Doesnt matter. The point is there are times where static effects do infact have timing
So we are saying that the whole informant ruling only applies to one-shots?
Thats how I play it, but I always tend to re-evaluate everything when new information appears.
Took the words out of my mouth.
I'm now lost. I've got what Christopher said, but not what it implies, with the Hairtriggers and the Guards and the whatnot.
Has there ever been an actual definition of what's a static effect and what's not (not what we think, but an actual definition from a designer I can link to), and what the actual difference is between them?
Also, we all take as fact that Hairtrigger Reflexes can't kill Fowl cards before they can cause Matriarch to deal her damage, but Christopher's ruling seems to contradict that. Is there a link I can use the for the FAQ that points to the original ruling about Hairtriggers not killing Fowls as fast as it seems it should? And if there is, why does Christopher's newest ruling not contradict or override his earlier one?
Honestly Spiff I think the term and definition of "static effect" was a forum creation to justify and explain timing rulings before the Order of Operations ruling effectivly dealt with all of them. As far as I am concerned it is not an official in-game term.
Hairtrigger would still cause Matriarch to backlash by killing fowls (as that target is still a fowl) and it still would cause an extra card play because regardless of when it was killed, the fowl was still played which seems to all fit.
Basically the way I look at it is that there are no shortcuts to break someones effects. A continuous effects (Whenever something happens do something) will always fire even if the card they are on is destroyed in the process of firing that effect (ie, killing the informant, killing a fowl)
No idea how that helps you spiff, but i've gotten so confused lately over the order of operations and simultaneous effects.
I generally play it as all effects fire in simultaneous situations mostly to card order, unless its among hero cards andthen its the best effect for the hero among their own cards (but if the villain is part of it, the get precedence)
i doubt thats right but i just got confused following everything and just play for fun :p
I have always played this the opposite way, and the Chairman is almost impossible to beat even without this ruling. With it, I don't see any point in even trying to beat him. If the Broker hits the table, and one of the heroes doesn't have a damaging innate in play, the heroes might as well just concede. One bonus card play from a 15-card deck is enough to pretty much doom them, so if they can't kill the Informant with a card without something even worse occurring as a result, then they really can't function. I think this is a really bad ruling, and not at all consistent with other effects in the game (such as the Toxic Seaweed + Bio-Engineering Beam ruling).
Simultaneous effects just all have the same trigger. So like multiple "When a card is played, do X" effects would all be simultaneous and resolve in order of player choice. But they would all be triggered.
The only thing thats a little wonky is that "When damage is dealt" triggers are actually simultaneous with other damage modifiers, as seen with the way Fortitude can be applied before or after Super Human Durability's effect. That would also umbrella most redirection effects like Driving Mantis. So Fixer with Pipe Wrench/Driving Mantis being hit with 1 instance of damage can choose to trigger the redirect before applying the -1 from Pipe Wrench (which an instance of 0 damage would not allow the redirection to trigger)
Yes, Chairman is supposed to be hard, you missed that memo I guess.
And this has nothing to do with Toxic Seaweed/Bio-Engineering. Its not remotley close to similar buddy. Comparing Apples and Oranges will never work in your favor man, just wont happen.
It is times like this when I wonder if we simply overthink things on the forum. Perhaps seeking exact syntax justifications for what seems to me to be more based on the spirit of the rules.
Did you play a card? Yes. The Informant activates and plays a card. What card did you play? Activate fire blast and kill informant.
Did a villain target get played? Yes. Hair trigger will shoot it, but you can't shoot something if you don't know what it is, what is it? Gene-bound Guard which has DR 1.
End of Days is destroying everything. It destroys Bee-bot. Bee-bot gets to destroy a card, destroys End of Days. End of Days can't continue destroying stuff when it is in the trash
Will it work perfectly all the time? probably not, but even if it isn't mechanically consistent it feels thematically consistent to me
Beat the chairman several times with the Broker playing cards even as we kill her with one shots. So... yeah.
There's a difference between "hard" and "definitionally impossible". What happened to "any hero team can beat any villain"? If you don't have Haka or Ra or Parse or a similar innate-damager, how are you ever supposed to win a game when Informant enters play, which thanks to the Operative (unless you can kill her in 4 turns, probably less) she always will? The Chairman is more than hard enough the way I've been playing him, and it wasn't even on Advanced (well, once).
And this has nothing to do with Toxic Seaweed/Bio-Engineering. Its not remotley close to similar buddy.
They are totally similar. One question is about whether a power resolves before checking for triggers; the other is about whether a card play resolves before checking for triggers. Why should they not have the same answer? What is this "check for triggers before some game events resolve but after others do" nonsense?
Same. The Chairman is hard, but not unbeatable, and an extra card play every now and again doesn't take him from hard to unbeatable. We've always played that the Informant still goes off, and we still one. Additionally, in numerous games, we've left her out to fish for Prison Breaks early.
And you think "definitionally impossible" isn't just massive hyperbole? No one can take you seriously that way.
No man. One question is whether a power needs to fully resolve before considered "used" to meet "on power use" triggers. This is about weather playing a card nessesarily comes before the effect text of that card. You are lacking understanding of important nuances in the arguments here.
There was an official ruling that static effcts do not have timing, that caused trouble when the ruling that Fortitude and Super Human resolve in order of play.
