It would be nice if Damon was more present in the community so that these stupid rulings didn’t keep getting made.
If you access Shock! twice in one turn and Net Shield it the first time, Enhanced Blood doesn’t trigger at all, right?
Does Enhanced Blood trigger the second time if you control Gene Conditioning Shoppe, or is Gene Conditioning Shoppe checking to make sure if everything went ok with the first trigger when it decides whether to fire?
It’s Synthetic Blood, and see FAQ Page 11 for the same example but with Tori Hanzo.
If you have Gene Conditioning Shoppe, it would trigger the second time.
I sent SS+MVT question to ffg form.
How does Salsette Slums interact with intalled Mumba Virtual Tour? As I got CtM+SS ruling SS effect is not a “trashing” rather then “removing from the game”. MVT says that runner must trash it if able. Since he is able to not use Salsette Slams he must to do so. Please explain me, why is this logic wrong? SS >Once per turn, when you pay the trash cost of an accessed card, remove that card from the game instead of trashing it. MVT >If the Runner accesses Mumbad Virtual Tour while it is installed, he or she must trash it, if able.
Answer:
One of the important things to understanding Salsette Slums is what it’s trigger condition is, paying the trash cost of an accessed card. The game only allows for this in one normal way, when the runner has chosen to trash a card they are accessing. Anything else would be an invocation of the Golden Rule and would require the card text to specifically state when and how the Runner can pay that cost, an excellent example of this is Political Operative.
Because Salsette Slums does not give anyway to pay the trash cost of an accessed card itself it must use a “carrier” ability, in this case, most often the normal trashing ability the game provides. Mumbad Virtual Tour says I must trash it when I access it while it is installed, if able. So once I make the decision to trash it, and then take the method outlined by the game, paying its trash cost, I have in effect trashed the card, meeting the condition of MVT.
Sallsette Slums says when I do this thing I can remove it from the game instead of trashing it. The attempt to trash is now replaced with remove from game, sending the card out of the game rather than to the discard pile.
It is not uncommon for people to assume that cards whose physical use in the game are similar or interact with the same part of the game must use the same reasoning by default, rather than reading the card txt and seeing that differences in how cards are written may cause different part of the rules to affect how cards are resolved. This i frequently part of the growing pains of a player-base as they start to see more and more “behind the curtain” and begin to understand the underpinnings of the rules. It is also part of the growing pains of the dev team to grow the language and constantly seek to create better templating, using consistent language for effects that are truly the same, and keep things like the FAQ current, being more explicit where possible about why and how the rules work the way they do, and less about individual card clarifications.
Damon Stone
LCG Developer
PS Cool answer but I miss “hope that helps” in the end:D
Thanks for posting this!
It made me think about ‘must’ clauses way too much, and I want to check whether I understand how they work. Here’s what I have:
-It’s established that if a player “must do X in order to Y”, then X must successfully resolve for Y to happen. (See: refusing to pay additional costs, taking but preventing a tag as a result of Snatch and Grab)
-It’s also established that if a player simply “must do X”, then X does not need to successfully resolve for the condition to be fulfilled. (See: the MVT ruling above, making an install with no cards in hand and Housekeeping active)
-Finally if a player “must do X or Y”. This is where things get tricky. In some cases, a player can choose to do X but prevent it from resolving, and are not then obliged to choose Y. The condition is considered fulfilled even though X failed to resolve. (See: choosing to take a tag from Data Raven but avoiding it).
However, in other cases, if X would be prevented from resolving, the player is obliged to choose Y. They cannot choose X and have it fail to resolve. (See: Forged Activation Orders on an ice the corp is unable to afford to rez, being obliged to trash a card if Fairchild 1.0’s subroutine resolves and you have 0 credits.)
My question is when the former is true for “must X or Y”, and when it’s the latter. My initial thought was that if the game state would cause X to fail to resolve, you must choose Y. But the Archer + Forged Activation Orders ruling means that things are more complicated. There, I cannot choose to rez Archer to satisfy FAO, then have it fail to resolve by refusing to pay the additional cost.
So my new thought was that both game state and constant abilities (additional costs look a lot like constant abilities) must be considered when deciding whether I can X, and if I can’t X then I must choose Y. But if those constant abilities involve a choice (such as whether to pay an additional cost), I must also consider what my choice will be and factor that into whether or not I can X. [This would seem to have the potential to lead to some really weird stuff in future.]
So maybe additional costs aren’t constant abilities, and only game state and additional costs need to be considered (which includes my willingness to pay those additional costs) when deciding whether I can do X.
