Unique Short Events

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the JabberwocK
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Bandobras Took wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2018 6:40 pm Imprecise, perhaps. It is totally possible to read Van's quote as saying that News of Doom's mechanics are unique, not that News of Doom has this property by reason of the Unique keyword.
But News of Doom's mechanics are not unique. So either way, we are left guessing.
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Konrad Klar
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There are not a cards with text "may be played only once".
Something similar can be achieved by making a card Unique AND (adding phrase "remove the card from play" OR making the card immune for effects that would discard it [not for short-events, long-events, creatures]).

Unluckily News of Doom is removed from game. If it would be obstacle for playing its other copy, then presence of Aragorn II in play after removing from a game the Strider breaks a rules.
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Bandobras Took
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@Konrad: I don't think so; only Strider has been removed from the game. Is there a rule that says one may not play a different manifestation once a given manifestation has been removed from the game?

@Jabberwock: News of Doom is the only hazard to remove a card by name from the game.
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Konrad Klar
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Bandobras Took wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:37 pm @Konrad: I don't think so; only Strider has been removed from the game. Is there a rule that says one may not play a different manifestation once a given manifestation has been removed from the game?
There is no such rule and this is just a reason for which Aragorn II may be in play even if its manifestation (or its copy*) has been removed from game.

Not being in game means not being in play also for purposes of uniqueness.
Since removing from a game a card has such effect on the game as a card not included in deck/sideboard (anti-FW sideboard addition in game not against FW).

*) that may be done by the Desire All for Thy Belly.
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Bandobras Took
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I think Van's indication is that a card removed specifically by name from the game may not be played by either player, as opposed to a card generically removed from the game (e.g. Dark Tryst "remove this card" or Desire All "remove the card").
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Konrad Klar
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For the Desire All for Thy Belly it is natural - because name of a card to be removed from a game is variable.
The same for Knowledge of the Enemy (after errata).
For other cards (that I know) that remove from a game themselves and refer to themselves generically - they are non-unique.

Does this pattern changes the meaning of phrase "remove from a game"?
"Remove from a game" means something here, and something else there?
Knowledge of the Enemy wrote:Stolen Knowledge. Playable on an untapped character at a Shadow-hold [S] or Dark-hold [D] or if his company faced an agent attack and all of its strikes failed. Tap character. Can be stored at a Haven [H]-only if stored do you receive its marshalling point. If stored, you may discard this card and force one non-unique hazard to be removed from the play as you see your opponent discard it through a mechanism of the game.
CRF, Errata (cards), Knowledge of the Enemy wrote:Removes cards from the game, not just from play.
So distinction between "removing from play" and "removing from game" is concept of ICE, not something imagined by some interpreters.
The Ithil-stone wrote: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.
This card (under some condition) is placed in out of play pile. Because it is unique this prevents a playing its other copy by other player. It refers to itself by name.
Why such complication if a phrase "remove from the game" (plus reference by name) would give the same result?

Or from what the desire to break a logic behind the use "removing Strider from the game" in text of Strider and will of distinguishing between "removing from play" and "removing from game" expressed in errata to Knowledge of the Enemy?
To save the sense of some Van's opinion?
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DamienX207
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Much love to you rules gurus for tackling this stuff, and not trying to step on y'all's toes, but for what it's worth: I don't see a distinction between "remove from the game", "remove from play", how a given card ended up in out-of-play pile, etc. Obviously ICE was not great about keeping rules text uniform between cards (/understatement). There's no "out-of-the-game pile"; cards removed from the game go to the "out-of-play" pile, and the rules clearly state that cards in the out-of-play pile count as in-play for the purposes of uniqueness -- it doesn't matter how a character ended up in out-of-play pile; once s/he's there, s/he ain't coming back into play on either side.

RE: KotE, the fact that the card literally says "remove from the play" (i.e. not proper English) implies to me that it was supposed to say "remove from the game" and the errata was just clarifying that (as opposed to being a weird way of saying "off to the side"), etc.

& Seems to me that Strider just needs a bit o' errata if it somehow doesn't have it already. :)
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Konrad Klar
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DamienX207 wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 7:08 pm There's no "out-of-the-game pile"; cards removed from the game go to the "out-of-play" pile, and the rules clearly state that cards in the out-of-play pile count as in-play for the purposes of uniqueness -- it doesn't matter how a character ended up in out-of-play pile; once s/he's there, s/he ain't coming back into play on either side.
There is also no pile for anti-FW sideboard addition not included in main sideboard if none of the opponents is FW.
Why?
Maybe because the cards are not in game.
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DamienX207
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Correct .......

* There aren't piles before the game has begun.

I see your point about the wording on Strider. However, KotE clearly states the removed card must be non-unique -- so that random errata about "from the game" and "from play" is pointless and (to my mind) clearly intended to fix the English typo rather than make some sort of distinction between "out of the game" and "out of play". Are there any other examples where this distinction would matter, other than Strider (and obviously News/Valar)? In the case of DofTB, one would think that a giant spider eating a character from the deck would mean that the character is dead and can't be replayed by either player, rather than just being out of the game for 1 player and not the other... :P

Still seems like the simplest fix for all of this would be a simple CoE clarification that "out of the game" and "out of play" are the same place (the "out-of-play pile") and an errata on Strider that it doesn't affect uniqueness if it's removed from play in its particular way ...
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Bandobras Took
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Konrad Klar wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 6:28 pmWhy such complication
Very well put. :)

I'm merely indicating what I think Van meant. The presence of alternate wording on another card achieving the same effect doesn't alter that, any more than the presence of "bring a faction into play" on Old Road would affect a reading of Hour of Need.
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Konrad Klar
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DamienX207 wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 7:33 pm Are there any other examples where this distinction would matter, other than Strider (and obviously News/Valar)?
Yes...
There are at least two.
And they are a two skeletons in cupboard.
CRF, Tournaments, The Character Draft wrote:Characters left over from the character pool may be placed either in the play deck, or
out of play, but may not be placed in the sideboard.
Balrog, Getting Ready to Play, Miscellaneous wrote:If you are a Balrog player, your opponent may not play any of the following cards:
The Balrog (Ally), The Black Council, Durin’s Bane, Balrog of Moria, Reluctant
Final Parting.
However, if at any time your opponent has one of these cards in his hand, he may
remove it from play and bring one card from his sideboard into his play deck.
I must admit. Nothing about removing a cards from game.
Should an unique card removed from play be placed in out-of-play pile?

