Council of Elrond

There's being an interesting discussion in the Rules Forum about wheter some information events are played or not on tapped/untapped characters/sites. The link is here:

http://www.councilofelrond.org/forum/vi ... .php?t=355

Any thoughts?

This subject was briefly touched in the Ready to His Will thread. I still consider tapping the character/site to be an active condition.

I will try to elaborate my view a bit. I believe there are two types of active conditions when you are playing a card.

• (1) Active conditions for the action of playing the card.
  (2) Active conditions for the card’s effect.

In order to play a card (bring it from hand into play), type (1) active conditions must naturally be met. Also type (2) must be met, otherwise it would be playing a card for no effect, which isn't allowed.

As an example, let’s take All Thought Bent upon It.

ATBuI wrote:Sage only. Playable during the site phase on an untapped sage at a site where Information is playable. Tap the sage and the site. Search your play deck and choose a item you must reveal to your opponent. Place the item in your hand and reshuffle your play deck. The sage makes a corruption check.

Ok, you play ATBuI and check for type (1) of active conditions:

• - untapped sage at a site where information is playable
  - site phase

If those are met, you check for type (2) of active conditions:

• - tap the sage (this is done now, at declaration)
  - tap the site (also done now, and includes the requirement of an untapped site)

Ok, playing the card and declaring its effect was succesfull. Now we still need to resolve the card’s effect. Here in my opinion you don’t have to worry about the active conditions for playing the card (1) anymore. They were checked when the card was played. It’s not like you can unplay the card now. But you do check the active conditions for the card’s effect (2), in this case:

• - sage is still in play and tapped
  - site is still in play and tapped

All is still well, so the card’s effect resolves. Had there been some problem at this point, the card and its effect would fizzle.

Now someone might argue that tapping the sage and the site are not active conditions for ATBuI's effect, because the card doesn't say "do X to get Y". Well, all you need to do is take a look at Lucky Search.

Lucky Search wrote:Scout only. During the site phase, tap a scout at a Shadow-hold [S] or Dark-hold [D]. Turn over cards from your play deck one at a time until you reveal a non-special item or reach the end. If you reveal a non-special item, the scout takes control of it. In any case, the scout must face a single strike attack with a prowess equal to 3 plus the number of cards revealed; this attack/strike cannot be cancelled. Reshuffle all revealed cards except the item back into play deck.

The second sentence is clearly an active condition. Otherwise you could grab an item for the scout in the untap phase at Rivendell...

miguel wrote:The second sentence is clearly an active condition. Otherwise you could grab an item for the scout in the untap phase at Rivendell...

Indeed it this case "Tap" is not printed bold or as cursive.

I think you've explained it very well Mikko.

I think that Lucky Search is case similar to Gollum.

Unique. Playable at Goblin-gate or Moria. If his company's size is less than three, tap Gollum to cancel one attack against his company keyed to Wilderness [w] or Shadow-land [s]. Tap Gollum if he is at the same non-Haven site as The One Ring; then both Gollum and The One Ring are discarded.

Underline mine.

Without appropriate CRF entry:

The text on Gollum is an ability that you can choose to use.

underlined phrase could be readed as mandatory action caused by passive condition*.

In other words I think that lack of cursives or bold printing in second phrase of Lucky Search is just example of the same (early) style of ICE.

However main moot point is that "playable on untapped X" and subsequent "tap X" may be both considered active conditions or that only first is considered as AC.

@Miguel
I think that your explanation is extraordinary. In such sense that it introduces brand new concepts (two levels of active conditions). This explanation is useful for legitimize some players habituated style of playing some cards.
Personally I think that rules are not for making things more complicated than it is needed, but rather should serve regulation of situations that otherwise (without that rules) would be undefined and as such unplayable.

*) The same for Baduila.