Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Can Gates of Hell add a demon from hand to battle?  I've always seen it played this way, but abilities default to play, and I don't think Gates of Hell is a band ability (or at least won't be if no EC is in battle, which is when the "add to battle" clause is usually used), so it appears it can't add a demon from hand to battle unless an EC is in battle.  Thoughts?

"At any time, you may discard the bottom card of deck. If it is an orange demon or a Lost Soul, place it in your territory instead. You may discard this card to add your demon to the battle."

I believe that it would default to play, because it is an add-to-battle, which is not defined the same as a band.  Band can target hand or play by default, but add-to-battle must specify if the card is out of play (like with certain Magicians, who refer to the actual card you put in hand off their ability).  So you should not be able to put a demon from hand into battle off of GoH.

I agree with everything you said.  But I have seen it often used to add a demon from hand to battle.  So maybe an elder could post on this to confirm our reasoning, and then we can have that to point to in the future when someone tries to add a demon to battle from hand.

For some reason, I thought we had given "add to battle" its own entry in the REG, but I guess not. I personally think that any ability that adds characters to battle should be able to target characters in your hand (unless otherwise specified) to be consistent with band and choose opponent abilities. This should definitely be formalized one way or the other though, as I have often used Gates to add from hand as I thought that was already the case.

I don't think there would be a problem with changing the ruling, but there have been a lot of arguments in the past about add to battle vs band, as add to battle is not necessarily a band, even though it sometimes is...the flux leads to confusing rulings.  Like this one, where band specifically allows adding from hand, while add to battle (which is not banding) would have to default to play unless it has its own entry stating otherwise.  Unless we consider adding to battle where there is already a character as a band...in which case it SHOULD be allowed, but only under that particular circumstance.

Clarification of these abilities can do nothing but help, from what I've seen