CoE Rulings Digest #121 Debate

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CDavis7M
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miguel wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2009 3:28 pm 3)
Do the guidelines for wounding/eliminating agents apply to detainment attacks from agents? Will Gothmog get tired of Golodhros pestering him and simply rip him a new one?
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Detainment attacks can't be defeated, so all Gothmog can really do is tell Golodhros to "shove it".
This is wrong. Gothmog can do more than tell Golodhros to "shove it," he can wound him. It's true that detainment attacks cannot be defeated but it's also true that strikes of detainment attacks can fail.

Putting aside Agents for now, look at the rules on resolving Combat and Detainment attacks.
(MELE p. 30)Resolving Strikes
Strikes are resolved one at a time as decided by the defending player. When you choose a strike to resolve, determine all of the factors affecting the strike before the roll is made (see "The Strike Sequence on page 33). To resolve a strike, the defender makes a roll (2D6) and adds his modified prowess:
• If this result is greater than the strike's prowess, the strike fails. Such a strike is defeated if its body attribute is "-" or if it has a body attribute and fails a body check.

(MELE, p. 31) a strike that fails is defeated if its body attribute is"- " or if it has a body attribute and fails a body check.

(MELE p.32) DEFEATING AN ATTACK
An attack by a hazard creature is defeated if it is not a detainment attack and if all of its strikes directed against (i .e., assigned to) a company are defeated.
A detainment attack from a creature is never defeated and the creatures card is always discarded after the attack is resolved.
Clearly a strike from a detainment attack can fail. But the detainment attack itself can never be defeated.

What about agents?
(MEDM p. 5) Resolving Combat With an Agent
When one of your agents attacks it is considered to be the attacker and it has one strike unless modified. Combat with an agent is handled like any other combat with the following exceptions:
...
*After the combat, the agent remains in play and it must be face-up and tapped or face-up and wounded

(CRF Agents) Rules Erratum: Agent attacks against minions are always detainment.
(CRF Agents) To wound an agent you only need to defeat the prowess of one strike. To eliminate an agent you must defeat the prowess and body for all strikes.
Agent combat against minion players are handled like any other detainment combat. If one of the agent's strike fails, regardless of whether that strike is defeated, then the agent is wounded. But the agent cannot be eliminated by a minion because detainment attacks are never defeated. The agent remains face-up and wounded.
Last edited by CDavis7M on Thu Aug 20, 2020 1:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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CDavis7M
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miguel wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2009 3:28 pm 5)
Do the sites that have become adjacent to an under-deeps site due to Caverns Unchoked count as surface sites.
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The answer is yes, so you cannot play cards like A Few Recruits at those sites anymore.
While this might "make sense" because those sites are not underdeeps sites, there is no support for this conclusion in the card text and it contradicts the rules.
MEBA p. 4 wrote:Instead of a nearest Haven, each Under-deeps site lists all of its "Adjacent Sites." Each Under-deeps site is adjacent to its one surface site and a number of other Under-deeps sites. The first adjacent site listed is always the Under-deeps site's surface site
Each under-deeps site has one "surface site". The first listed adjacent site is the "surface site." Other sites are not the "one surface site."
Caverns Unchoked wrote:Each other site (of yours) in the same region as its surface site is considered adjacent to this Under-deeps site.
Caverns Unchoked could have said that the sites in the same regions are considered "a surface site," but it says that they are just considered to be "adjacent." These sites are not "surface sites" because they are not the first listed adjacent site. And even Caverns Unchoked says "its surface site," referencing the one surface site.

