The Battle Is Joined

[John Constantine 967]

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/11/6/the-battle-is-joined/

 

Edited November 6, 2015 by John Constantine

[Bullroarer Took 996]

This quest is a force ten beating in solo.  I'm going through my second game and there is no way I'm not going to threat out.  Easily the hardest quest of the cycle including the box.  Glaurung should be pleased. 

 

Question:  Lets I have a Ranger with Winged Foot and Quick Ear.  I exhaust the ranger to quest and call enemy.  A right bad @$$ comes out.  Can I ready with Winged Foot and then exhaust for Quick Ear?

[Glowwyrm 98]

I don't see why not, since they're both responses and you're triggering them off of the same response.

[John Constantine 967]

Yeah, I would rule it out as "yes", because both responses happen simultaniously, and when that happens - you decide the order.

[Gizlivadi 1,089]

Cool idea!

[gandalfDK 262]

No not possible, I would say. You cancel the card, so it won't 'reveal' anymore, hence Wingfoot doesn't work.

[GrandSpleen 1,756]

They talked about this question in the most recent Cardboard of the Rings podcast too.

 

Anybody remember the ruling about damage cancellation?  Caleb wrote something like you don't put a point of damage on the character, then remove it.  You just cancel it, so from a mechanics standpoint it never happened.

 

Similarly, Quick Ear 'cancels' the enemy card.  You don't reveal it and then unreveal it.  Treat it like it never happened... which means no Wingfoot.

Edited November 6, 2015 by GrandSpleen

[soullos 147]

I don't see why not. Choose Wingfoot first and once you've satisfied the conditions for the response, use Quick Ears response. Before Quick Ears is even on the table, Wingfoot has already been satisfied. There's no take backs. That's my opinion.

 

It would be nice if we had a Stack like Magic dictating the order of things so there's less confusion about these things. Anyone tried e-mailing Caleb and Matt about this?

[Bullroarer Took 996]

So you can have either ears or feet, not both.    Or can you?

 

Here are the texts on the cards:

 

Wingfoot:  "Attach to a Ranger hero. Response: After attached hero commits to a quest, name enemy, location, or treachery. If a card of the named type is revealed during this quest phase, ready attached hero."

 

Quick Ear:  "Response: Exhaust a Dúnedain or Ranger hero to cancel an enemy card just revealed from the encounter deck. Then, shuffle it back into the encounter deck and reveal an additional encounter card."

 

 

Quick Ear does say "JUST REVEALED".  So the card does have to be revealed before you can cancel it.  Therefore, Wingfoot has a chance to respond in my opinion.

Edited November 6, 2015 by Bullroarer Took

[GrandSpleen 1,756]

For reference, here is the ruling I was referring to earlier.  Perhaps my interpretation is reaching a bit.  Quick Ear says "cancel an enemy card" and not "cancel the effects of an enemy card" (since you're getting rid of the whole card and not just its effects), which is something I do not think we have seen before.  So, not sure how this would interact with Wingfoot, and whether the card is still considered to have been revealed or not.  But here is the ruling:

 

"When a player uses a Response to cancel an effect, the result is that the canceled effect never resolves. For example, when a player uses A Test of Will to cancel the ‘when revealed’ effects of The Necromancer’s Reach, the players do not deal 1 damage to each character in play and then remove 1 damage from each character in play. Instead, no damage is dealt.
Similarly, if you use the Response effect on Raven-winged Helm to cancel the damage just dealt to Erkenbrand after triggering his Response effect, you do not place 1 damage on Erkenbrand and then remove it. Instead, the damage is not dealt at all. In which case, his cost has not been paid and you cannot resolve his effect.
Visually, it looks like this:
Damage is dealt by effect ——> Response effect cancels damage dealt ——> No damage is actually dealt
Cheers,
Caleb"

[NathanH 350]

I believe it has previously been ruled that Wingfoot on a Tireless Ranger Eleanor can ready her before exhausting her to cancel a treachery, so I see no reason why this case should be any different.

 

The ruling on Erkenbrand is arrant nonsense and should be ignored.

 

Edit: Well, perhaps I am too harsh. But we don't like the ruling and would prefer the card to be written properly (via "if damage was dealt to Erkenbrand by this effect, cancel the shadow card").

Edited November 7, 2015 by NathanH

[soullos 147]

If you trigger Wingfoot first and then Quick Ears I think it should be legal. Wingfoot has already resolved and I don't see how Quick Ears would retcon when cancelling the enemy. If that's the case, wouldn't Quick Ears retcon itself since it cancelled the response it triggered off of initially?

