during their Preparation Phase.

-ML returns from Set-Aside and is now CBN from Joy.

Does that work?

That looks legal to me.

Great, thanks for confirming.