Cactus Game Design Message Boards

If I rescue with Samuel and my opponent blocks with TAS, choosing to use the ability of TAS, is the add to battle portion considered a play ability, thus it's negated by Samuel?

Play
A card is considered “played” if it meets these criteria:
● You play an enhancement by attempting to activate its special ability (or numbers in battle)
● You play a character or multicolor site by putting it in your territory or your side of the battle.
● You play any other card type by putting it face up on the playing surface from hand, deck, or discard pile due to your special ability or game action, except when you discard a card from hand.
Note: Play can be a special ability, but is more broadly a game action. A special ability is only considered a play ability when it contains the word play, and is not referring to the
Field of Play. Any other action or ability that results in a card being played is not a play ability, but is an example of a play game action. For example, "You may play an enhancement" is a play ability, while "You may band a Hero into battle from hand" is not a play ability, since it does not contain the word play, even though the character banded from hand is considered to have been played by the player who used the ability.

Samuel - Negate play abilities...

The Amalekite's Slave - If blocking, you may place this card in opponent's Land of Bondage to search your deck for a human Evil Character and add it to battle.

Quote from: REG>Glossary

Play
A card is considered “played” if it meets these criteria:
● You play an enhancement by attempting to activate its special ability (or numbers in battle)
● You play a character or multicolor site by putting it in your territory or your side of the battle.
● You play any other card type by putting it face up on the playing surface from hand, deck, or discard pile due to your special ability or game action, except when you discard a card from hand.
Note: Play can be a special ability, but is more broadly a game action. A special ability is only considered a play ability when it contains the word play, and is not referring to the Field of Play. Any other action or ability that results in a card being played is not a play ability, but is an example of a play game action. For example, "You may play an enhancement" is a play ability, while "You may band a Hero into battle from hand" is not a play ability, since it does not contain the word play, even though the character banded from hand is considered to have been played by the player who used the ability.

Samuel negates "play abilities", which by this definition only include special abilities with the word "play" in them.  Therefore, Samuel does not negate The Amalekite's Slave.

I agree with your responses.

The tricky part is that "add to battle" is undefined and mimics, sometimes even counts as, other abilities. For example, if add to battle is adding a character to a side of the battle that already contains one or more character it's considered a band ability. If it adds an Enhancement to battle it's considered a play ability. I'm just not sure if that carries over to adding the character to battle as well because of this part of the definition - "You play a character or multicolor site by putting it in your territory or your side of the battle."

That makes sense. Thank you.