Kismet's front side says "whenever a hero target deals another hero target 4 or more damage, destroy 1 Jinx card." From this, I can see that you can't punch yourself to make a Jinx card go away (since it says you have to hit another hero target), but other details remain fuzzy.
I've been interpreting it as meaning one hero needs to do 4 damage all at once, but it doesn't say that. Perhaps I could deal four instances of 1-point damage effects and that would do it? Or, there seems to be no reason you couldn't do one damage each round for four rounds, and at the end the Jinx card would be destroyed. Further, there seems to be nothing saying the damage has to come from the same source. Perhaps four heroes could deal one damage each to destroy the Jinx?
A further complication perhaps: if you can do the damage across multiple turns, what if Kismet flips on different turns? She only has the rule about being able to destroy Jinx cards on her front side. Damage done while she's on the side without the rule wouldn't count perhaps, or maybe it would reset the timer for how much damage has been done?
How do others handle destroying Jinx cards with this rule?
4 in a single shot, I just never read it any other way. Otherwise you need to track all damage a hero does to hero targets, individually, so you can tell when you reach the magic 4 on each seperate target, too much hassle for it to be an intended mechanic IMO.
If they wanted it to be in bits and pieces it would have been far easier to give the Jinx's HP and say "When this card takes damage, it deals damage an equal amount of damage to the hero effected by this card", or similar
I would think that the card is talking about one instance of damage of 4 or more. That seems straightforward to me. Never considered the other way a possibility.
So then, Chrono Ranger, using a Compound Bow with a +1 damage bonus in play couldn't remove a Jinx because he'd be dealing two instances of 2-point hits, which wouldn't satisfy the unwritten requirements? That doesn't feel right to me. Requiring the damage to come from a single hero target in a single round seems more reasonable, but I suppose anyone could interpret it in their own way.
That is how I would read it; to me, it's implicit in "whenever". I wouldn't mind an official ruling, and your proposed version (single hero target/single round or turn) would have been a good alternative.
How often do people actually do this? I never have.
Yeah, this only triggers on a single instance of damage which is 4 or more. Compare it to Plague Rat's Shadowy Ambush which plays a card whenever he deals 5 or more damage to a target. Again, you don't track cumulative damage to each target, it triggers on a single instance of 5 or more.
Now, changing it to a single turn or single round might make me actually try to use that trigger. As it is, I pretty much just ignore it.
Why does it feel wrong? How have you interpreted similar instructions on cards in the past, for example how do you deal with Plague Rat's Shadowy Ambush, would a single +1 increase to his damage allow a Vicious Onslaught to trigger it -1 times?
It very clearly has to be a single 4-point wallop, or else it would use language akin to that of Omnitron-X's components. Kismet doesn't say "When a hero takes 4 damage from one other hero in a round", it says "when a hero deals 4 damage to another hero". It's just like Superhuman durability and the second ability of Undaunted; if you don't hit hard enough to trigger it, it doesn't matter how many times you hit, they all resolve normally and trigger nothing.
Chrono-Ranger is mostly built to deal damage in individual instances that start out at 1 or occasionally 2; he has several ways of boosting it, and those boosts count double on Compounded Bow, but conversely the fact that it's 1+1 rather than 2 means that it's less likely to be able to trigger some things, this being one of them.
This wouldn't work because Kismet only destroys her own Jinxes on one side. You'd have to make them immune to damage when she's a Deranged Miscreant. Better just to leave them as Ongoings. (It just dawned on me how good Ra is going to be in a match against Kismet…)
I can't remember the last time I fought Plague Rat, so the comparison to Shadowy Ambush didn't occur to me. I guess I'd have to agree that the (too vague) wording on the card should be interpreted to mean that the 4 points must come from a single attack. It felt correct to me that if I could cobble together 4 points by the end of my turn, I could burn a Jinx card, but I can see that's probably (though not definitively) incorrect.
It's not really all that vague, compared to a lot of the things this game leaves unclarified. In this case, it's pretty clear that the trigger can only occur off instances of 4+ simultaneous damage. It's just like how damage reduction and increase works - if there's one instance, it can apply once, while if there's two instances it can apply twice. But in this case, damage amounts of 3 or less aren't instances at all, because they're not what the Jinx looks for. If you had an effect that said "whenever a hero is dealt 4 or more damage, increase that damage by 1", you wouldn't assume that General Voss's legions would all deal +1 damage after the first couple had nibbled heroes down by a total of 4.
You could consider the wording on Omnitrons components. With them, it clearly indicates that the damage can be additive through the round. I think if Kismet was ment to function similarly, there would have been a caveat listed that extended the threashold past a single instance of damage to all damage through a turn or round.
Another card that works like Shadowy Ambush is in Spite's deck - Collateral Damage. When he deals, I think, something like four damage in a single hit, you destroy a victim. I can't remember how much damage it is because I've never been in a game in which it's been physically possible for him to manage it, so we just tend to basically ignore that card after the initial victim destruction when it gets played.