Had an epic battle to save The Dreamer today. I want to make sure I played this correctly as it brought up several questions regarding indestructible.
The Dreamer had awakened from her slumber (I.e.-flipped), and had two projections under her card already. The whole team of heroes (Team Leader Tachyon, Argent Adept, Expatriette, and Dark Visionary) are in single digits for HP. We are facing certain destruction on the next villain turn from the Dreamer and two Arachnoids plus whatever she draws.
Dark Visionary, the last hero to go before the environment, plays a Decoy Projection and looks at the environment deck. She sees a Fixed Point and the Atlantean Throne Room. The throne room is not going to be good enough to keep any of us alive, so she rolls the dice on Fixed Point. Now, everything that isn't Fixed Point is indestructible.
The Dreamer plays several more projections, bringing her total to six. They unload on the heroes, but they're indestructible. We start tracking negative hit points. The heroes unload on the projections, with AA taking off the last hit point of the last projection, which are all also indestructible. All attacks on Dark Visionary are redirected to the (indestructible) Decoy Projection. She has two hit points left and enters a Telekinetic Cacoon, just in case. The environment turn comes and Fixed Point is destroyed, triggering the incapacitation of three heroes an the destruction of six Dreamer projections and one Decoy Projection that had soaked about 20 damage. The environment played something harmless. Start of the Villain turn and we win! Right?
My first question is: Did we play that correctly?
Also, do indestructible things go into negative hit points. It would matter for healing. If we can't get below zero, then AA could have healed everyone.
Finally, AA can destroy any non-character card. How would that work while the indestructible modifier is on? I assumed it would do nothing at all, but I wasn't sure. Might it reduce the target to 0 HP? That feels like it would break…something.
I believe indestructible targets do go into negative hitpoints. Typically I don't actually track that, but if there is a real chance to heal them (like here) you should.
If something is indestructible it just can't be destroyed. Nothing else (like reducing it to zero HP) happens instead.
Cool. It had been a while since I played. I'm glad I remembered and interpreted things the right way. And equally glad that such an epic game ended in a victory.
I find it to be incorrect. Heroes are not destroyed. Destroying something means it is removed from play and into the appropiate trash. Heroes however become incapacited. When a hero reaches 0 or fewer health that hero is not destroyed, it simply flips. Since the flipping condition on heroes are when they are below 0 and not when they are destroyed they will still become incapped even if they are now indestructible.
I could have sworn the rulebook said that happened when a Hero is destroyed, but you are right it does technically say they become incapacitated when reduced to zero or fewer HP.
The rules for the villain character card has the caveat “Unless stated otherwise,” so I think they are clearly protected by Fixed Point (although Dreamer specifically says that you lose if she is reduced to zero HP). Personally, I would still rule that being indestructible prevents a hero from being incapacitated, but the rules are not as clear on this as I thought they were. If not, it raises the question of whether their other cards can be removed from the game, since being indestructible usually prevents a card from leaving play for any reason.
I think the trigger has to be when they would be destroyed as opposed to when they drop to 0hp, as at least one villain has a one-shot which destroys hero targets with 3 or fewer HP, so if the trigger was negative HP then it wouldn't activate, and the hero would be destroyed.
Either A: In the rule book they need to change the wording to the same as Dreamer so that way it includes both 0 or fewer and destroyed by something like Ennead's card (forget what... Grave beckons maybe?). Or B: When a hero does somehow get destroyed by another way other than Incap it removes that hero from the game, no incap abilities or anything. Honestly B sounds fairly exciting, adds a little more scaryness to the game, though I think A is most likely the route that things will go.
I think the rules are pretty clear what happens if they are reduced to 0 or fewer, as it specifically states what happens. The only thing that is not clear is what happens why they are destroyed, but as of right now I think the only non-hero that can do it is the Ennead though.
The Way I always interpreted it was this: Hero is reduced to 0 HP, Destroyed Triggers, Incapicated instead of destroyed triggers and the hero card flips. Same thing happens if a hero gets hit with a "destroy target with X or fewer HP" or something similar.
Another thing to bear in mind regarding heroes being "destroyed" is the Unforgiving Wasteland card, where it says that stuff destroyed by the environment while that card is in play is removed from the game entirely.
Wait. Does that imply that destroy doesn't affect character cards? Hmm, that sounds familiar. Wasn't there something a while back about using a destroy effect on Baron Blade's 1st side?
That's why his first side now says "When Baron Blade would be destroyed, flip Baron Blade's Villain Character Cards instead"… but that was added because his second side is not the same villain as his front side, he's essentially a second character and destroying him would have skipped the whole second side of the villain.
If/How this affects something without HP on its second side is… debatable
Personally, I think the "reduced to 0 = flip" interpretation is clunky and makes things like Fixed point behanve in unintuitive ways. I don't know what the actual ruling is going to be, but the simplest way is to say that >=0 HP means destroyed, which is the same for all targets. For Hero character cards destroyed = flip to incapacitated and for villain character cards destroyed = win.
I'm inclined to think that Unforgiving Wasteland is meant to remove character cards from the game when they are reduced to zero HP. It seems like kind of the whole point of the card. Also, the other day I played Iron Legacy in Final Wastelend and Unforgiving Wasteland was in play when an environment target dealt the last point of damage to him. I REALLY WANT him to have been removed from the game. DON'T TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME. ;P
Hmm, does that mean that any effects applied to his front side (such as Twist the Ether or any of Chrono Ranger's bounties) would be destroyed when he flips?
Cosmonaut, his character card specifically says he is immune to damage from the environment, so that couldn't have happened.
Ameena, I asked Christopher in person about the bounty/flipping thing (regarding the talisman, but it would apply to any character card with a target on both sides) and the bounties stay on the target when they flip, since they are still the same card. So on one hand, you get to keep Twist the Ether, Impale, and the like, but on the other you don't get to cash in your bounties by the card flipping.
Unless, of course, the other side is not a target, like the Ennead or the Operative.