Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Doesn't make sense in T2, where you can have multiples of each ls. There would be no well to tell if one had been rescued before

We can't make it not reset in hand, deck or discard.  All cards reset in those locations, and this is not a card that you can have a "per game" wording or ruling about, simply because that wording expands to all copies of that card.  This obviously would not work for a Lost Soul card.

So while it is CBN per the errata, that's about as far as that card can go without a straight-up ban.

how many lost souls (2 or 3 liner) can you have in a t2 deck? you could make it follow the same rule per card (rescue twice it counts as two) regardless of being shuffled

T2 isn't the only problem.  You can have 2-5 in a T2 deck, but still up to 3 in a T1 deck.

You say "regardless of being shuffled" but that violates all of the rules we have regarding how cards behave when the go to hand, deck, or discard.  You cannot even be sure it is the same copy when multiples are being used, and the only way to make it 'stick' when the card resets is to say "must be rescued twice per game" which, by definition in this game, means that refers to all of that card, not one specific card.  You can only use 1 Holy Grail regardless of the copies you have, but what happens when you rescue twice on a Lost Souls and another is put into play?  It just does not work.

yeah but if you rescued 1 once you could rescue the next one to appear or one that is in play one more time to count as two so they could tap 2 or 3 for you if there are more in play and you never get them until sog nj or something same stalling strats but less repetitive chasing the same rescue

i really want more people's opinion on this because even redoubter is saying straight up ban haha seems like he either wants it or hates it probably common in most cases which is where i'm trying to suggest an in between balanced ruling

I'm not a fan of Liner abuse, but it is what it is as Redoubter has said. While I somewhat agree with the spirit behind the suggestion, there's no way to avoid the complications that have been brought up.

The way I understand it is that kariusvega's suggestion is to make the 2-3 Liner a "Twice per game" ability similar to Holy Grail in that it doesn't reset in deck and and applies to all copies being able to collectively be rescued "Twice per game". I know you all probably already knew that, I'm just stating what I read for sake of clarity.

We can't make it not reset in hand, deck or discard.  All cards reset in those locations, and this is not a card that you can have a "per game" wording or ruling about, simply because that wording expands to all copies of that card.  This obviously would not work for a Lost Soul card.

I'm wondering what obvious game breaking ramifications would result by making this a "Twice per game" ability.

If the 2-3 Liner is 1 of the 7-13 LS in your deck, it's the same as before, except this time when he redraws it, it's still tapped. Defenses can still shuffle it to get it out of play in case their opponent has SoG + NJ, but when they redraw it, the previous rescue made by the other player didn't go to waste. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that currently the 2-3 Liner is the only way outside of Falling Away to effectively deny or retract a Lost Soul from being redeemed in a phase or turn after the rescue attempt took place.

If the 2-3 Liner is 2 of the 14-20 LS in your deck, its the same as before, except this time if one copy enters play and is half rescued then shuffled back into deck, the next copy that is drawn has one "Use" attributed to it just like Holy Grail would. Then, after the LS is rescued twice and the second copy is drawn, it's a dead card because it's already been rescued twice. In the end, there are still 14 rescues possible from all the lost souls in your deck. Most cases where you will have 2 in your deck are in T-2 when you'll be able to choose whether or not to rescue it in the first place.

If the 2-3 Liner is 3-5 of the 21-Idk how many LS in your deck, the only significant difference is that a 154 card deck can't tap 3 of them and reset them all continually. One other thing that would change is once the 2-3 Liner has been rescued twice, it makes the other 2-4 copies dead cards. If your opponent has 18-Idk how many non 2-3 Liner Lost Souls, it doesn't matter if 2-4 others are not able to be rescued. And, in order to make those 2-4 copies unable to be rescued, your opponent has to already be 2/5 on his way to winning. That's the worst I can see happening if it were changed.

So, in retrospect, the most significant changes would be to 50-99 card T-1 decks and 154+ card T-1 decks. In 50-99 card decks it would work as it already does except it won't have the often abused and perhaps OP ability to deny the Lost Soul for a rescue that took place in a previous phase/turn, an ability that has only otherwise been delegated to a dominant, and in a 154+ card deck all it would do is make <5% of your Lost Souls unable to be rescued by giving your opponent 40% of their win condition. 100-199 card T-1 decks are mostly nonviable to begin with, and in T-2 you have Rescuer's Choice which already makes many a Lost Soul useless.

I'm sorry if I missed something or explained any of this wrong. I just fail to see how changing the 2-3 Liner to "Twice per game" would make it so obviously OP that it is an utter impossibility.

I do get your point about tricky interactions with falling away, but we have that now as well. If I understand this correctly, when the 2-3 Liner is redeemed it goes to your Land of Redemption and counts as 2 Lost Souls. However, your land of Redemption is out of play, so the 2-3 Liner should reset. Then, if it is later Fallen Away, it should re-enter play now needing to be rescued twice again, not once. Either I'm missing something or everyone in the history of the game has been playing the 2-3 Liners wrong for 18 years.

I don't have a way to explain what happens if you Fall Away a 2-3 Liner with a "Twice per game" ability, but it would probably depend on how you interpret the last sentence from Falling Away,

Select any Redeemed Soul and return card to your Land of Bondage. Character is treated as a Lost Soul. Subtract the rescue from appropriate player's current score.

same way holy grail shuffles still one has one use after being used once same as jeph or amaziah one use per game etc. same rules different ruling here which is actually against what the card says even to the errata "must be rescued twice counts as two" that simple

Except it is just not the same as those cards.  "Using" a card a specific times per game is something that can be easily tracked across all copies of a card in a deck.  It will not work for rescues on a Lost Soul card.

In your explanation before that, you mention being able to have 'two tapped' at the same time, but that's also a problem with this.  As 'per game' abilities are across all copies of a card, if multiple copies are in play, they all have those 'two rescues' applied to them per the way that wording works; it could not play out as you describe.

The capabilities of existing wording in the game is insufficient to achieve the aim, short of restricting the card to one per deck.  Changing the rules for a single card introduces inconsistencies and confusion where they don't need to be.

I don't see any way this card is going to change.  Making it CBN was a great errata and fixed big issues with the cards and broken rulings.  There are not similarly-big issues requiring an errata here that break the game, and the errata being proposed leads to more problems than it solves.

This whole post is on a flawed premise, that liner is broken and bad for the game thus requiring some form of Errata. Liner is not broken. Liner cannot be a broken card powerlevel wise. No defensive card can be too powerful in the sense of completely warping the meta-game in the sense of TGT or Auto.