[Ryodu 16]

I believe it has previously been ruled that Wingfoot on a Tireless Ranger Eleanor can ready her before exhausting her to cancel a treachery, so I see no reason why this case should be any different.

 

The ruling on Erkenbrand is arrant nonsense and should be ignored.

 

Edit: Well, perhaps I am too harsh. But we don't like the ruling and would prefer the card to be written properly (via "if damage was dealt to Erkenbrand by this effect, cancel the shadow card").

Caleb has said before, and I can see this being the case, that a lot of times the way the card is written seems pretty straight-forward. So I can see how one could argue that the reason Erkenbrand and Raven-Winged helm wouldn't work can be found on the card without having to ask the designer for a ruling, but I could see the other side as well. It's tough trying to keep everything perfectly worded

 

Also, I knew when I first saw the Helm that it had to be too good to be true lol.

[GrandSpleen 1,756]

I believe it has previously been ruled that Wingfoot on a Tireless Ranger Eleanor can ready her before exhausting her to cancel a treachery, so I see no reason why this case should be any different.

 

 

 

Eleanor cancels "when revealed" effects and Quick Ear cancels the "card."  That seems like a massive difference in wording to me.

[GrandSpleen 1,756]

I went ahead and submitted this question to Caleb finally.  His reply is below, followed by the question that I submitted:

 

Caleb wrote:
"When a player card, such as The Door is Closed or Quick Ears, cancels an encounter card, play should proceed as if the canceled card were never revealed. That means if you cancel a Sorcery card with The Door is Closed, Thaurdir’s ability will not trigger. It also means that if you cancel an enemy card with Quick Ears, Wingfoot cannot trigger off of that enemy. 

Cheers,
Caleb"

 

My question was:

"Hi, Recently there have been a couple of Lore events that cancel cards, and they have some differences in wording compared to other cards. I'm adding emphasis below: The Door is Closed says "After an encounter card is revealed from the encounter deck, cancel ITS EFFECTS..." Quick Ears says "Exhaust a Dúnedain or Ranger hero to CANCEL AN ENEMY CARD JUST REVEALED from the encounter deck..." What gets canceled with these? Quick Ears has you cancel the "enemy card." If you play Quick Ears, can you still trigger the Response on Wingfoot (which requires an enemy to have been revealed, if you chose enemy)? Same question for The Door is Closed. This might interact with a previous ruling about canceling damage that was "just dealt" (previously ruled that if damage is canceled you can't trigger a response that keys off of damage being dealt). How about in a case like this: in The Battle of Carn Dum, Thaurdir has some nasty effects if a Sorcery-traited treachery card is revealed. If you use The Door is Closed, will they still occur? Or if you have a Goblin Archer from Khazad-dum in the staging area (deal 1 damage when an enemy is revealed), but you use Quick Ears? Sorry for the many examples, but thank you very much for your help!"

[Bullroarer Took 996]

Thanks for that.

 

Flavor fail on the art btw.  (Did I already say that?)

[danpoage 707]

I went ahead and submitted this question to Caleb finally.  His reply is below, followed by the question that I submitted:

 

Caleb wrote:

"When a player card, such as The Door is Closed or Quick Ears, cancels an encounter card, play should proceed as if the canceled card were never revealed. That means if you cancel a Sorcery card with The Door is Closed, Thaurdir’s ability will not trigger. It also means that if you cancel an enemy card with Quick Ears, Wingfoot cannot trigger off of that enemy. 

Cheers,

Caleb"

 

My question was:

"Hi, Recently there have been a couple of Lore events that cancel cards, and they have some differences in wording compared to other cards. I'm adding emphasis below: The Door is Closed says "After an encounter card is revealed from the encounter deck, cancel ITS EFFECTS..." Quick Ears says "Exhaust a Dúnedain or Ranger hero to CANCEL AN ENEMY CARD JUST REVEALED from the encounter deck..." What gets canceled with these? Quick Ears has you cancel the "enemy card." If you play Quick Ears, can you still trigger the Response on Wingfoot (which requires an enemy to have been revealed, if you chose enemy)? Same question for The Door is Closed. This might interact with a previous ruling about canceling damage that was "just dealt" (previously ruled that if damage is canceled you can't trigger a response that keys off of damage being dealt). How about in a case like this: in The Battle of Carn Dum, Thaurdir has some nasty effects if a Sorcery-traited treachery card is revealed. If you use The Door is Closed, will they still occur? Or if you have a Goblin Archer from Khazad-dum in the staging area (deal 1 damage when an enemy is revealed), but you use Quick Ears? Sorry for the many examples, but thank you very much for your help!"

