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How can both of those statements possibly be true at the same time? You honestly can't say we've been playing Unholy Writ differently in different locales for 8 straight years? What is the second situation?

He means UW and Banding. They both deal with duplicates and they come to opposite conclusions.

This is a few pages back now, but I still contend there is no rule against controlling multiples. "No player may control duplicates of a unique character or cause them to fight each other" is what is used to imply there is, but I read that, and pretty much everyone has been reading that for a long time, as saying you can't control multiples because one of them has to be Discarded. There is a hard rule against entering that situation by playing a card via game rule or via banding, but otherwise, you can't control multiples because you must Discard all but one.

I hate to be arguing against the side that would make Sam decks weaker, but having a different rule for the same ability based on whether it has a "may" is bad for the game, as is any ruling that looks at intentionality or unknown circumstances (such as "add to battle" being a banding ability). There should be one simple set of top-down rulings that apply to all cards and all abilities so that even a RLK could extrapolate any ruling in any situation, not many branching rulings with many conditions and caveats.

Quote from: Minister Polarius on March 15, 2012, 06:48:00 AM

There should be one simple set of top-down rulings that apply to all cards and all abilities so that even a RLK could extrapolate any ruling in any situation, not many branching rulings with many conditions and caveats.

Pol and I probably have different resolutions to this conflict, but I agree with these principles.

I think that all the elders are also in agreement with these principles.  We all want the rules to be simple and consistent, and to lead to a fun game.  Balancing those things in the best way is the tricky part

Thanks for the decision Gabe. I don't play Samuel that much anymore, so I'm a fan of it. I'm sure Brad will be excited too.

End of semester and another rule that others agree with me on? Priceless! In reality i thank the elders for consistency. That captured character duplicate nonsense confused me anyway.

So too make it as painfully simple as possible, I can no longer us Unholy writ to capture a character to cause a duplicate to be discarded?

I'm pretty sure they clarified that too, anticipating you

Note: captured characters are not characters and thus do not affect these rules."

You said that cards are protected from abilities that would cause them to become a duplicate, and then clarified what would happen if a duplicate was created. What circumstances would a duplicate be successfully created?

You said that cards are protected from abilities that would cause them to become a duplicate, and then clarified what would happen if a duplicate was created. What circumstances would a duplicate be successfully created?

Good question. Here are examples provided by one of my peers.

You have David in your territory and another copy of David in your hand.  I attack and play Praise Him Moon and band the copy of David in your hand into battle.  Since it joins battle on my side (controlled by me) and since the David you already had in play isn't in battle the band itself doesn't violate the rule, so it's allowed.  But after battle the David I banded to returns to your territory by mandatory game rule.  Which results in you controlling two copies of David.  Returning David to your territory is not restricted by the wording I used because my wording specifies "optional game rule."  If you were restricted from the mandatory game rule of returning David to your territory, then what happens to David?  He just sits in battle?  He returns to my opponent's territory instead of mine?  He goes back to my hand?  It seems simplest to allow the mandatory game rule to happen and then have another rule to discard him after the fact.

A similar situation could occur if you capture Goliath from my territory and then I use unknown nation to add Goliath to battle from my draw pile and then I negate your capture.  The negate doesn't target the captured Golr.iath, so the protect line isn't applicable, but the negate does cause by mandatory game rule, the captured Goliath to return to my territory as a non-captured Goliath character leaving me with two copies of Goliath.

Midwives (Wo)

Type: Hero Char. • Brigade: Green • Ability: 7 / 6 • Class: None • Special Ability: Each time Midwives enter the Field of Battle, return to Field of Play all Green Brigade Male Heroes from all discard piles

Not optional, so we'd have to have a rule to fall back on.  Is that correct?

The note of protection didn't look like it was limited to optional abilities, but all abilities that would cause a duplicate.

Gabe, that answers my question, thanks.

Ok, serious questions based on the responses:

1. What does happen with Midwives (Wo)?  There is no "may" about it, and it doesn't say any number, it just says "all".  If that would cause duplicates, are those cards just protected from Midwives period?

2.  Nice to see the captured characters ruling become something not so complicated, but does this mean I could (especially in T2) capture multiples of my opponent's (and my) characters?  And since this seems to be the case, would they be protected from something like Covenant with Palestine if there is already a copy in territory, or multiple captured copies?

Covenant of Palestine (Pa)

Type: Covenant • Brigade: Purple • Ability: 5 / 2 • Class: None • Special Ability: Use as an enhancement or an Artifact. Return all Heroes in all Lands of Bondage to owners' territories. Capture of Heroes is prevented.


Thanks!

1. The Duplicates in Discard pile are protected from midwives ability. If that argument doesn't work for you then we have that last line says all copies other than the original that somehow make it through the other portions are immediately discarded. So they'd go right back into the discard pile.

2. If you had no copies of the duplicated captured character in territory, you'd get one back with the others being protected from the covenant. If you already have another copy, you get none.

If captured characters aren't characters then cards like I am Redemption don't work. Because if they aren't characters then they aren't able to be targeted as a hero even if it says captured heroes.

Hmmmm... never remembered that rule. Hmph I need to read the REG more.

Quote from: Redoubter on April 28, 2012, 04:42:15 PM

What does happen with Midwives (Wo)?  There is no "may" about it, and it doesn't say any number, it just says "all".  If that would cause duplicates, are those cards just protected from Midwives period?

Yes, this is a "hard" rule, so SAs do not overcome it.  The duplicates would be protected from Midwives and would NOT enter play.

Thank you!

So that means only things like what SirNobody posited could overcome the rule and trigger the fail-safe.  And in my second scenario, any captured heroes that would become duplicates would be protected from being returned.

Hard rule, got it.