Draft of Digest #122

[miguel]

I will be posting a draft of each upcoming Digest here on the NetRep board from now on for comments and to see if something should be discussed in more detail.

1)
Regarding Blind to the West and Ire of the East, why do we play them to cancel cards played by Fallen-wizard player, not played by FW (avatar) himself? Card texts say FW, not player.
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I don't think characters really play cards, the players do. For example, it's common during a game to say "Ioreth plays Marvels Told" but that's not really accurate. The player plays MT and Ioreth is tapped as the active condition of the card. Therefore Ire/Blind cancel cards played by a FW player.


2 a)
Is it possible to play Army of the Dead with Old Road (from Edhellond) after playing Paths of the Dead on a squatting Aragorn?
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The conclusion I came to is that playing Army of the Dead is in fact not an influence attempt, but a special case. I believe Old Road sets up an influence attempt, and therefore it cannot be used to play Army of the Dead.

2 b)
Does the play of Army of the Dead trigger a corruption check from Lure of Power?
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Based on the above, no.


3 a)
Is replacing the site with Farmer Maggot considered movement, since you are replacing a site card with a different site card à la Great Road/Iron Road?
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It's considered movement without a movement/hazard phase, yes.

3 b)
If it is movement, would using Farmer Maggot to take your company to a site in Arthedain trigger an attack from Scorba Ahunt (if Doors of Night is in play)? Scorba Ahunt makes mention of moving in a given region, but do you have to actually be using region movement?
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For Scorba Ahunt to attack, you don't need to be using region movement, but the company must have at least one of the affected regions by name in its site path (with starter movement the regions of old and new sites). When 'teleporting' with Farmer Maggot, there is no move/haz phase and therefore in my opinion no site path either. So the company is safe from the nasty dragon.


4)
Regarding the card Burglary: Presumably, the site in question must currently have an automatic attack, correct? Is this card playable during any phase à la Chance Meeting or only during the site phase à la Old Road?
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Burglary is playable only when you would face a site's automatic-attack. Therefore the site must have an AA and Burglary can only be played during the site phase.


5)
I'm not sure if this one was ever clarified, but I know there's been some debate about it: Since Motionless Among the Slain says "playable on an attack" with no reference to defending against the attack or "an attack against your company", you can play this as the attacker in CvCC, correct?
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Only the defender may play Motionless Among the Slain.


6 a)
If I play The Great Hunt and have the ally Regiment of Black Crows in the company, can I cancel an attack with the ally’s gametext?
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You can use the Crows and the creature will go to owner's hand.

6 b)
What about Ahunt Dragons, then? Are they returned to owner's hand when RoBC is used to cancel the attack?
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Yes.


7)
If I play an item at an under-deeps site I may immediately play a second item. When may Troll-purse be revealed and what happens then?
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You play item #1, Troll Purse gets revealed and it triggers, making you face the auto-attacks again in the next chain of effects. However, before that happens, you may play item #2 because you need to do that immediately. Should you choose to do so, Purse gets triggered again, making you face the attacks twice.

You have the floor.

[miguel]

The terms "influence check" and "influence attempt" are not synonymous. In general any card that modifies an attempt will affect whatever dice-roll is made in that attempt. A card that affects a check or roll will only modify checks or rolls of the appropriate type.

Note this ruling overturns COE 119

[marcos]

i just posted a couple of things that i would like to be considered for next diggest.

[miguel]

Nice idea but we don't really move that fast. They might make it to the next, next digest.

[marcos]

Nice idea but we don't really move that fast. They might make it to the next, next digest.

ok, other than that, i think this draft is pretty clear and imo there is nothing to be discussed in detail

[miguel]

Stickied this for further feedback because I will post the draft for CoE members to view (as I agreed to do elsewhere) at the end of this week, with hopes of actually publishing the new digest next week.

[Sauron]

How did you come up with the amry of the dead ruling?

[miguel]

Thanks for asking.

In my opinion Army of the Dead does not follow the normal guidelines for playing a faction.

To play a faction, tap one character in the company to make an influence attempt.