This doesn't answer the question to my satisfaction, because both responses (Wingfoot and Quick Ears) have the same trigger. So it seems like I should be able to use the Wingfoot response to ready the hero, THEN play Quick Ears. For that matter, I should be able to respond with Wingfoot and then exhaust some other character to pay for Quick Ears (to still benefit from the enemy for purposes of Wingfoot). They are both responses to the enemy being revealed, I am just choosing to use one before the other. I understand that Quick Ears makes it so that the enemy was never revealed, but that it not relevant when resolving the Wingfoot response because it (Quick Ears) hasn't happened yet. Surely cancellation does not also perform time travel to negate a previous response which as already resolved? Response resolution in this game becomes less intuitive to me all the time.

 

Just to clarify, the readying from Wingfoot is not even a response - it is actually a passive that is constantly looking for an enemy to be revealed. The response on Wingfoot is the attached character committing to a quest. This then creates a passive effect which is checking for an enemy to be revealed. The FAQ states that passive effects happen before anything else (other than forced) so it definitely seems like you could wait for this passive effect to ready your Wingfoot-ed hero and then pay the cost for Quick Ears (which is itself a response). With two effects that have the same timing, the first player has always been able to choose the order - I don't see why this should be any different.

Edited November 17, 2015 by danpoage

[koriakin97 23]

But when revealed effects are also resolved before responses, so strength of will wouldn't cancel them before they happen. So it seems that cancellation does some time travel

[cmabr002 292]

 

I went ahead and submitted this question to Caleb finally.  His reply is below, followed by the question that I submitted:

 

Caleb wrote:

"When a player card, such as The Door is Closed or Quick Ears, cancels an encounter card, play should proceed as if the canceled card were never revealed. That means if you cancel a Sorcery card with The Door is Closed, Thaurdir’s ability will not trigger. It also means that if you cancel an enemy card with Quick Ears, Wingfoot cannot trigger off of that enemy. 

Cheers,

Caleb"

 

My question was:

"Hi, Recently there have been a couple of Lore events that cancel cards, and they have some differences in wording compared to other cards. I'm adding emphasis below: The Door is Closed says "After an encounter card is revealed from the encounter deck, cancel ITS EFFECTS..." Quick Ears says "Exhaust a Dúnedain or Ranger hero to CANCEL AN ENEMY CARD JUST REVEALED from the encounter deck..." What gets canceled with these? Quick Ears has you cancel the "enemy card." If you play Quick Ears, can you still trigger the Response on Wingfoot (which requires an enemy to have been revealed, if you chose enemy)? Same question for The Door is Closed. This might interact with a previous ruling about canceling damage that was "just dealt" (previously ruled that if damage is canceled you can't trigger a response that keys off of damage being dealt). How about in a case like this: in The Battle of Carn Dum, Thaurdir has some nasty effects if a Sorcery-traited treachery card is revealed. If you use The Door is Closed, will they still occur? Or if you have a Goblin Archer from Khazad-dum in the staging area (deal 1 damage when an enemy is revealed), but you use Quick Ears? Sorry for the many examples, but thank you very much for your help!"

 

Surely cancellation does not also perform time travel to negate a previous response which as already resolved?

 

 

I believe this is where you are misunderstanding.  It does indeed perform time travel so I don't know why it wouldn't negate any passive, forced effects, or responses that could have triggered as a result of the event if it were not cancelled.  This is consistent with other rulings, I think.

 

1.  If you aren't allowed to time travel, then cancelling one point of damage that was dealt to a character would not "revive" it if were to cause the character to be defeated.  They have ruled that you in effect negate the damage as if it never happened.

 

2.  If you aren't allowed to time travel, then cancelling treacheries with A Test of Will would do very little if their effect was first applied. 

 

I am sure there are a number of other examples of this as well.  However, perhaps there are examples of the opposing view point (not sure).  I do think that Caleb's ruling could cause some issues though.  Say you have a card eventually that allows you to trigger an effect when a character is dealt damage.  Let's say this effect allows you to search your deck, then shuffle, and that you already knew the top 5 cards of your deck (due to Imladris or something).  Then you play Gondorian Discipline to cancel that damage.  Well now, in order to roll everything back you have to find those same 5 cards or whatever and place them back on top of your deck to negate the first card you played.  While my example is possible to revert, I am sure there are other situations that would cause you to not know how to legally resolve the circumstance.

