Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Maybe this is dealt with in the REG or something, but I missed it.

Naomi, White 4/5, May band to a Ruth Hero.

Ruth, White 4/3, Negate Evil Characters

Selfish Kinsman, Brown 5/7, Negate Enhancements

Achan's Sin, Brown 1/1, Negate the last good card played this battle. Discard all cards in battle.

J deck RA, Naomi banded to Ruth 8/7 total. Block with Selfish Kinsman, 5/7. SK is negated and losing. Play Achan's Sin, which is not negated by SK. AS negates Ruth as the last good card played this battle. Since Ruth is negated, SK's ability activates, which negates AS. Sin AS is negated, Ruth is no longer negated, so SK's ability is negated again. This reactivates AS...

I see two possible solutions:

1) Although AS's ability is split into two sentences, both parts activate and Ruth (as well as everything else) is discarded before reactivating.

2) During the switching on/off of Ruth and SK, AS ability is considered permanently negated.

Neither one of these is satisfactory. What am I missing? (I suspect it's something really obvious and simple, but it's late and I'm tired.)

That might work, but that would mean any negated ability on a character wouldn't reactivate if the negation was negated.

There are two things at play here that may help with your infinite problem.

First, cards cannot indirectly negate themselves.  Your example gives a perfect reason for this rule.  For confirmation of this, look at the ruling of ending a banding chain with a FBTN character who negates the band, with the FBTN still active.  Normally, the cascade negate would negate the FBTN character as well, but then the band still happens, and you get circular events.

Second, no, characters cannot active later in battle if they were prevented.  This would be my ruling, BUT: There has been a lot of debate on this, and in fact I do not know that there was ever a consensus.  It is one of the open questions I am tracking, because you will find conflicting answers.

There are two things, both from Redoubter's post, that answer this question.

First, cards cannot indirectly negate themselves.

Second, characters cannot activate later in battle if they were prevented.

The first means that Achan's Sin cannot be negated by indirectly causing Selfish Kinsmen's ability to activate.  The second is actually incorrect for ongoing abilities; since they are ongoing, they are always trying to activate, even if they are prevented. 

Here is the chain of events:
1.  Achan's Sin activates, negating Ruth and discarding all characters in battle.
2.  Selfish Kinsmen is no longer negated, and since he has an ongoing ability, it is now active.
3.  Achan's Sin cannot indirectly negate itself, so all cards in battle are discarded, despite Selfish Kinsmen now being active.

The debate about character abilities doesn't really apply in this situation as the same thing happens either way, let's not confuse things with arguing it here.

I agree with those that said Achan's Sin still completes and discards all cards in battle.

True, but the original question only dealt with Kinsmen, Ruth, and Achan's Sin, not with the ability for the rescuer to play anything else.

I don't think he's saying that the issue isn't important, but rather it's not important to this specific discussion/topic. If I understand browarod correctly, he's just trying to keep on topic rather than starting a secondary discussion on something that can't be resolved until the elders speak up, anyway.

It's relevant if the owner of Naomi/Ruth wants to play Family Bond to negate Achan's Sin.  Otherwise, as browarod pointed out, it is true; both outcomes are the same (Achan's Sin happens).

Actually, while I want to know how the specific case works out, I'd really like to know the undergirding principle that makes it happen.

In the specific situation you mentioned, Achan's Sin remains un-negated because cards cannot indirectly negate themselves. The Kinsmen issue only matters if the rescuer has a negate they want to play, and as has been mentioned the issue isn't clear either way but the precedent is that characters do not activate if they were prevented when entering battle so Kinsmen would remain fizzled and the rescuer could play a negate to full effect.

Admittedly I have always had a hard time ruling these situations, but my understanding has always been this:

In order for an ability to re-activate, it had to have activated in the first place. Therefore if an ability activated, then was negated/interrupted, it can be re-activated by proper means later in the battle. However, if the ability was prevented, then it never activated, and therefore cannot be re-activated at any point in the battle.

If an Elder could confirm whether this is true, or if someone could point to specific examples of where this has been ruled differently, I'm sure we would all appreciate it. 

YMT, I would agree with you, but I know that cards that are ongoing and not characters have been ruled differently in the past.  It is a very fuzzy situation indeed, and is one of the unresolved rulings I am tracking.