The question has been raised whether players may tap to support a corruption check that would be caused by the resolution of an on-guard card being revealed (e.g. Weariness of the Heart). Some rule scholars have pointed to the following rule, which was published in CRF 4:
The question then becomes how to interpret the word "immediately" in this CRF 4 ruling. Some players have interpreted it as an adverb modifying "declared" and "resolved", i.e. "A revealed on-guard card retroactively takes effect as though it were both declared-immediately and resolved-immediately prior to the chain of effects during which it was revealed." Since effects that happen “immediately” in MeCCG normally can’t be responded to, this interpretation would mean that responses, such as tapping to aid a corruption check, would not be valid.A revealed on-guard card retroactively takes effect as though it were both declared and resolved immediately prior to the chain of effects during which it was revealed.
However, this interpretation would contradict the original rulebooks explicitly stating that players may respond to on-guard cards:
Importantly, there is another way to read the CRF 4 ruling in English, which would be for "immediately" to modify the adjective "prior", i.e. "A revealed on-guard card retroactively takes effect as though it were both declared and resolved immediately-prior to the chain of effects during which it was revealed." This interpretation would indicate that the on-guard card is treated as having taken effect "just before" the current chain of effects without other actions taken in between, but would not disallow responses in a theoretical sense. This would seem to be the more likely syntax based on the original rulebooks.You and your opponent may both want to perform actions at the same time or actions that are sequenced with respect to other actions. This can happen during your movement/hazard phase (or during your site phase if your opponent has a card on-guard). Such actions almost always include playing a card, tapping a card already in play, and revealing an on-guard card.
The question remains, though, how to actually implement this interpretation in practice. In ICE 539, ICE’s NetRep explained that an on-guard card that has been revealed may be targeted in the current 'resource-inititated' chain of effects as it is already in play:
This means that the on-guard card can’t wait to resolve until the ‘resource-initiated' chain starts resolving and THEN move ‘back in time' to before the current chain; rather, the on-guard card needs to have already resolved and be in play before the 'resource-initiated' chain resolves, so that it can be targeted during the unresolved 'resource-initiated' chain. Therefore, the 'resource-initiated' chain essentially needs to 'pause’ while the on-guard card resolves in a separate 'on-guard-inititated' chain of effects, and then the 'paused' chain resumes once the on-guard card has resolved and can then be targeted in play per the NetRep’s example.Why can The Sun Unveiled target Foolish Words in the same chain of effects (“in response” implies the same chain)? Foolish Words hasn’t resolved yet, so it doesn’t exist as a target, right? OR can you wait for FW to resolve, but play The Sun Unveiled before rolling the influence check?
The key to this mystery is that Foolish Words was played on-guard. On-guard cards are considered to have been declared and resolved immediately prior to the current chain of effects. So, since Foolish Words was resolved prior to the current chain (even though it actually reveals in response to the influence attempt) it is in play and can be canceled by The Sun Unveiled.
Things get a bit more complicated if a passive condition would come into effect upon the resolution of the on-guard chain (e.g. from the chain itself or a card already in play), which, while this situation comes up rarely, would ostensibly also need to then be declared and resolved prior to the current 'resource-initiated' chain. Even still, since the on-guard card should have already resolved prior, it would make sense that any resulting actions from passive conditions should have also resolved (immediately) prior.
This is how all of that would play out:
- Player A declares that they are playing a resource that taps the site. Note that if the resource requires tapping a character, the character must be tapped at this time.
- Player B responds by revealing a valid on-guard card. The revealing of this card is retroactively declared immediately prior to the resource being played, and therefore initiates a new chain of effects immediately prior to the current 'resource-initiated' chain of effects.
- Both players may respond to this superseding 'on-guard-initiated' chain of effects with other valid actions (such as tapping characters to support a corruption check due to the on-guard card).
- Once both players declare that they have finished responding to the on-guard card, the ‘on-guard-initiated' chain of effects resolves, and is treated as retroactively resolving immediately prior to the 'resource-initiated' chain. Any resulting passive conditions would then initiate another chain of effects, immediately after the 'on-guard-initiated’ chain but also immediately prior to the 'resource-initiated' chain (again, since the cards with those passive conditions should have already taken effect retroactively).
- Once all of the resulting effects of the on-guard card have finished resolving and are in effect, the 'resource-initiated' chain resumes. Players can now target any cards that came into play as a result of the on-guard card being revealed and subsequently resolved.
As this interpretation more closely adheres to the original rulebooks and ICE digests, this committee will be updating the aforementioned CRF entry for clarity as follows:
When an on-guard card is revealed in response to a resource being played, it initiates a separate chain of effects that is treated as if it had been declared immediately prior to the chain of effects during which it was revealed. Once players finish responding to this on-guard-initiated chain of effects and the on-guard chain resolves (as well as any passive-condition-initiated chains of effects that would normally follow), the original chain of effects then resumes.
As a final note, when going through all of the cards that potentially may be revealed on-guard, Heedless Revelry stands out as being affected functionally if players are allowed to play cards in response, since a player could potentially tap characters to play more resources (e.g. Noble Hound and the like) before those characters get tapped by Heedless Revelry resolving. ICE 123 tangentially implies that this was not the intended implementation for Heedless Revelry, and moreover, this committee has concerns about the potential play balance issues of not having Heedless Revelry available as a counter to very powerful squatting decks. To that end, while this committee believes that ICE did intend players to have the option to respond to on-guard cards being revealed generally, we also believe that the intention for Heedless Revelry in particular was that characters couldn’t tap in response AND that not allowing that is better for tournament play balance, and so we will also be issuing errata for Heedless Revelry as follows:
Card erratum: Change “Tap all untapped non-Ringwraith, non-Wizard characters in the company.” to “When Heedless Reverly is revealed in this fashion, immediately tap all non-Wizard, non-Ringwraith characters (without players being able to tap those characters in response).”