There is no influence attempt to be made, no number to roll against, the faction is merely played. Therefore it is a special case. I suspect the lack of a possible influence attempt might also be the reason for Army's CRF entry.

Card Erratum: Add "May not be influenced by an opponent."

Since there's no way to set up an influence attempt for AotD, I don't think one would be able to play it using Old Road because IMO it does require one.

Allows a character at a Haven [H] to attempt to bring a faction into play. The length of the site path from this Haven to the site at which the faction can be played must be two or less (this must be verified by an available site card). The influence check for this attempt is modified by -1 and is not modified by the influencing character's direct influence.

In my view "attempt to play" = "make an influence attempt".

On top of this, I found nothing anywhere supporting the idea of playing AotD this way, except in the Play and Examples file Joe put together.

[Sauron]

Thanks for asking.

In my opinion Army of the Dead does not follow the normal guidelines for playing a faction.

To play a faction, tap one character in the company to make an influence attempt.

There is no influence attempt to be made, no number to roll against, the faction is merely played. Therefore it is a special case. I suspect the lack of a possible influence attempt might also be the reason for Army's CRF entry.

Card Erratum: Add "May not be influenced by an opponent."

Since there's no way to set up an influence attempt for AotD, I don't think one would be able to play it using Old Road because IMO it does require one.

Allows a character at a Haven [H] to attempt to bring a faction into play. The length of the site path from this Haven to the site at which the faction can be played must be two or less (this must be verified by an available site card). The influence check for this attempt is modified by -1 and is not modified by the influencing character's direct influence.

In my view "attempt to play" = "make an influence attempt".

On top of this, I found nothing anywhere supporting the idea of playing AotD this way, except in the Play and Examples file Joe put together.

When do you play old road?

[miguel]

Site phase. Even if Old Road was allowed outside it, I'd still argue that "attempt to play" = "make an influence attempt" would make the trick void.

[Sauron]

Site phase. Even if Old Road was allowed outside it, I'd still argue that "attempt to play" = "make an influence attempt" would make the trick void.

Well if was played during org phase or something, then I could argue attempt to play means, that you could do it if you made it to the site phase. But since it's during the site phase, hmm.

I'll need to think about this a few.

[miguel]

It's really no trouble if you (or anyone else here) think this should be discussed in more detail, I'd be happy to remove it from this digest and open a new thread for it. For now I'll just reiterate my key points:

(i) Army of the Dead does not follow the normal rules for playing a faction, which entail an influence attempt. Instead, the conditions for playing AotD are outlined in its card text.

(ii) Old Road sets up an influence attempt, therefore it is not possible to play AotD with it.

[Shapeshifter]

Unique. Playable at Vale of Erech. May only be played by Aragorn II on the same turn he plays Paths of the Dead. May not be influenced by an opponent.

Not that I think it works this way, but I'll throw in this thought anyway:

Army o.t. Dead is playable by Aragorn only. Could this mean that Aragorn makes an influence attempt (without influence check) but it is always/automatically successful? On the card it doesn't say that an influence attempt is not needed (as one would normally expect to make such an attempt when playing a faction).

[Wacho]

Hi guys,

It's been a while since I've been in the loop, and I'll probably need to brush up on some stuff, but I'll put in a couple thoughts.

I don't see why Old Road couldn't be used to play Army of the dead. Old Road says "allows a character at a Haven to attempt to bring a faction into play" the Army is a faction, granted a special one, but it follows much of the same rules as any other faction (i.e. site phase, tap a character, etc.) The only read difference is that only Aragorn can play them and there is no influence check necessary.

Influence attempts and influence checks are not synonymous. This was hashed out a while back. If there is a reason to revisit that ruling I suppose we can, but I was the one that investigated that and I'm pretty certain there isn't anything left unexplored there.

Also the Old Road/Army of the Dead trick has been around for a long time. I'd bet this has been answered before, possibly even by ICE but I haven't checked the digests.

Everything else looks fine, except maybe 7. I'm not sure of the timing, but it's probably ok.

[miguel]

Ok, I will remove 2 a,b) and 7) for a more detailed discussion. I am not really happy with the wording of 7) and find the whole situation trickier than I initially thought.