Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Here we go again...

If you honestly believe that you should be able to capture any number of heroes with Unholy Writ by the end of battle then please make an argument. If you, like myself, believe that it's pretty obvious it's meant to capture one, be discarded and be done with, please stop.

did you like, miss the last 4 pages or something?

Did you like, miss everything Tim has said?

He has already explained it like 4 different ways.

it is not a 'cost: effect' card so there is no 'fulfilling'. as worded, you can spam it during the battle phase.

I am assuming then that this is EXACTLY how you have been playing it for all these years?  Just capturing as many heros in battle as you want and then d/c ing it after use?  If you can tell me that that is how you have been playing it then you have a reason to keep jawwing about this, but you would be in the extreme minority in how this card has been played.  The rest of us have been using it to capture a single hero in battle and then d/c ing it after use.

The only new revelation here is that if the SA on UW is not negated, then "surprise, surprise" it can still be used within the same phase (just like everything else, enhancements, characters etc.)  Just because it is d/c'ed before it captures does not open it up to an endless feedback loop of capturing.

That I can understand, but the idea that I can manually trigger it after it has been discarded makes no sense to me. However, as Crustpope implied, I am not too bright for not understanding this.

Ever d/c and enhancement yet still use its SA?  Since you are a "bright" fella I will asume that you have and you understand that discarding a card and negating its SA are two different things.  That is all I am saying and that does not require tremendous leapsof logic.

Ever d/c and enhancement yet still use its SA?  Since you are a "bright" fella I will asume that you have and you understand that discarding a card and negating its SA are two different things.  That is all I am saying and that does not require tremendous leapsof logic.

I would argue that it does. Discarding cards that have an ongoing effect is one thing, but discarding a card that has not been triggered yet is different. I'm not sure why that seems like such a stretch of intelligence.

Perhaps I have a solution for this conundrum   We would all agree about the following situation:

Player 1 plays a GE to win a battle.  Player 2 plays an EE to interrupt the battle and discard the hero.  The GE then tries to activate, but can't because there is no hero for it to activate on.  Thus for the card to work, it needs both an available target, and the proper "foundation" (in this case a character of matching brigade).

So what if we said that for an artifact/curse/covenant to work, it also needs both an available target and the proper "foundation" (in this case the artifact pile or other designated location like a temple).  Therefore, in a situation with an artifact that isn't continuously active, if it is no longer on that "foundation", then it can't activate anymore.

There is a big difference between an enhancement having been interrupted and trying to re-activate after the interrupt and an artifact that has activated and its special ability is still in effect because it hasn't been interrupted or negated, just the card was discarded.

I don't think that there is really a conundrum here. Nothing is broken. Just people discussing how an effect with a manual trigger can still be active waiting for the manual trigger when the card that activated it has been discarded. If this needs to be changed, there would be a lot of other cases where an effect is still active but its card has been discarded that would have to change too. I just don't see a problem here.

Mike

Is this a universal ruling that I have been getting wrong all this time?

I guess so.  This is what the REG has to say:

Cards with ongoing abilities that are not negated continue until the end of the phase in which they are discarded or removed from battle (in the case of special abilities on characters and enhancements, unless specified otherwise), or discarded or removed from play (in the case of sites, artifacts, fortresses, lost souls, placed cards, etc…).

If my Covenant of Noah is discarded, I can still negate an EE later in battle?

Yes, if it was active as an Artifact.  This probably hasn't come up very often, if ever, since almost every card that can discard an Artifact also negates it.

.  Writ is an instant ability.  Using it many times does not change that fact.

At last a smart person agrees with me. I feel better already (even if I'm still wrong).

I wish. 

I (and I assume we) just don't understand how Writ fits into the ongoing category.  It may be delayed/dynamic in the fact it can be used out of prep phase, but that doesn't make it an ongoing ability.

Hey,

Under instant abilities it defines them as: "Instant abilities complete before another ability can be inserted."  That definition does not fit Unholy Writ so Unholy Writ must not be an instant ability.  Since the only options are instant abilities and ongoing abilities (that is the case although it wouldn't surprise me if that's not spelled out anywhere) Unholy Writ must be an ongoing ability.

As far as where Unholy Writ fits in the list of ongoing abilities, the list is broken down into two parts "lasting effects" and "triggered effects."  A triggered effect is explained as "if X happens, then do Y."  Which is what Unholy Writ does: X = I choose to use it, Y = Capture a human hero in battle.  It would then fit into the sub category of "delayed effects" under triggered effects.

Any player moving from playing by the rules to mastering the rules should at some point have trouble with Unholy Writ.  Unholy Writ is worded like an instantaneous ability (as worded on the card).  If you look at the play as it hopefully becomes easier to understand that it's an ongoing ability.  If you look at the play as closer you probably start to wonder how we got to the play as from the original wording.  It comes down to the idea of manually triggered abilities (which unfortunately the REG doesn't link you to from Unholy Writ and even if it did the definition of manually triggered abilities isn't all that helpful).

Manually triggered abilities are (generally) instantaneous abilities that do their thing when you choose for them to rather than when they are activated.  This allows two things: (1) it allows your preparation phase (and to a lesser extent your discard phase) to be fluid rather than rigid.  If there weren't manually triggered abilities fortresses like Kingdoms (putting characters in it) would have to be the first thing you do during your preparation phase.  It would be a little bit like going back to the days where we had a separate artifact activation phase, site maintenance phase, and whatever else we had.  The new preparation phase where players can do things in whatever order they like is much better in my mind and we need manually triggered abilities to be able to do that.  And (2) it allows us to make cards that are not played in battle to have an instantaneous effect on battle (Herod's Dungeon, The Silver Trumpets, Unholy Writ, Covenant with Noah, etc).  This adds a new dimension to battle making them all the more fun (well, perhaps the funness of it is debatable, but it definitely makes battles potentially more interesting).

When we first started using the idea of Manually triggered abilities I think we had a pretty good definition of how you identify them.  When I get time I'll look and see if I can find it somewhere.

Tschow,

Tim "Sir Nobody" Maly

If I activate UW, I don't have to use it. I can't use it if its not face up. I shouldn't be able to use it in the discard pile. If I can something is wrong with that rule.

I can't use Destruction of Nehustion on UW after my oponent used it and it is in the Discard pile.

I can't use it if its not face up.

Because it was not activated.

I shouldn't be able to use it in the discard pile.

You should if it was only discarded and not degated

I can't use Destruction of Nehustion on UW after my oponent used it and it is in the Discard pile.

 

That would be true since DoN can only target cards in play.