I may be exaggerating, but not by much.
Therefore, I'm going to put together as much information as I can and then ask a few generic questions -- no specifics, just generic questions.
This may be a long post, but I'd like to try and be thorough, so bear with me. These will be numbered strictly for convenience.
MELE Rules wrote:
1 ) Action: Any activity in the game (card play, a corruption check caused by Lure of the Senses, etc.). Each action is not immediately resolved when it is declared. An opponent and yourself have the opportunity to declare other actions in response. Meeting active conditions and exhausting a play deck are not actions -- they are declared and resolve immediately.
2 ) Condition, Active: A prerequisite for an action actively made by a player. Typically this involves tapping a character, discarding an item, or having a character with a specific skill in play. Active conditions are declared and resolved with no time for a response by your opponent or yourself.
3 ) Chain of Effects: A series of actions declared in response to one another before any of them resolve. Actions in a chain of effects resolve in the reverse order from which they were declared (last in, first out).
The biggest question has caused the most debates:CRF, Active Conditions wrote: 4 ) An active condition must be in play or established when the action requiring it is declared. Active conditions serve as the price of an action. They are restrictions on the player invoking the action.
5 ) Annotation 5: If an action requires an entity to tap as a condition for the action's main effect, that entity must be untapped when the action is declared; else, the action may not be declared. Tap the entity at this point; this is considered synonymous with the action's declaration; i.e., it is not a separate action. When it comes time to resolve the action in its chain of effects, that entity must still be in play and tapped or the action is canceled.
6 ) Annotation 6: If an action requires an entity to be discarded as a condition for the action's main effect, that entity must be discarded when the action is declared; this is considered synonymous with the action's declaration; i.e., it is not a separate action.
7 ) Annotation 7: If any other active condition for an action does not exist when the action is resolved, the action has no effect; if the action was playing a card from your hand, it is discarded.
8 ) Annotation 8: An action that requires a target is considered to have the active condition that the target be in play when the action is declared and when it is resolved. An action may not be declared if its target is not in play. However, dice-rolling actions may always be targeted by other actions declared later in the same chain of effects.
A ) How can one tell whether any given sentence on a card is an action or an active condition?
As I understand it from 4 ), an active condition is something that must be done if an action specifies it. For example, cancelling an attack through concealment requires that you tap the Scout. The problem comes with numerous cards with the following phrasing "Playable on W. Do Action X. Do Action Y. Do Action Z." A lot of people maintain that X is an active condition for Y and Z, while others are saying that X is its own action. This varies depending on the card you're talking about (there's at least two cards where people are saying Z is the condition for X).
Also, many people have repeatedly stated that corruption checks are not active conditions for a card. Why not?
B ) A Target is an active condition for the play of a card according to 8 ). According to 5 ), if an action's main effect requires an entity to tap, the entity must tap when the action is declared.
The problem comes when a card targets an untapped entity and the entity must tap for the card's main effect. When the chain of effects resolves, the card must still have a valid target. Unfortunately, because the entity has been tapped before the card resolves, they are no longer a valid target for the card. How is this to be understood? Do cards only check the validity of a target on declaration?
C ) An even worse problem comes when a card targets an entity as an active condition for 8 ) and the entity must be discarded upon declaration for 6 ). When the card resolves, the target is definitely not in play and the active conditions cause themselves to fail. How is this to be understood?
D ) A strict reading of 3 ) would indicate that active conditions are not possible in a chain of effects because only actions may be declared. Is this the case?
In a special spot, I will put:
MELE Rules wrote: Declaring An ActionStating that an action is being played, though the actual effects of the action are not implemented until both players have had a chance to respond with the declaration of other actions. Each time you play a card, you are declaring an action.
This may get a little involuted, so bear with me:Balrog Rules wrote:If a card specifies that more than one action occurs when the card is itself resolved in a chain of effects, all of these actions are to be resolved in the card’s chain of effects uninterrupted and in the order listed on the card. No actions may be declared to occur between these multiple actions. The actions listed on the card are considered to have been declared in the reverse order as they are printed. As an exception, in one of the effects of a card is an attack, cards may be played that cancel the attack, cancel one of the strikes, or that otherwise are playable during the strike sequence.
Since the play of a card is defined as an action, then the action of a card (if any) is a separate action. If this action is included in the same chain of effects, then it is declared after the declaration of the play of the card. In other words, a card's action must resolve before the play of the card itself resolves. This is bizarre, but there is no coneivable way to say that a card's effect is declared before the play of a card is declared.
Is it possible that a card's actions (if any) are not declared until the play of the card has resolved? Looking at 1 ) and 3 ), I'm not sure.
It just seems to me that this whole idea of active conditions is very shaky ground. I'd like to see some definite general answers so that I can actually make a reasonable attempt to figure out any given card.
Going with what ICE meant is fairly murky area (and I think that's been the philosophy adopted in interpreting active conditions: ICE clearly meant X as an active condition, ICE did not mean Y as an active condition).
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