Edited November 17, 2015 by cmabr002

[soullos 147]

Time traveling? Yeah, that won't complicate things further...  

[GrandSpleen 1,756]

I don't know if time traveling, or "rolling back" the game state, is the right way to look at this... because of:

 

"When a player uses a Response to cancel an effect, the result is that the canceled effect never resolves. For example, when a player uses A Test of Will to cancel the ‘when revealed’ effects of The Necromancer’s Reach, the players do not deal 1 damage to each character in play and then remove 1 damage from each character in play. Instead, no damage is dealt."

[ricedwlit 209]

So its not so much a case of time travel as it is prevention: you are aware of what will happen and, through the player card, stop it from happening.

An analogy: A card ("Clumsy person") is revealed which instructs you to push a glass off of your table onto a tile floor where it will shatter. However, a player then plays a card ("Quick reflexes") that allows you to catch any falling object. Net result: no broken glass. No time travel involved -just a cancelation of the glass shattering effect.

[Seastan 1,324]

I don't know if time traveling, or "rolling back" the game state, is the right way to look at this... because of:

 

"When a player uses a Response to cancel an effect, the result is that the canceled effect never resolves. For example, when a player uses A Test of Will to cancel the ‘when revealed’ effects of The Necromancer’s Reach, the players do not deal 1 damage to each character in play and then remove 1 damage from each character in play. Instead, no damage is dealt."

 

Yes, so if you play Quick Ears, it is as if no card was revealed. But only once you play Quick Ears. I'm not seeing the problem of readying your hero with Wingfoot first, if it is indeed the same trigger.

 

So people seem to be saying that if you trigger Wingfoot first then play Quick Ears, you need to go back and undo the readying of your Wingfoot hero. I love stuff like this because they allow me to come up with ridiculous scenarios. Here we go:

 

You have a Ranger hero with Wingfoot and Spiders-Web ("Each time attached hero readies, deal it 1 damage.") attached to him. Then an enemy is revealed and you ready your Ranger and deal him 1 damage, which happens to kill him. You also have a lore hero with Horn of Gondor attached and currently 0 resources in his pool. So you trigger the horn and give your lore hero a resource. Since this was a nested response triggering off the Wingfoot readying, we still have not moved on from the revealing of the encounter card, so there is still an opportunity to play Quick Ears. Luckily you now have a resource to afford Quick Ears so you play it and cancel the card that was revealed. Now what? You go back in time, bring your hero back to life, and undo the Horn of Gondor resource that allowed you to play Quick Ears in the first place? This is a paradox.

[GrandSpleen 1,756]

Hmm... even if we manage to come up with a solution to this Quick Ears/Wingfoot problem (maybe a convincing argument for Wingfoot having to come after Quick Ears? -- it says "if," not "when" a card is revealed) -- we'll still run into this problem later on, whenever we get a Response that keys off of cards revealing.   Is it really intended that you roll back the game state if you trigger a cancellation response after triggering other responses?

 

I guess we have some already: Merry (Spirit), Gimli (ally), Strider's Path (if we're treating The Door is Closed the same way we treat Quick Ears).

 

I see a couple of options.. First: play as if the game can be rolled back.  If you accept that, there are going to be weird interactions down the line.  Second: add an entry to the FAQ that explains the word "cancel," maybe reversing this ruling, maybe forcing you to use any effects that say "cancel" before you use other effects with the same trigger, maybe preventing the use of "cancel" effects if any other player or encounter Response, Passive, or Forced effects have been triggered prior to using the cancel.

[DukeWellington 312]

I actually met the guy who does copy edit for many of the cards and I tried to explain this problem with wording to him, but he didn't seem to understand. This was back when people were debating whether or not Frodo died if he was damaged by Marsh Adder and then canceled the damage. Anyway, I greatly prefer the use of hypothetical voice to create replacement effects as is done in Magic the Gathering. So the language should be something like "whenever X would happen, instead Y happens". The use of the word would indicates clearly that it is a hypothetical scenario (it never actually takes place). As a result of that use of language there is no time travel, no rolling back the game state, no question whether or not Frodo dies (he doesn't). In the case of Seastan's crazy case study the hero dies and gives the resource from Horn of Gondor only if the enemy is actually revealed, not merely hypothetically revealed. Therefore once the hero is dead there is no longer an opportunity to play quick ears. That is how I would resolve it, but that is not how FFG resolves it. (As an aside, my interpretation would explain why honor guard cannot prevent t the damage derdingle does to himself and still allow for the armor bonus, etc.)