Many of Captain Cosmic's Constructs give benefits when they take damage. Do they still give those benefits if the damage is enough to destroy the Construct?
They do not, because they will leave play when they take that damage, interrupting the response to that damage, so the response never happens. It works just like damage does, it is trying to complete its effect but fails because it leaves play.
It would be great to get an official ruling (and a general flowchart of how certain play actions get resolved). Even after seeing this post, we're still having a debate in our group whether the interpretation is correct.
The debate generally centers on a couple of different things.
First, the FAQ has a section that says that a card is still in effect during is destruction, meaning that the card still triggers its power because it is still alive to be triggered by damage.
The second argument, along the same lines, is that damaging something is a distinct action from destroying it (because among other things, damage can occur and even reduce something to 0 without destroying it, if the right cards are in play.) I think the closest we've got to a definitive ruling here would be the game play for baron blade in the computer game; I believe if you take him out while he has backlash field up, it goes right to end game.
Anyway, the difference in opinion over these greatly affects the power level of Captain Cosmic.
Here's a stab at writing these interpretations as a series of steps
Interpretation 1
1. Apply damage
2. Check if target died
3. If target died, apply any cards or effects based on the cards destruction, and then remove it from play
4. Apply effects based on the card taking damage.
interpretation 2
1. Apply damage
2. Apply effects based on the card taking damage.
3. Check if target died
4. If target died, apply any cards or effects based on the cards destruction, and then remove it from play
There's a spreadsheet floating around somewhere which holds our current unoffical damage timing rules. It's closer to interpretation 1, but much more complicated.
The spreadsheet is on the forums? On the Internet somewhere?
It’s number 1. Once something is destroyed, it is immediately removed from play, unless it has an on destruction effect. This question came up during playtesting, and it purposely has the same wording as Sad Bot, which has the same ruling.
The original ones had wording that they triggered when damaged or destroyed that got removed becaue it unbalanced his deck. The action the construct would take is interrupted by the HP = 0 or less, and it is removed from play, once removed from play the effect stops because the text is no longer in play.
Damage timing spreadsheet here. Pydro started it, I did a ton of updates. It hasn't been officially validated, but it is based on our best understanding of official rulings.
This came up again last night in a RL game I was playing with AlexxKay. It was frustrating as I was playing Capt Cosmic and kept having constucts wiped out before their "when damaged" abilities would have kicked in. However, on reading through the Damage Timing Spreadsheet Alexx linked to, I agree that this makes the most sense.
If destroying a villain target would prevent its "when damaged" ability from triggering, I'd be in favor of it, so I suspect my dislike of this is really just that it limited a hero I was playing -- so I just have to suck it up and recognize that being destroyed interrupts a target's ability to use a "when damaged" ability (otherwise it would state "when damaged or destroyed")
This makes me sad, but it is porbably the correct way to do. I'll try a few games like this, but I suspect we may end up houseruling it for our local group.
Both Syphon and Conduit used to have language that it acted when the construct was destroyed, but it actually caused the effect to happen twice in the instance of the construct being destroyed, since the On destruct wording held the card in place while both the damage dealt text and the destruction text activated.
The wording needed to seperate them into two clauses and put the on-destruct first was just confusing and too wordy.
It also needed to avoid Captain Cosmic triggering the effects by destroying his own cards, conservation of energy was one of his strongest carsd early on, even after infinite links were gotten rid of, because it coudl trigger Syphon and Conduit and then let you play/draw cards.
So you are looking at something like:
Play this card next to a hero character card.
When this card is destroyed by a non-hero card effect that hero may use a power.
Whenever this card is dealt damage that hero may use a power.
Which is still able to fit on the card, but is wordy and fiddly, and would be the first time on-destruct text would come before other wording that could trigger.
The effect isn't bad though, and isn't wholly out of sync with the original intent, go with it if you want to.
How about:
> Play this card next to a hero character card.
Whenever this card is dealt damage, even if that damage destroys it, that hero may use a power.
It's a bit fiddly, but it's pretty clear how it's supposed to be handled.