This matters for several cards that refer to a "surface site." It also matters for the rules on Underdeeps movement (MEBA, p. 4): "One of your companies that begins its tum at the surface site of an Under-deeps site can move normally or it can move to its adjacent Under-deeps site. One of your companies that begins its turn at an Under-deeps site may only move to one of the adjacent sites listed on the Under-deeps site card." Caverns Unchoked lets a company move from the underdeeps site to new adjacent sites, but it does not let a company move from those new adjacent sites back to the underdeeps site.
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Konrad Klar
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miguel wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2009 3:28 pm Do the guidelines for wounding/eliminating agents apply to detainment attacks from agents? Will Gothmog get tired of Golodhros pestering him and simply rip him a new one?
---------------------------------------------------
Detainment attacks can't be defeated, so all Gothmog can really do is tell Golodhros to "shove it".
Lidless Eye wrote:A detainment attack from a creature is never defeated and the creatures card is always discarded after the attack is resolved.
Agents are not creatures.
We will not speak of such things even in the morning of the Shire.
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CDavis7M
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Konrad Klar wrote: Thu Aug 20, 2020 8:55 am
miguel wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2009 3:28 pm Do the guidelines for wounding/eliminating agents apply to detainment attacks from agents? Will Gothmog get tired of Golodhros pestering him and simply rip him a new one?
---------------------------------------------------
Detainment attacks can't be defeated, so all Gothmog can really do is tell Golodhros to "shove it".
Lidless Eye wrote:A detainment attack from a creature is never defeated and the creatures card is always discarded after the attack is resolved.
Agents are not creatures.
Of course agents are not creatures, but the rules on combat against creatures apply to combat against agents because MEDM says so: "Combat with an agent is handled like any other combat with the following exceptions: ..."

So then "A detainment attack from a creature is never defeated" also means "A detainment attack from an agent is never defeated."

So while you can wound an agent attack that is detainment by beating its prowess (the agent's strike fails), you cannot eliminate the detainment agent attack by beating all of the body checks for its failed strikes (a detainment agent attack can never be defeated). As an except to the normal detainment combat rules which discard a creature, "After the combat, the agent remains in play and it must be face-up and tapped or face-up and wounded."
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Theo
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I like your logic on the wounding from the rules texts. However, how do you account for:
ICE Rules Digest 122 wrote:>Well I guess we won't have to worry about giving away three kill MP's with Golodhros anymore..., but..., can he become wounded? Probably not.

No. Agents attacking as detainment cannot be wounded.
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Theo
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Furthermore, miguel's wording doesn't address whether or not an agent can be wounded, since a wounded or unwounded agent can still pester. I think you owe him an apology.
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CDavis7M
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Theo wrote: Thu Aug 20, 2020 4:52 pm I like your logic on the wounding from the rules texts. However, how do you account for:
ICE Rules Digest 122 wrote:>Well I guess we won't have to worry about giving away three kill MP's with Golodhros anymore..., but..., can he become wounded? Probably not.

No. Agents attacking as detainment cannot be wounded.
The rules on detainment attacks change the result of a successful strike (against the character), not the result a failed a strike (by the attacker). The detainment rules only change the result of defeating all of the failed strikes.
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CDavis7M
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Theo wrote: Thu Aug 20, 2020 4:53 pm Furthermore, miguel's wording doesn't address whether or not an agent can be wounded.
It does.
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Theo
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CDavis7M wrote: Thu Aug 20, 2020 5:04 pm
Theo wrote: Thu Aug 20, 2020 4:52 pm I like your logic on the wounding from the rules texts. However, how do you account for:
ICE Rules Digest 122 wrote:>Well I guess we won't have to worry about giving away three kill MP's with Golodhros anymore..., but..., can he become wounded? Probably not.

No. Agents attacking as detainment cannot be wounded.
The rules on detainment attacks change the result of a successful strike (against the character), not the result a failed a strike (by the attacker). The detainment rules only change the result of defeating all of the failed strikes.
Is this answer the same as: "I will not account for this ruling"?
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CDavis7M
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Theo wrote: Thu Aug 20, 2020 5:29 pm
CDavis7M wrote: Thu Aug 20, 2020 5:04 pm
Theo wrote: Thu Aug 20, 2020 4:52 pm I like your logic on the wounding from the rules texts. However, how do you account for:

The rules on detainment attacks change the result of a successful strike (against the character), not the result a failed a strike (by the attacker). The detainment rules only change the result of defeating all of the failed strikes.
Is this answer the same as: "I will not account for this ruling"?
This ruling does not reflect the rules. The rules specifically indicate that the agents are the "attacker" and that they are wounded when their strike fails. The detainment rules do not change how failed strikes of the attacker work. "Agent attacks against minions are always detainment" doesn't mean that minion defense against agents are detainment (there is no such thing). The ICE ruling was made in response to the announcement of the change. It's not some long-held ruling. It was a mistake. An easy one to make, apparently.
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Theo
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Ah good.

