Mumba Temple vs NAPD MWL 1.2

[pang4]

The question is a fairly simple one:
Does the Alliance ability on Mumba Temple cancel out Universal influence pips?

Under the new system, cards on the MWL have extra universal influence pips added to them according to tier.

However, Mumba Temple clearly states "This card costs 0 influence if you have 15 or fewer ice in your deck."
So does that cancel out Universal influence as well? I is confuse...

[Dragar]

I think the intention is pretty clear.

[pang4]

Yeah, but the intention was clear with MCA Informant as well, and we saw how that turned out.

[Dragar]

Well, this isn't supposed to be rules text or errata. I'm not sure card text is supposed to interact with it.

[Saan]

I think part of the reasoning behind calling it Universal Influence is to have it distinct from the mechanic of Influence. Mumba Temple only cancels the Influence cost, not the Universal Influence cost as well.

[Arthur_Barnhouse]

They need to clarify this in the document though. I've seen people take as a given the new universal influence does impact mumba temple but I've also seen people take as a given that it doesn't impact the professor. They need to clarify this because people are out there building professor decks with Faust and they need to know for sure if that's right or wrong.

[pang4]

This is a very good point. The Professor either can't run Faust, or Mumba Temple costs no Universal influence. They need to be consistent.

[Sanjay]

The Professor and Mumba Temple are worded differently so theoretically they can come up with a consistent guideline that allows you to have universal influence work on Mumba Temple but not on The Professor.

For instance: "Universal influence can be ignored, but cannot be reduced".

Faust costs 5 influence for the Professor, but that influence does not count against his influence ability due to his ID ability.

By contrast, Mumba Temple only reduces the non-universal influence part of its influence to 0.

To be honest, it's two cards, I really don't see why being consistent on this is that important as long as they are clear about how things work.

[Arthur_Barnhouse]

To be honest, it's two cards, I really don't see why being consistent

So....I'm gonna stop you there. Consistancy is not unimportant, even if it's just two cards.

Regarding why there could be an explanation of why MWL would apply to one and not the other, that's true but that's not Made clear anywhere. Why would it work in the manner you described? Why not he reverse? Again, it's not obvious and i don't see why they couldn't just provide a clarification. Looking back at the CTM debacle from last nationals season it seems dangerous to leave this ambiguous.

Probably no one is bringing professor to a national, but store champs it's fairly possible.

[pang4]

Because it might not be two cards in the future. What if we get some other influence-reducing mechanic in the future, that is worded in a third way? Will we get a new ruling for each one?
Consistency is important for card games. We can't errata things on the fly, so things need to be worded correctly the first time.

[Sanjay]

You can stop me midsentence but you kind of need the whole sentence to represent what I am trying to say so please don't?

I'd rather they get both cards working the way they want them to than having the cards work less well in order to chase parsimony.

In this instance, I think spelling out how each ability works with the MWL is fine, even if those explanations result in different conclusions.

To your point, @pang4, if we get another influence-reducing mechanic in the future, I'm fine with them spelling that out too.

Consistency is important and so is cards working as intended. Sometimes you do things for the sake of rules simplicity. Sometimes you fudge the rules a bit so a card works how you want.

[Arthur_Barnhouse]

I don't really think I misrepresented you in any particular way.

You're fine if it's clarified, but I don't know what that means in this context, because you seem to take it as a given that the two cards will work differently with MWL influence. It is not obvious that they do, and if they do FFG needs to provide that clarity.

This isn't really a discussion about consistancy. It's a discussion that if they want MWL to work one way with one card and not another card they actually need to say that.

[Sanjay]

I think you've misunderstood me. I agree with you.

FFG needs to come up with these clarifications.

[Arthur_Barnhouse]

Cool!