Council of Elrond

Hello, faithful community members,

I was looking at the "Mithril" mission card from the Dark Minions expansion. The card reads:

Unique. Playable with a Sage or Dwarf only during the site phase at The Under-gates if you have a stored Vein of Arda. Sage or Dwarf may not untap until Mithril is stored at a Haven. Mithril is worth 7 marshalling points when stored. During any organization phase in which you store Mithril, you may immediately tap a character in the same company and play with him a non‐unique, non‐special weapon, armor, shield, or helmet from your hand or discard pile. When Mithril is stored, each Dwarf in play must immediately make a corruption check modified by ‐3.

So let's say it's your organization phase. You store Mithril. Like with any item you wish to store, you must first make a corruption check. If you pass it, you may then immediately play the non-unique, non-special item. But all Dwarves must also immediately make a corruption check.

1) If you retrieve an item that you want to give to a Dwarf, and assuming that item imparts a certain number of corruption points, does that Dwarf make the corruption check BEFORE or AFTER receiving the item?

2) Incidentally, as a follow-up question, if the character storing Mithril is a Dwarf, I'm assuming that Dwarf will actually make two corruption checks during the organization phase, correct?

Thanks for your help.

Cards with multiple actions are declared in reverse order so they will resolve in order.

Storing Mithril triggers two actions: one optional and one not. The order is as follows:

1) Store Mithril.
2) Chain of Effects for Item Play (optional).
3) Chain of Effects foe each CC.

A Dwarf will have his item when he makes the CC.

The CC to store is separate from the CC of Mithril's text.

Thanks for the clarification, much appreciated.
I knew the corruption check for storing was separate from the corruption check required by Mithril, I just wanted to make sure of the order of effects.

Cheers!

Bandobras Took wrote:Cards with multiple actions are declared in reverse order so they will resolve in order.

This applies to cards being resolved. Mithril and the passive conditions (when stored, x/y happens) it has set up are already in play.

While it would be tempting to say you simply resolve everything as written on the card, I think the actions of playing the extra item and the dwarven corruption checks should be looked at separately. If the storing occurs during org phase, they both trigger. And that means the player storing Mithril would get to choose the order in which to declare/resolve them.

My apologies, I interpreted "when it is resolved" from the Balrog rules differently.

I do not think that an action that player may take is the action caused by passive condition. By definition.
There are many cards that state that player may something "when", of "if".
Why (do not) use passive conditions timing in case of Farmer Maggot?

Second problem:

[...] When Mithril is stored, each Dwarf in play must immediately make a corruption check modified by ‐3.

CRF, Rulings by Term, Stored Cards wrote:Stored cards are not considered to be in play, except for uniqueness.

CRF, Rulings by Term, Passive Conditions wrote:A card causing an action as a result of a passive condition must be in play when the
action resolves, or else the action is canceled.

So at the moment when alleged action caused by passive condition (corruption check) would resolve the Mithril is not in play. And corruption checks do not happen (hurray).

--> Konrad, but don't the rules also say that card text takes precedence over rules? In this case, as Mithril is being stored, the corruption checks take place.

Eyelid wrote:--> Konrad, but don't the rules also say that card text takes precedence over rules? In this case, as Mithril is being stored, the corruption checks take place.

What I'm trying to say is that cc caused by storing Mithril is not an action caused by passive condition.
So, OK - a card text takes precedence over rules - but it is not relevant here (in my opinion).

Or you could just say what I've said loudly and often: that both the rules and rulings are a pile of spaghetti and need to be reworked from the ground up.

In this particular case I just say that (and why) passive condition stuff is not applicable to Mithril.

Konrad Klar wrote:I do not think that an action that player may take is the action caused by passive condition. By definition.
There are many cards that state that player may something "when", of "if".
Why (do not) use passive conditions timing in case of Farmer Maggot?

Why isn't Farmer Maggots ability a passive condition? Is it because of the word "may"? Is there a ruling on cards with the word "may"?

traemyn wrote:

Konrad Klar wrote:I do not think that an action that player may take is the action caused by passive condition. By definition.
There are many cards that state that player may something "when", of "if".
Why (do not) use passive conditions timing in case of Farmer Maggot?

Why isn't Farmer Maggots ability a passive condition? Is it because of the word "may"? Is there a ruling on cards with the word "may"?

CRF, Rulings by Term, Passive Conditions wrote:A passive condition causes an action to happen as stated on a card already in play.

If a player takes an action then, the player causes the action, not a passive condition.

Some actions that a player may take, may be taken only under special conditions described on card.
And it is only similarity between such actions and actions caused by passive condition. (And source of confusion, I guess).

LOL who plays Mithril anyway?

Even if the actions themselves aren't actually caused by passive conditions, I think they could be treated the same way for the purposes of timing. They might be classified to be on-going effects created by Mithril (while still in play) that trigger when it is stored... Maybe.

I nominate that animation for the new Council of Elrond Logo/Icon.