I should clarify that I feel that this flies in the face of previous known interactions and is likely not the intended effect of the ruling.
I don’t like the point that I’m making, but I do feel like the point that I’m making is correct if following the rules as written in the FAQ.
I get that they wrote this “clarification” with regards to idiots who thought Street Peddler literally couldn’t do anything. But the effort to fix the issue is arguably dumber – and I can’t believe this is possible – than those idiots were in the first place.
Trashing a card as a cost for an effect can trigger all sorts of nonsense that can go on to trigger other kinds of nonsense before the effect has a chance to resolve. Trying to reference the game state at the time of trash (even the narrower case of “the game state as it pertains to that card”) is just a fundamentally bad idea.
E.g. Without even getting into fancy scenarios like SMC/Geist (and all the potential cascading triggers from there – Palana, Tech Trader, etc.), suppose I have a rezzed Test Ground (I know, lol) with one counter on it. I trash it to activate its effect. Can I now use that effect to “derez” the Test Ground that is already in the trash, because the game state at the moment it was trashed recognized it as an active, rezzed card?
No, the effect is copied while the card is placed in the trash.
The effect and its choices are solved when it’s supposed to solve, not at the paying point.
And I’m the one who’s supposed to make things complicated, lol.
The effect and choices are resolved at the time of effection, but they are resolved observing the board state at the time of trashing (by the latest FAQ; this was not traditionally the case). This is the source of concern.
Anyway, Jako has already said he’s going to talk with Damon about this. I think we should hold back on debating how these rules work until he gets back to us.
It does bring up an interesting point as a TO though; do you go against the written rules because you don’t feel it was what was intended, or do you follow the written rules because they are unambiguous and clear in their message (and written rules should be as close to law as possible in a game like this).
To me, your point goes against Allele bringing back itself and Scavenge reinstalling Lady.
You can’t play Scavenge if you can’t install from grip or heap before paying the cost, it’s only what this means.
Scavenge reinstalling Lady is not the same thing. The latest FAQ entry is for trash paid abilities only (Scavenge is an action).
Allele can also still bring itself back because the FAQ entry specifically makes the exception to the board state that a copy of the card exists in archives (in fact, Allele is the exact example of this they give in the FAQ). I recommend reading the FAQ entry in question (page 5 in FAQ 3.1).
Lastly, even if it did fly in the face of these rulings, that isn’t a counter to the point (there are numerous other known interactions that this FAQ entry does contradict, which I’ve pointed out). This FAQ entry came out after they were ruled, and could easily flip their ruling.
For the Allele exemple, you paid the cost, trashing Allele, before board checking.
To me this is the opposite 
I think it’s obvious at this point we don’t agree and can’t make each other see the other’s point of view. Let’s just wait to hear back on it.
Pretty sure they intended it to be ‘If you ever need to know something about the state of a card that is now in the trash, look at the state of the board before that card was put in the trash. Or, in other words, the Last Known Information about the card as it was In Play.’ The only thing this doesn’t solve is Spike/Wraparound. It does solve Street Peddler and SOT for Levy with only 4 creds and a Tech Trader. (When resolving SOT you don’t need to know the state of SOT so you don’t reference back to before it was trashed.)
So basically we’re looking for a really narrow wording that allows Street Peddler to work, allows you to use current credit pool to resolve SOT/CC/SMC, and allows a lone Spike to break a Wraparound. We need a rule for Street Peddler to work, and being able to do both of the last two things requires some weird language I think, that I can’t envision…
In the case of Street Peddler, I think (?) it requires even a bit more than that to fully square the circle (which is why, I’m guessing, there is the overly vague reference to “game state”). It’s not only that you have to know something about the state of Peddler itself (that it was hosting cards x, y, and z), but you have to know something about the hosted cards as well – that they were hosted on Peddler (otherwise, since they’ve moved to the heap, other rulings would suggest that these bits of cardboard are no longer the “same cards”).
Not exactly. A card only becomes a new copy of itself when it is uninstalled, and cards on Peddller are not installed.
We still have to know though because otherwise the card installed by Peddler would technically be installed from the heap.
Can you IA Allele, rez & fire if there is no cards in Archives ?
In my interpretation of this matter, you can’t fire. In yours, you can.
This is what I’m saying.
If the ruling is subject to interpretations, it’s a bad wording anyway, so I’m ok with waiting for a change.
@jakodrako I think hosted counters and cards will be transferred to the copy. Advancable trash abilities like Allele or those things in NBN making lose 4c/adv, or Weyland gaining 4c/adv, like Peddler, wouldn’t work otherwise.
No, in my interpretation of this, you can’t fire. The board state observed at resolution has no bearing on checking if you’re allowed to use a card; resolution is much later in the timing window.
Oh wow, that would be crazy…
quickly scratches out ‘Street Peddler’ from his Exile lists… (No I didn’t actually think that worked.)
With regards to the Spike/Wraparound interaction.
The rule regarding icebreaker/ice strength is that the icebreaker has to be equal or higher strength compared to the ice in order for the breaker to interact with the ice.
And since Spike is strength 1 and Wraparound is strength 0, Spike is allowed to interact with it by trashing itself.
The resolution of the ability doesn’t have to check strength after that. No look back is even necessary.
Yep, the spike/wrap interaction is a non-issue. However, we do still need more knowledge about the game state than just the specific card that’s being trashed, as Jako pointed out about peddler installing from heap.
Maybe a more appropriate line to draw would be if you considered the specific card and any hosted cards/conditions to be in the state they were pre-trash (which I think might’ve been brought up?). If the boundaries were drawn like that, street peddler still installing cards off of itself as expected, but geist couldn’t install the card he drew from SMC as a result of SMC’s effect (which I believe is the intended interaction).
Right. He could never do that. It would be drawn, not in RND.
Yeah, I agree. Problem is, if anyone reads the latest FAQ and follows it to a tee, he can now (because the board state at the time SMC was trashed had Geist’s draw in the deck, and the deck we are searching is the one in that board state).
When a card has a trash ability that is triggered, any reference to the game state within that resolving effect is based on the game state as it was at the moment of trashing, but with the trashed card considered a new copy of that card in Archives or the heap.
I’m pretty sure that Geist’s trigger happens first, because it’s cascaded off the SMC paid ability, you would draw the card, then search for stuff. I don’t think this situation has anything to do with that ruling. The game state does not include a full knowledge of all cards in your deck, as far as I know, since the Stack is hidden information. There is no “copy” of the drawn card still in the deck. The game state doesn’t check that, can’t check that. You’re assuming the ruling lets you to find a phantom card.
Honestly it isn’t clear anywhere in the rules what draws the line on what is and isn’t the game state, so I’m not going to draw any assumptions on that front outside known interactions.
However, at the very least, the amount of cards in your stack is definitely game state info (IE: can’t trigger SMC with an empty stack). Applying that same logic to the Geist SMC interaction, the stack you’re looking through should contain X cards if following the latest FAQ (not X - 1, from Geist draw).