ANCUR Unofficial FAQ

Netrunner does not use “in play” terminology. “Active”’ is the used nomenclature because there are a lot of situtations in which a card can be “in play” but not active.

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The Runner could theoretically encounter Archangel during a run, though, give it the Grail subtype, and then I guess the Corp could reveal Archangel to Merlin/etc.?

Once the Archangel goes back into the hand the game loses track of which card was encountered and given grail. At least that’s how I would understand the interaction.

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When Archangel is triggered on access though, you go through the normal encounter stages including paid ability windows though don’t you?

So if Marcus Batty was already rezzed in a server and it had Cell Portal protecting it and had a Grail ICE on the outside of the server and the Runner accessed Archangel:

  • Corp could force the Runner to encounter Archangel;
  • Runner could Panchatantra Archangel into a Grail;
  • During the encounter with Archangel Corp could fire Marcus Batty in the paid ability window, succeed and trigger the Cell Portal subroutine;
  • Cell Portal would cause the Runner to immediately encounter the Grail ICE, and the Corp could add the Archangel subroutine as a Grail subroutine (still in the middle of the Archangel encounter remember!).

Totally pointless, but possible. :slight_smile:

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This raises a different question, whether one can actually encounter 2 pieces of ice simultaneously. If you are approaching the outermost ice of the server, are you still encountering Archangel (or any other ice you’d trigger Cell Portal’s while encountering)? I would think you would no longer be encountering that ice but rather approaching the outermost ice of the server.

The Grail subtype by itself doesn’t do anything. It works because of the line of text at the top of all the Grail ICE save Excalibur - “When the runner encounters Lancelot, you may reveal up to 2 Grail ICE from HQ. For the remainder of this run, Lancelot gains the subroutines of the revealed ICE in the order of your choice.”

There’s no practical way to give an ICE in HQ the grail subtype, except to give it to Archangel upon HQ access - but then you’ve already passed all the ICE in the server and it loses Grail. The only thing I can think of it to use Kitsune to trigger an HQ access mid-run, the runner access archangel and chooses to use Panchantantra on it to give it Grail (because I like giving the Corporation more options), and then encounter a normal Grail ICE after the Kitsune.

I don’t think you can be. The wording of this particular FAQ entry is limited to Shiro, but the implication is that in the event of ‘nested’ encounters, you resolve them in an inner-to-outer fashion, and only the one currently being resolved can be considered to be encountered.

The Cell Portal question does open some weirdness, though, because:
a) Cell Portal refers to approach, rather than encounter. I wouldn’t necessarily think this was super weird, except that the Approach phase allows the option to jackout. There’s nothing inherently contradictory about jacking out during the pending-Archangel-encounter (some cards, such as Data Raven, explicitly allow jacking out during an encounter), but it feels a bit weird.
b) The dependencies aren’t exactly the same. Technically, the Batty-induced-Cell-Portal-approach is happening ‘inside’ the Archangel encounter, but that’s not something caused by Archangel’s subroutines. So, do you resolve the entire approach/encounter of the outermost ice before returning to Archangel? Or all ice on the server? Or does the Archangel encounter just… fizzle for some reason?

ETA: This is a bit of a stretch, but I think it does ‘fizzle’ because of the way Cell Portal works. We must read Cell Portal’s sub forcing the approach as ending the current encounter (akin to bypass effects) – so a Cell Portal with an active Sub Boost (because, reasons?) wouldn’t have a lingering ETR floating out there. The stretchy part is that “moving” the runner’s position in the run to a new portion ends all outstanding encounters.

The issue there is that once the Archangel encounter is over, it should lose the subtype as it returns to the hand.

This mostly silly and irrelevant question about Panchantantra has actually made me rethink what’s going on with Archangel, though. Unlike Awakening Center or The Twins, which, despite breaking our normal approach/encounter sequence, still rely on a piece of ICE that has been previously installed, the mechanics of Archangel get a bit wonky to me. We must assume that Archangel is in play (although I have never considered other cards being accessed to be in play), otherwise you wouldn’t be able to target it with Icebreaker abilities, right? But it is also not installed (e.g. EtF isn’t earning a credit from this), so is it a valid target for, say, Bishop/Knight/Rook off a Deep Red? If so, what happens at the end of the encounter? My ‘gut’ says they should be trashed, but the hosting rules say:

Archangel certainly isn’t being trashed, and I don’t think Archangel can be said to be ‘uninstalled’ if it were never installed in the first place:

Yeah, Archangel already causes weirdness in itself, without any of the other rubbish!

As seen in the Shiro example, encountering Archangel is the only card (I think) which initiates a run phase without “jumping” the play to that run phase and continuing from there.

Does this mean though that Archangel encounter is conceptually a separate effect outside of the normal run sequence and distinct from it, or that it is still part of the overall run but a special case in that once we are done for some reason we jump back to where we were before the Archangel encounter began rather than continuing the usual sequence?

In other words do we “jump” to be in the HQ server when encountering Archangel with Shiro and “jump” back to Shiro again when done, or do we initiate a separate Archangel encounter discrete from the main run, all the time remaining at Shiro? If it’s the former, we only have one run, so it’s easy to see where we are if another effect moves us again. But if it’s the latter, when effects within the Archangel encounter refer to “the run” do they mean the conceptual run that the floating Archangel encounter is part of, or the real run where you’re sitting on Shiro?

I’m not entirely sure I follow, but certainly any Archangel encounter (brought on by Shiro or otherwise) is a part of the same run – you should still have access to the same pool of BP or Stimhack credits, for example. I also feel comfortable with the ‘nested’ understanding of the Shiro/Archangel encounter: that feels very intuitive with relation to other rulings about pending effects.

Things start to get a bit wonky when Batty fires off a Cell Portal (or a Bullfrog, for that matter) in the middle of an Archangel encounter, but it’s also, frankly, not much different from Batty firing these cards during any other encounter. And my hunch – based on the admittedly stretchy logic above – is that the only way to interpret these effects is that they end all encounters. Otherwise… Archangel or no, Batty will necessarily have you running in two places at once.

Also: I’ve tried googling this, but is there no ruling on Batty/Bullfrog or Batty/Cell Portal? Both of these seem like run structure black holes.

I’m not sure it is a rules hole. Normally when an effect causes you to skip to another point in the run structure, you go straight there after any open paid ability window has closed, continuing from there and no longer having a connection to the place in the run where you just came from. Archangel is specifically different. So if you Batty a Bullfrog when the Runner gets into the server (and win both Psi games!), the Runner will no longer be in the server but approaching some other ICE instead.

Business First UFAQ has been posted!

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This really is an excellent series released with every datapack, thankyou for your work.

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The Democracy and Dogma UFAQ has been posted!

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“Q: Is swapping Sadyojata with another Deva considered an installation?”
“A: No.”

Kinda a surprising ruling actually.

Par for the course! I expect more sensible update in 6 months :wink:

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“The Corp can always play Punitive Counterstrike because it always initiates a trace”

uhhh is this new?

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It’s a reversal of an old ruling, actually.

The political assets don’t check their condition until the Corp is done with other triggered abilities that happen at start of turn?

Everything that triggers “when your turn begins” triggers simultaneously, and then you resolve them in the order of your choice. Thus, since Blue Sun’s ID ability and Political assets’ abilities trigger at the same time, you can choose to resolve Blue Sun’s first, so that the Political asset won’t have any ice in front of it when its ability resolves.

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