If so then The Balrog (Ally), or Durin’s Bane, or Balrog of Moria, would effectively block a playing The Balrog character.
And if one of mentioned above cards would be in out-of-play pile, it would block a removing from play others.
Presence The Balrog character in play would block a removing from play other its manifestation.

There is a big chance that characters left over from the character pool and placed in out-of-play pile will be unique and even multiple unique copies of the same card.

For the three reasons (including Strider) I am convinced that idea of removing a card from game as activity different from removing a card from play is necessary.
Alternative solution would be negating the difference and arbitrary deciding which of unique cards in out-of-play pile counts for purposes of uniqueness, and which does not.

In the two quoted rules, using "placed in [...] out of play", "remove it from play" instead "remove from game" causes visible problems.

If it comes to News of Doom, Favor of the Valar, that (by their text) remove itself "from game".
They would say "from play" and there would not be a problem (and Van would be right/happy); they just would work differently (could be played once per game, not a once per player).
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DamienX207
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Thanks KK, appreciate your insight as always.
I do have to laugh, though, at those rules you quoted -- yet another example (is somebody keeping count?) of ICE/Van/CoE not being as technically specific with terminology as they should have been, and leaving the rest of us in this quagmire of confusion however many years later. :)
Obviously I'm not a Rules Wizard like yourselves, but as someone with a strong grasp of English and an interest in this thread since I've been getting e-mail notifications of new posts ever since I replied to my boy Jabberwock ... :P :P

It seems to me like those 2 rules (character draft and Balrog unplayables) clearly need to be fixed since they both use the "out of play" terminology which in most cases would imply in-play uniqueness, when presumably nobody plays that way nor would that have been ICE's intention.

In that case, then, it would seem to me that the clearest fix in the interest of preserving ICE's intentions but also making the rules more intuitive across the board would be:
- Clarify ruling that any cards "removed from the game", "removed from play", etc go to the out-of-play pile and count as being in-play for uniqueness (fixes Jab's initial question, gets rid of that weird KotE ruling, clarifies Belly, etc).
- Re-word the character draft and Balrog unplayable rules (needs to be done anyway) -- My suggestion would be to change both so that those removed cards DO go to the sideboard, since it looks like that "not the sideboard" bit on the character draft rule was added post-facto (or at least, not in MELE rules or old CoL tournament rules that I'm seeing) so I don't think that's in conflict with ICE's intentions (if that's a concern), and putting those cards in the sideboard is the simplest way to avoid the uniqueness problem and doesn't seem like it would break anything. Yes, you could then get those cards back, but obviously that doesn't matter in the case of Balrog since the card(s) would still be unplayable, and I'd think that putting undrafted characters in the sideboard wouldn't be a significant problem since players are allowed to put them in the play deck to begin with ...
- Errata on Strider that it doesn't count for uniqueness if removed from play with its own ability.

Just my 2 cents! :)
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rezwits
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This was a Chad Martin (NetRep/CoE) ruling...

Some cards (Aware of Their Ways, Longbottom Leaf) state to ‘remove it from play’ and others (Favor of Valar) state ‘remove Favor of Valar from the game”. I feel IT means the specific card played and when in states
THE specific card, it means no one else can play the card.
*** In all cases, the copy of the card that is removed from the game cannot be brought back. If the card is not unique, there is no restriction on another copy being played by you or your opponent.
As of 4/3/21 4:03:21
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All of the rules and rulings found in these PDFs at:
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Theo
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I'm on board with Konrad in there being a distinction between removed from play (including all eliminated characters) and removed from the game. Something that is removed from the game should have no further affect on the game, while the out-of-play pile still affects uniqueness. There is no removed-from-the-game pile because removed from the game means they aren't a part of the game anymore. Cards removed from the game join all the cards that do exist but were't selected by either player to be part of their decks/starting cards/sideboards; those cards have no effect on the game.

My impression was that the (round-based) character draft isn't Officialized? But the characters in the draft were never a part of the game in the first place. The draft is a part of the "steps to get ready to play"[MELE]. Undrafted characters cannot be "removed" from the game when they were never a part of it, so the phrasing "place out of play" (note the difference from "place in out-of-play pile") is not inconsistent with the notion that they are not in any pile of the game and do not affect unique rules.

Van's response was just wrong about News of Doom. If there was some sense that it should have been right, News of Doom is the card that should get the errata "place in the out-of-play pile".
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DamienX207
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How dare you say Van was wrong when we must all uphold every insanely needlessly-complicated ICE/CoL/CoE ruling for the sake of posterity??? ;)
Having out-of-game and out-of-play has no functional difference in vast majority of circumstances and, as shown above, hasn't been upheld even by ICE in their own printings/terminology, so personally I'm in favor of cleaning up the rules for the sake of streamlined gameplay when possible... But of course, I don't expect to make headway with ICE-rules-reform arguments around here. :)
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