So part of the text of the card Kinetic Looter in Chokepoint's deck is "The first time a hero card leaves play each turn, put it face-down in the villain play area."
My question is does a played one-shot enter and leave play for the purposes of this card?
Pretty much. If they are you could have a situation where Into the Stratosphere could put Rook City is Mine! back on top of the Chairman's deck through Ghostly Images coming out.
Take Akash for example. Her deck has many times where, due to order of actions, you can have multiple one-shots all at different stages of resolution trying to resolve. They are certainly in the villain play area as they are taking effect.
If you wanna create a whole new undefined area for one-shots to be played, I'd say thats a little obtuse
Is there a reason why this absolutely 100% cannot possibly be the case? I think it would be a rather cool interaction.
It has been confirmed while Mega Computer testing that One-Shots cannot be Into the Stratosphered. Also, if One-Shots are in play, they cannot leave play with Fixed Point, and I think it was there that we had the ruling that One-Shots aren’t in play.
One-shots are not considered or counted as “cards in play.” That means Into the Stratosphere or Cedistic Dissonant cannot destroy one-shots that are currently being played.
That said, when Kismet has her talisman a one-shot Jinx currently being processed does add to her damage total - I forget what it's called but there's one that deals damage based on the number of Jinxes currently in play and it counts itself among that total. Something like that, anyway. I seem to recall it coming up on the forum before, aaaages ago…
I ran into headaches trying to resolve this card in a game against her as well. I have the feeling that there is a rewording of the card, or of the "play area" rules that can be written that will make it all feel less nebulous. Even if we do figure out the correct method for it's resolution, i do not feel it is one that lends itself to being immediately clear to the player without some rules digging.
Not when you're dealing with a stack of effects. Infinitor is a prime example. You can't send cards to the trash right away because of cards that have multiple actions, which are interrupted by other actions. Even the app shows them entering the play area, even if they're not considered "in play."