WITHDRAWN - Face Out of Sight

[Konrad Klar]

There is the item card (that may potentially exist in play permanently) The Ithil-stone.

Unique. Palantír. Playable at Barad-dûr. When a character taps to play Ithil-stone, make a roll (draw a #). If this result plus the number of scouts in his company is greater than 9, Ithil-stone is successfully played. Otherwise, the bearer is eliminated and Ithil-stone is placed in your out of play pile. Bearer makes a corruption check at the end of each of his untap phases. Bane of the Ithil-stone is discarded and cannot be played. If The Lidless Eye is in play, its player's hand size decreases by two.

"Bane of the Ithil-stone is discarded and cannot be played."
uses passive verb tense. Right?
If so and the sentence should be read as continuous effect, then "and cannot be played" is redundant.
Or maybe it should be read as an action executed when The Ithil-stone is successfully played. Then "and cannot be played" does not make a sense at all. And if so read "If The Lidless Eye is in play, its player's hand size decreases by two.", then a Sauron player's hand would be reduced permanently, regardless of The Ithil-stone's future presence in play.

[Konrad Klar]

Look also at cards like Rebuild the Town.
Do they cause continually a losing of automatic-attacks, or becoming a target site a site of given type?

[Konrad Klar]

(Or additionally, apparently for Long Winter, a minimum of once/turn? Not sure why this was decided instead of only on establishment of existence.)

Once the effects of an environment card have been applied to a target during a given
movement/hazard phase, that effect is not applied again to that target during the
current turn.

For balance?
Condition like "Doors of Night and in non-Haven site's site path" may be fulfilled continuously. When the effect of an action triggered by the condition (tapping of a site) is applied, the condition is still fulfilled.
The same for company moving through a region affected by Dragon Ahunt. But M/H phase of company sooner or later ends and an attack from Dragon Ahunt has a chance to be triggered later.
For condition like "Doors of Night and in non-Haven site's site path" there is no such natural reset.
However such condition may disappear and reappear in play when Doors of Night disappears and reappears in play.

[Theo]

Look also at cards like Rebuild the Town.
Do they cause continually a losing of automatic-attacks, or becoming a target site a site of given type?

Rebuild the Town does not use passive tense for these effects.

[Theo]

"Bane of the Ithil-stone is discarded and cannot be played."
uses passive verb tense. Right?
If so and the sentence should be read as continuous effect, then "and cannot be played" is redundant.
Or maybe it should be read as an action executed when The Ithil-stone is successfully played. Then "and cannot be played" does not make a sense at all. And if so read "If The Lidless Eye is in play, its player's hand size decreases by two.", then a Sauron player's hand would be reduced permanently, regardless of The Ithil-stone's future presence in play.

"and cannot be played" is not redundant: "Bane of the Ithil-stone is discarded" being a passive condition that checks for existence of Bane of the Ithil-stone and initiates a discarding action upon it. Should Bane of the Ithil-stone be played, the discarding action would create a new chain of effects. During this chain of effects, corruption points of Palantiri are doubled (along with canceling searching/looking at various things), which means that the hazard player could declare other effects which force corruption checks for more punch than they should have, for example. "and cannot be played" prevents this abuse.

I don't know where you are getting the idea about reducing permanently. I guess that could happen if you decided you only need to implement that effect once and be done with it, which is in the direction of your interpretation, not mine. It is not a one-time imperative.

While we're at it, let's look at Bane of the Ithil-stone more. "Corruption points for Palantiri are doubled." If you ignore the passive tense, then this card would only effect Palantiri that were in play when it is played. Not what was intended, in my opinion.

[Konrad Klar]

Should Bane of the Ithil-stone be played, the discarding action would create a new chain of effects.

Not taking into account:

Annotation 9a: If a card is required to be discarded by some passive condition, the
card is discarded immediately when the condition resolves, not in the following chain
of effects.

I don't know where you are getting the idea about reducing permanently. I guess that could happen if you decided you only need to implement that effect once and be done with it, which is in the direction of your interpretation, not mine. It is not a one-time imperative.

If to read it as action executed once (when The Ithil-stone is successfully played).
I'm not assigning you this interpretation.
I've tried to take into account other interpretations and check whether "and cannot be played" makes any sense.

"Corruption points for Palantiri are doubled."

This is not an action (triggered by existence of Palantir). This is an effect.

[Theo]

Should Bane of the Ithil-stone be played, the discarding action would create a new chain of effects.

Not taking into account:

Annotation 9a: If a card is required to be discarded by some passive condition, the
card is discarded immediately when the condition resolves, not in the following chain
of effects.

Right. However, this rule didn't exist when the card was printed.

"Corruption points for Palantiri are doubled."

This is not an action (triggered by existence of Palantir). This is an effect.

By "this" do you mean the doubling? Doubling is an activity, an action verb, so I would contend it is an Action in the game. Phrasing could have been something like, "Corruption points for Palantiri are twice their previous value." to establish non-action effect.

But I see how "doubled" could also be an adjective implying that there was a doubling at some earlier point. So I guess it comes down to interpretation. Without there being only an assumed earlier doubling under this interpretation, it doesn't sit as well with me.

[Konrad Klar]

By "this" do you mean the doubling?

Yes.

But I see how "doubled" could also be an adjective implying that there was a doubling at some earlier point. So I guess it comes down to interpretation.

So imagine that "this" is an action.

Bane of the Ithil-stone comes in play.
"This" is declared and resolves.
Palantiri in play have now their CPs doubled.

Bane of the Ithil-stone is discarded.

