Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Hey guys, remember that negate was made as a combination of interrupt and prevent.  So Negate interrupts (suspends) an action but then prevents the ability before it can reactivate.   

Negate is no longer considered a combination of interrupt and prevent.  The REG seems to be outdated.

Hey guys, remember that negate was made as a combination of interrupt and prevent.  So Negate interrupts (suspends) an action but then prevents the ability before it can reactivate.   

You are correct that interrupt and prevent is being treated as negate, but it is NOT the same in reverse.  I do not know where you get that 'negate is the same as interrupt and prevent', the REG doesn't have that anywhere in it either.

ALL quotes on the negate special ability:
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• General Description: A negate ability takes a previously completed ability and undoes the effect of that ability.
• How to Play: If an ability is negated the effects of the ability are completely undone.  This is accomplished by doing the exact opposite of what the ability did in the first place.
• Special Conditions: Abilities that have not completed activation are not valid targets for a negate ability.
• Clarifications: Abilities that are worded “negate all special abilities” are actually a combination of a negate and a prevent ability, even if the ability includes an exception or is limited to all special abilities of a certain type. However, this is not true if “currently in battle” is in the ability.  Play this as “negate all [specified set of abilities] in play and prevent all [specified set of abilities] for remainder of battle.”

Nowhere is there any mention of treating it as an interrupt ability.  It is not one, it is a completely separate ability with its own description.

And based on these descriptions of negate and interrupt, interrupting a negate and not allowing it to reactivate results in the negated abilities never being negated, that is they happened.  Note the rules also state that you may not negate an ability that has not completed activation.  If the ability is undone, and then the negate is undone, then that means that the ability in actuality completed activation.

Here's what the REG says:

Negate

Negate stops and prevents a targeted special ability or card. The negate ability is played in the Field of Battle. It can undo another card already played unless the card explicitly states it cannot be negated. Negate is the same as ‘interrupt and prevent’ combined. A negate ability interrupts a special ability, and then prevents that special ability for the rest of the battle. (See Cannot be negated).

We have an ability that has been one thing, has always been one thing, but has somehow seemed to morph into something greater than it was ever meant to be. I don't think treating negate as something different than interrupt and prevent is the right way to go about this at all...

So a CBI ability can be Negated? That's wrong.

No, CBN can't be stopped before or after. Which makes no sense if negate doesn't include interrupt, but there you are. If you are pro-negate you can have your cake and eat it too.

Interrupt and negate are as different as A hamburger is from a cheeseburger. Negate just has a little something extra.

My question is this, why do we allow CBI abilities to stop negates if negate is separate form Interrupt + Prevent?  I understand that this is the way it is, but I would really like to know the elders' reasoning behind this.   

Okay, so how am I supposed to explain this to the kids I'm teaching how to play?

Interrupt is an ability that does A. Prevent is an ability that does B. Negate is an ability that does C and B. and even though Negate REALLY sounds like it does A and you can't tell the difference between A and C, it doesn't do A but rather C. What's the difference between A and C? Well A suspends the halted abilities while C doesn't. What effect does this difference have on gameplay as far as you can tell? None whatsoever.

Secondly:

Again, I ask for an explanation from the actual rules and the REG.  As Sir pointed out, the glossary is out-of-date, while the rulebook and definitions themselves are current.  By the rules, what I have stated is correct.

You say the Rulebook is current? So we should use that rather than the REG? Well, here's the quote from the Rulebook:

Negate: Negate stops and prevents a targeted special ability
or card. The negate ability is played in the Field of Battle. It
can undo another card already played unless the card explicitly
states it cannot be negated. Negate is the same as ‘interrupt
and prevent’ combined. Anegate ability interrupts a
special ability, and then prevents that special ability for the
rest of the battle. (See Cannot be negated).

Now, doesn't that sound familiar...

If you read my most, I stated that I recognize that they are separate.  My question for the Elders is why call it cannot be interrupted if it means 'cannot be interrupted or negated'

Because its not CBI and CBN
Once a CBI is played it can't be Int so the Int and prevent part of a negate won't every be able to "cut in" on the CBI ability.

The problem actually arrives with a CBP ability. Say you play a CBP battle winner and your op plays a negate last enhancement card or (INT and Prevent the last enhancement) card. As of now were playing that all of our CBP abilitys don't work if there negated but if they get a chance to reactivate as of now, they should. This is a problem in the rules that should be addressed or else I can see a lot of people trying to claim there CBP enchantment or character still works if an op plays a FBTN card after there CBP entered battle.

Ex: I play Council of Abigail my opponent responds with Midnight Attack. I then claim CoA will reactivate and still win the battle even after the negate has been played.

1. To Praeceps:  You missed both Sir's post and my quote where it was pointed out that the glossary of terms is not up to date.  You are quoting out-dated material.  Everything I have quoted is straight from the rulebook.  Please give me an argument from the rules in the REG.