As you can tell, I’ve probably tied myself in a few knots. Can someone explain how this works?
Bonus question that might help resolve this:
-If I run through Fairchild 1.0 after RSVP’s subroutine has fired, am I obliged to choose to trash a card because I may not spend credits, or can I choose to pay credits and fail to do so?
You can’t choose the credit option on Fairchild if you can’t actually pay (for any means; either RSVP or 0 credits). Just like you can’t choose the trash option with no cards to trash.
Like FAO; the corp can’t choose to rez the ICE and fail. The act needs to be completed, or alternative chosen.
Thinking about it now FAO is a terrible example because of the counter point of archer, enforcer, etc. But ignore the additional cost effect and the answer is the same.
Edit:. Nevermind this I was wrong. Base answer remains unchanged though.
This isn’t true for Data Raven. I am allowed to choose to take a tag and then prevent it with New Angeles City Hall without ending the run. In that case, the act is not completed and the alternative is not chosen. Hence my question about what I have to consider when deciding if I can or cannot do something.
Prevent is not the same as cannot.
But in that case, I can rez Archer but prevent it by refusing to pay the additional cost. Yet I’m not allowed to choose this. That’s the contradiction I’m trying to understand.
And having zero credits is not the same as being under the effect “cannot spend credits”.
Additional costs specifically say they can be refused in the rules. It is a caveat, not a contradiction.
Edit: Nevermind this I was wrong about how this interacts with “either/or” effects. Answer remains unchanged though.
Yep, correct, but both lead to the same answer in this case.
So, getting hypothetical, if there was a runner card that said “you cannot take tags”, encountering data Raven would be a guaranteed ETR.
If you cannot do an action (for any reason), then it isn’t a valid choice for “either/or”. If you can and do do an action, you are allowed to later prevent it.
How does that square with Forged Activation Orders/Archer? I thought that if you decided to decline to pay the additional costs, you had to trash the ice?
Yeah sorry you’re right that’s the interaction.
I’ll update my answers, but that just removes the caveat; the answer for Fairchild is unchanged.
So clarifying this point, now that I have the right perspective on it, refusing something is not the same as preventing.
If you cannot or do not do what is asked in the “either” case, you must do the “or”.
If you cannot or do not rez Archer vs. FAO, you trash it. You would be allowed to prevent that trash though (if something existed for that purpose; good open design space here).
If you cannot or do not spend a credit vs. an unbroken Fairchild routine, you trash an installed card. You would be allowed to prevent that trash though.
I think we’re talking past each other here. I understand that I am obliged to consider some factors that would prevent the action from being successfully completed, and that there are others I am not. What I’m asking is where the dividing line is.
However, I think I’ve figured out what the sticking point is: “additional” is a really weird conditional ability trigger word that occurs simultaneously with its own trigger. This is a hard wording to wrap your head around: my original reading of this was that an additional cost would be fired by the trigger “rez”, then you’d refuse to pay the cost, and the rez would not resolve (but would have caused anything relying on “rez” to meet its trigger condition). In this case, I couldn’t see the difference between this and taking a tag being initiated but failing to resolve due to being prevented.
BUT I can see a consistent scenario where this is not what happens: instead, as far as I can understand it, an “additional” trigger meets its trigger, triggers and resolves in a single instant (WTF?), and if you refused it, the game moves past the “rez” trigger before anything else can even meet its trigger condition. Essentially, “additional” takes precedence on meeting its trigger condition, triggering and resolving over other effects even meeting their trigger condition. This is super weird: could jako or someone else who understands this please let me know if I’ve got this correct?
With all that in mind, here is my new understanding:
-“Must X or Y” will be satisfied by X or Y being initiated, not successfully resolving.
-You can only initiate X or Y if there is not a constant ability (“you may not spend credits”) or aspect of the game state (“you do not have 1 credit to pay”) preventing you from doing so. [Abilities that do not fall into these categories will not prevent you from initiating X or Y]
-When an “additional cost” for X is refused, X is initiated but terminated so fast that the “must X or Y” condition never even sees it being initiated.
God, I hope this is correct; my brain has come off. Please could someone (preferably @jakodrako) confirm or deny?
You can wait for jakodrako if my answers aren’t satisfactory, but your points sound correct to me, except I don’t really understand that “initialized but terminated so fast” clause, and how it fits in.
Additional costs are, in this context, just costs (they are different in some manner from costs, but occur at the same time as costs). If you don’t pay them, you never actually initiated.