Council of Elrond

Does Memories Stolen, Dragon Breath, or Dragon’s Desolation “target” a dragon?

Thanks,

Frodo

Target: Entity Through Which An Action is played out.

Memories Stolen wrote:Dark enchantment. A non-Wizard character facing a strike from a Dragon hazard creature attack loses all skills while bearing this card. The strike's prowess is modified by -3. Cannot be duplicated on a given character. If at a Haven [H] during his organization phase, a character with this card may tap to attempt to remove it. Make a roll (or draw a #): if this result is greater than 8, discard this card. Modify the roll by +1 for each character in his company that taps in support.

Actions: Target Character Loses Skills; Strike reduced by 3 prowess.

The Dragon is not the entity for either of these actions.

Dragon's Breath wrote:Playable on an attack by a True Fire-drake, by a Winged Fire-drake, or by any manifestation of Itangast, Leucaruth, Scorba, or Smaug (must be played before strikes are assigned). Each character in the company being attacked must immediately face one strike equal to the attack's prowess. Instead or using prowess against the strike, each character uses his body modified by +1 if he has a shield, by +1 is he has a helmet, and by +3 if he taps. The target attack which follows receives +1 body and -2 prowess. Cannot be duplicates on a given attack.

Actions: Creation of strikes and modification of prowess to the attack.
The dragon is an entity through which an action (modification of the prowess/body) is played out, so Dragon's Breath does target the Dragon/Drake in question.

Dragon's Desolation wrote:The prowess of one Dragon attack is modified by +2 or one Dragon hazard creature may be played at a Ruins & Lairs [R] that has two Wildernesses [w] in its site path (only one Wilderness [w] is required if Doors of Night is in play).

For the first use, obviously yes. For the second, my first instinct is to say "no." It makes a dragon keyable to the site, but it only does so after the card itself has already resolved before the Dragon is brought into play.

Hmm... can I get anyone else's opinion on this? It seems that one can easily argue that since an action is played out by lowering a strike's prowess by 3, and the strike belongs to a Dragon, that the Dragon is being targeted by Memories Stolen. (In your Dragon's Breath example you use similar reasoning with prow/body being affected).


This is nuts that we have to work all this out to figure out if something is being "targeted"...

My reasoning was that strikes are part of an attack. The attack is part of the dragon's card. Therefore things that affect the attack, yes, things that affect an individual strike, no. There's room for interpretation.

I believe Memories Stolen does target the Dragon since it modifies the prowess of the strike. Likewise the other two cards also target the Dragon.

What is practical implication of one or other version?

Only for the Virtual cards project, where there is card which raises the hazard limit when a card is played that targets a unique dragon manifestation.

Although to be honest, Konrad, I'm suspecting that we should probably avoid using the word "target" on new cards, because nobody will know what it means, even if you tell them.

The other practical side is that as a person interested in rules and terms I'd like to see a complex example of how targeting works, as with the above cards. Would help the Universal Rulesbook I'm sure. My understanding is that this is not completely ironed out on the NetRep team, but maybe a few global interpretations would help, such as whether cards played on or effecting a hazard creature attack/strike always target said creature/strike.

Frodo

Ok. I was just curious about that.
It is always useful to have a "real life" example for purpose explaining of some theory.
I'm not suggesting that some definition/ruling is not important just because at given moment it does not have any impact on real situaton. Existence of such impact may appear sooner or later.

Right, that makes sense. And on that note, here is the relevant text from a great card, Half an Eye Open (V):

"When this card is played, take up to four hazards from your discard pile or sideboard and place them face down with this card. If an “at Home” event is in play, you may play non-unique hazard events placed with this card that mention a named Dragon or the word “Dragon” in their game text or title as if they were in your hand (not on-guard). Twice per turn, a hazard played that targets a unique Dragon increases the hazard limit by one."

Frodo

Strike does not belong to attacker nor defender. Card that targets a strike does not target attacker/defender (unless card has more than one target).

Short justification:
Otherwise in CvCC player could not play hero resources that cancel strike from Orc/Troll. In fact player could not play any resources that target strike, because:

CRF, Ruling by Terms, Targets wrote:You cannot target an opponent's character or resources with your own resources.