2. To Wings, Jmbeers, and Ploarius: CBP, CBI, and CBN DO NOT MEAN that they just stop P, I, and N.

CBP means that something cannot be stopped by a card that came before it.  A card that comes after can stop it, regardless of the type.

CBI means that something cannot be stopped by a card that came after it.  A card that came before it can stop it, regardless of the type.  You are getting hung up on the "cannot be interrupted", when the REG clearly states that that means it cannot be interrupted or negated.  It is right there in the How To Play in the REG, what is the problem?

CBN means that it cannot be stopped by any card, before or after.  Does not matter if it is prevent, interrupt, or negate.  Just because it says "cannot be negated" doesn't mean that a card can prevent or interrupt it.

The terms CBP, CBI, and CBN do not refer to the abilities they stop.  Rather, they clarify when the cards can be stopped (after, before, and never, respectively).



PLEASE read my full posts and all quotes.  The quotes from the REG make it very clear that they are distinct abilities, and that CBI does stop negate.  It is specified.  That is not the debate here.

Interrupt and negate are separate abilities completely.  Negate does not mean interrupt and prevent, and no, that is not a change of the rules.

Quote from: Redoubter on March 18, 2012, 08:18:14 AM

1. To Praeceps:  You missed both Sir's post and my quote where it was pointed out that the glossary of terms is not up to date.  You are quoting out-dated material.  Everything I have quoted is straight from the rulebook.  Please give me an argument from the rules in the REG.

You said that the REG's glossary is out of date. You said that the rulebook is what I should use as that is current. Where do you think I pulled my definition? The RULEBOOK. And you still haven't told me why negate has suddenly become a seperate ability. It has ALWAYS been Interrupt and Prevent, but now it seamingly means something else?

Your quote is from the Glossary of Terms, which is out of date.  Sir confirmed this for you.  Go to the actual rules for Instant Abilities -> Negate, and you will see everything I have quoted.  Nowhere in there does it define negate as interrupt and prevent.  Rather, it is a separate ability that undoes another ability that has completely activated.

Hey,

Except Malay is trying to say Negate does not mean interrupt and prevent. If it's a completely distinct ability, than a CBI ability will have no bearing on a negate, only an interrupt. That is an enormous game change that can't be implemented without a major announcement.

You're trying to apply non-Redemption logic to Redemption.  It would be nice if we could do that, but it doesn't work that way (and hasn't for a long time).  The ability entry for CBI says it stops a negate, so it stops a negate.  There's no change to gameplay.  The only change is in how you explain to newer players why CBI stops negate.  The angel wars insert uses the "it stops cards played after" explanation, that still works.

I used an "interrupt effect" explanation in the early drafts of REG 2.0 that got dropped at some point.  The explanation was that "interrupt effects" are abilities that can use special initiative - i.e. interrupt and negate abilities.  And CBI stops interrupt effects.

To help with word economy Rob and the other Elders decided that negate would mean a combination of interrupt and prevent so that they would only have to print the cannot be negated part on the cards.

This makes me wonder how long you've been playing the game.  The "interrupt + prevent = negate" ruling is REALLY old.  It long predates the existence of elders (most of the current elders weren't even playing at the time), it predates word economy being an issue, and it predates this message board (and the message board we used before this one).

The original ruling was that "interrupt + prevent = negate."  And was used to argue that the "interrupt and prevent" on ehud's dagger had the same result as "negate" on Foolish Advice.  The fact that interrupt and prevent has the same result as negate is as true today as it was in 1999.  But because the original ruling used symbols rather than words it was interpreted in some different ways, was poorly expressed over the years, and eventually morphed into "negate means interrupt and prevent."

There has been a change from that, so that negate doesn't mean interrupt + prevent anymore.   However the playerbase has not been notified of this change.  What we are taking isssue with are two-fold.

1) Why did the Elders change this?  We really can't see a need to implement such a massive rule change. 

2) Why hasn't the player-base been notified of this?  For years a lot of us have been playing negate as interrupt + prevent, becasue that's what the glossary of terms says.

It's not a massive rule change.  It doesn't change how any situation in the game is played.  It's just a change in how the game is explained.  It's in the REG 2.0, so if you read that I hope you would have figured it out.  We didn't make a point of explicitly notifying the playerbase, because it has no net change on how the game is played.  The "change" was made because the ruling had drifted far enough from it's original intent to be causing problems, so we pulled it back to it's original intent.

Tschow,

Tim "Sir Nobody" Maly

Quote

because it has no net change on how the game is played

So you're retracting your assertion that negation and interruption behave differently when they're interrupted or negated?

His entire post was very well worded and I think explained the situation very well.  You cherry-picked one portion of one statement out-of-context to try and make it say something else.  He said that the ruling was originally that interrupt and prevent equals negate, but not the other way around.  However, this got distorted through the boards, and was expressed in the original form in REG 2.0.

I don't see the confusion or the problem, or how his post changed his position on this issue.