So you have come to revise your opinion?
CDavis7M wrote: Fri Sep 13, 2019 9:58 pm The ICE Digest says that is how the rules work. From what I have seen, the Rulings are almost never wrong, and they were corrected when they were.
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CDavis7M
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Theo wrote: Thu Aug 20, 2020 7:46 pm Ah good.

So you have come to revise your opinion?
CDavis7M wrote: Fri Sep 13, 2019 9:58 pm The ICE Digest says that is how the rules work. From what I have seen, the Rulings are almost never wrong, and they were corrected when they were.
Good find. Still waiting on your semantic analysis though.

But yeah, that was a year ago.

2 years ago I thought many of the ICE rulings were bogus, having similar thoughts as many others made here and on MECCG.net. But after taking the time to understand the rules and how the rulings were made, I began to I realized that the ICE Netrep was right, the CRF and rules are consistent, and I realized that I didn't understand the rules as well as I thought I did.

So 1 year ago I made that post expressing "no, actually, the ICE Netrep is right and he would be corrected if wrong." And that's true, the ICE Netrep's ruling there on Traitor (working the same as Icy Touch) IS supported by the rulings on passive conditions and the card text -- multiple copies of Traitor are triggered at the same time, their effects are declared separately, and when it come time to resolve the the 2nd Traitor, there is no "next character that fails a corruption deck" (there is only 1 character that failed, not 2).

It's also true that the Ichabod usually corrected himself when he was wrong. Or sometimes he was was right but the rules were changed by the Designers.

Since a year ago, I have found a few other instance (though even that list gets shorter) where the ICE Netrep was wrong but was not corrected. This is one of those instances. The ruling does not reflect the rules. It's possible that Ichabod was corrected on it but that was lost on the mailing list, it's also possible that the corrections didn't show up because Van took over as Netrep right after that ruling.

Either way, the rules and the rules and Ichabod knew the rules, but he is confusing success strikes against characters with failed strikes by agents, as did the CoE Netrep here.
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Theo
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Like I said, I appreciate the details you pieced together. I had not noticed that implication before, myself. Rezwits needs to add a link to this in his "you probably aren't playing Agents correctly" signature.

I do not think that what miguel said was wrong, unless you wanted to literally interpret the card as talking... which, yes, is obviously wrong. At least until 3 A.M.
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Theo
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CDavis7M wrote: Thu Aug 20, 2020 1:12 am While this might "make sense" because those sites are not underdeeps sites, there is no support for this conclusion in the card text and it contradicts the rules.

...

Caverns Unchoked could have said that the sites in the same regions are considered "a surface site," but it says that they are just considered to be "adjacent." These sites are not "surface sites" because they are not the first listed adjacent site. And even Caverns Unchoked says "its surface site," referencing the one surface site.

This matters for several cards that refer to a "surface site." It also matters for the rules on Underdeeps movement (MEBA, p. 4): "One of your companies that begins its tum at the surface site of an Under-deeps site can move normally or it can move to its adjacent Under-deeps site. One of your companies that begins its turn at an Under-deeps site may only move to one of the adjacent sites listed on the Under-deeps site card." Caverns Unchoked lets a company move from the underdeeps site to new adjacent sites, but it does not let a company move from those new adjacent sites back to the underdeeps site.
Except your conclusion is inconsistent with your premise, for the rules also say "One of your companies that begins its turn at an Under-deeps site may only move to one of the adjacent sites listed on the Under-deeps site card." And the rules also require that a roll exceed the number in parentheses following adjacent sites, which cannot be verified for the sites made adjacent by Caverns Unchoked, and thus the movement cannot be successful. As near as I can tell, we would need to conclude that the adjacent effect of Caverns Unchoked is almost entirely pointless (Spider of the Morlat and Nameless Things could be played against the Balrog there if Doors of Night is in play?).

Or, surface sites on the cards are merely described by the rule you quoted, but not constrained to that alone if card text says otherwise. We see this also for Deep Mines, which goes so far as to say that a surface site implies that the roll required to move between them (in either direction) is zero. Stretching Caverns Unchoked from adjacent to surface site as done in CoE #121 seems like one reasonable way to make the effect meaningful.
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