Bane of the Ithil-stone comes in play.
"This" is declared and resolves.
Palantiri in play have now their CPs doubled (quadrupled their original CPs).

And so on...

[Theo]

Oh, I think I see your point now. The problem is that if the doubling were an action then once it is resolved there is no longer a dependency on whatever triggered it. That was certainly not my original point. I guess using more accurate language, my point was that the passive tense suggests a passive condition triggering an action or effect.

If you ignore the passive tense, then this card would only effect Palantiri that were in play when it is played.

Similarly, other cards that having non-targeting doubling effects from METW:

Unique. Each character has the corruption points doubled for one of his sources of corruption (the player controlling the character chooses).

The prowess of all Undead attacks is increased by one.
Additionally, if Doors of Night is in play, the number of strikes for each Undead attack is doubled. Cannot be duplicated.

If Plague of Wights was played earlier in the turn and then later a new Undead creature was played, would there be any doubt about whether either of the Plague of Wights effects should apply to the new Undead attack? Why should Face Out of Sight be any different?

[Konrad Klar]

Granted. Beside the "All on-guard cards are returned to owner's hands" in Face Out of Sight text (that is moot point) and texts of Gates of Morning, Doors of Night, Skies of Fire (that contain a word "immediately"), is not used to describe any actions that are performed once, when a card comes into play.

Besides, a passive tense does not indicate an action caused by passive conditions. And action caused by passive conditions may be described without using a passive tense, even if it applies to multiple objects.

Spell. Wizard only. All of the strikes from one attack against your Wizard's company fail; +3 to any body checks made to determine of the attack is defeated. Discard the Wizard (i.e., he becomes unrevealed) and any non-item cards he controls. Place any items he controls under this card and keep these off to the side (these items are considered to still be in play). If the Wizard is put back into play, return his items to him and place Sacrifice of Form with him. Wizard receives +1 to his prowess, body, and direct influence. May not be duplicated on a given Wizard.

"return his items to him" does not use a passive tense.

Technology. Playable at a tapped or untapped Shadow-hold , Dark-hold , or a site with a Dwarf-automatic-attack. Discard during the site phase at a Border-hold or Shadow-hold to make all versions of the site Ruins & Lairs . Its normal automatic-attacks are replaced with: Gas-each character faces 1 strike with 7 prowess (cannot be canceled). Keep Vile Fumes with the site until the site is discarded or returned to its location deck.

Does "are replaced with:" mean that Vile Fumes continuously check for appearance of "normal automatic-attacks" ?

[Theo]

Spell. Wizard only. All of the strikes from one attack against your Wizard's company fail; +3 to any body checks made to determine of the attack is defeated. Discard the Wizard (i.e., he becomes unrevealed) and any non-item cards he controls. Place any items he controls under this card and keep these off to the side (these items are considered to still be in play). If the Wizard is put back into play, return his items to him and place Sacrifice of Form with him. Wizard receives +1 to his prowess, body, and direct influence. May not be duplicated on a given Wizard.

"return his items to him" does not use a passive tense.

Of course; it is a one-time action. There is a passive condition as specified by "if the Wizard is put back into play," the effect of which is to perform an action once, not create another passive condition checking for existing of his items.

But in principle I agree that passive conditions may be specified ways other than by using passive tense.

Technology. Playable at a tapped or untapped Shadow-hold , Dark-hold , or a site with a Dwarf-automatic-attack. Discard during the site phase at a Border-hold or Shadow-hold to make all versions of the site Ruins & Lairs . Its normal automatic-attacks are replaced with: Gas-each character faces 1 strike with 7 prowess (cannot be canceled). Keep Vile Fumes with the site until the site is discarded or returned to its location deck.

Does "are replaced with:" mean that Vile Fumes continuously check for appearance of "normal automatic-attacks" ?

Definitely. If there was some hypothetical way for the site to be exchanged for a different version (while keeping Vile Fumes), the new existence of the new version's automatic attacks should still be replaced.

[Konrad Klar]

I see the reason for which:
"All on-guard cards are returned to owner's hands."
should be treated in the same way like the texts of Gates of Morning or Doors of Night and not in the same way like text of Long Winter.
The reason is use of "all" and not "each".
Mere existence of objects of given type which are described as "all objects of given type" is not enough to treat it as passive condition for action that operates on the objects.

[Theo]

Your interpretation would make the underlined portion unnecessary.

All corruption cards on the bearer are discarded when this card comes into play.

(Not that unnecessary text alone is sufficient justification for it not being correct.)

More worrisome, Dragon factions would not actually cancel anything (other than hypothetical Dragon attacks that were in the midst of resolving prior to playing the faction):

All attacks by manifestations of [Dragon X] against any of your companies are canceled.

[Konrad Klar]

Kudos.
I give up.

Searching for a consistency I have found that not Face Out of Sight but Gates of Morning, Doors of Night are odd and require an errata.

[rezwits]

This card:

All on-guard cards are returned to owner's hands. At the end of any turn, all wounded agents and tapped agents are returned to their owner's hand. Cannot be duplicated. "With a sudden flick, quick as lightning, an apple left his hand and hit Bill square in the nose. He ducked too late, and curses came from behind the hedge."-LotRI

Am I missing something? This card is clearly a Long-event, playable during the Resource player's long-event phase.

A. All on-guard cards during the long-event phase are NON-EXISTENT.
B. As a hazard player plays an on-guard card it's is "bounced" right back to his hand, DONE.

I don't see the confusion.

P.S. Sorry, I see the "BIG WITHRDRAWN" in the sky sorries...