The ruling on static effects not having timing was on a question of damage modifiers like Imbued Fire and close quarters. Leading to the ideal that static effects are ones that do not state a condition but have a constant effect, like damage +1 or -1, all damage is fire, or all ongoings are equips.
It is even more complex since our entire idea of "triggers" is called into question now that we know responses to cards entering play do not trigger like we thought before.
The entire Static effect thing came out of an official ruling.
Here is the first use of "Static Effect" I can find.
I can't think of another time when it would even be a question. If an ongoing or equip, or heck even a target card said "when this card enters play destroy a target with 2hp or less," then I guess we'd deal with it that way too.
The only question for non-One-shots would be a card that prevents cards from being played from the villain deck.
Take Down is a great example, and a perfect test case for how the court would see static effects vs. reaction effects. Take Down says "Villain cards cannot be played," when it enters play does Informant get to play a card, or does she go to play a card, only to find an effect that stops her?
This would, to me, seem the same as the Hair-trigger/Gene-Bound Guard question. So you know where I lean on that.
I would say that Take-Down does stop the Informant from playing a card, but Mistbound would not, since it is a one-shot, and the discarding and selecting of a deck will not have occurred when Informant plays a card, so at that time there is nothing stopping her from playing a card.
NOTE: You mention "before they can cause Matriarch to deal her damage" above, but the issue is about whether or not The Matriarch gets to play another card, not deal damage.
Christopher originally ruled that when HtR killed a Fowl card, The Matriarch still got to play another card. He was later convinced that the text on the cards did not support that ruling [1], and thus the latest version of the Matriarch's deck has moved the text about playing another card from the Fowl cards themself to the Matriarch's gameplay.
Here's Christopher's original ruling on HtR vs. Fowl cards: https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/hairtrigger-reflexes-vs-fowl
[1] Order of operations – both HtR and card play triggered on the Fowl coming in to play, so in the past you would do the trigger from the card that was in play first, which would be HtR. HtR would destroy the Fowl and thus the trigger for another Fowl would be gone. Even with the more recent ruling on order of play, players could choose the order. With the text for playing another card moved to the Matriarch's setup, players can no longer destroy the trigger for playing another card. So, even with the more recent ruling on order of play, although players could choose to destroy the Fowl card before another card is played, the text for playing another card is still valid and the other card still gets played.
It's not by much. Chair has only a 15-card deck at the start of the game. I've had him virtually always pull an Underboss as his first card play, then another one for the Operative, and often that happens twice. So by turn 3 all the Underbosses are out, leaving 10 more cards, and assuming the Broker was the last to turn up, playing one of those ten cards when you go to kill her, unless you have Haka in position 1 or something. Meanwhile, you've probably had to kill at least the Contract and the Deputy in order to have any chance at all, and that means that the 2 Prison Breaks in those 10 cards are going to undo all that work and leave you getting riddled with bullets again. I was not exagerrating by much. Both of my two Chairman victories have been absolutely skin-of-the-teeth, and one of them was due to a rules error on top of it (though there's a fair chance that game might still have been won otherwise). A single card play, even if it's the weakest one (Perfect Human Specimens), is very much enough to tip the scales.
Credibility is priceless. Don't be so quick to throw yours down the drain. I'll show myself out.
@Skippy: I see what you are saying and I think I pretty much agree. Take-Down would be a great case study of the interaction.
Setting aside that some people (including sometimes me) rather enjoy digging in to the syntax, I don't think that the spirit of the rules is always clear enough to avoid needing syntactic distinctions. If everyone at the table agrees, great, do your thing. As much as I like to focus on just having a good time, however, I have run in to situations both at the table and online where it's been quite frustrating to not be able to easily reach agreement.
Hell, ive beat the Chairman in Rook City, when he is getting Scum and Villany extra plays + the Broker extraplays. With Expatriette as one of my heroes. So... yeah. Its possible. Nighly impossible is nice and all, but its obvious that people beat him without that ruling given the... dun dun duh... Statistitics project... He is only lost to about 43% of the time, in about 250 games. Id say that's not 'highly impossible' - and from old data we already know all the non promo heroes at least have one win against him.
This I can totally agree with, the main thing is to have a good time, not get everything right.
Some of us really, Really enjoy digging into the mechanics of this game.
I wouldn't want anyone to think our arguments are that important, we just like digging into things.
One of the problems with a game designed by a English Major is we have a game more about the experience of playing than the rules of playing.
By problems I mean why this game is awesome, because the experience is far more than just the rules and cards, that's the beauty of Sentinels, and also why we get to argue over semantics because there are little cases like this that drive the technical minded ones a bit crazy.
I also just reread through and saw that I referred to a test case and "the court," it's been 9 years since I've dug through Supreme court rulings for school.
sigh.
Expat is actually really good against the Chairman, which I found surprising since she's weak in most other matches. Being able to choose between Shotgunning the Operative and SMGing down all the Thugs is a lot of great utility. When I mentioned the "any hero team" part, I was thinking along the lines of, say, Argent Adept plus Bunker plus Absolute Zero (original, not Elemental Wrath). Or maybe you're Tachyon and you draw two Blinding Speeds, a Lightning Reflexes and a HUD Goggles. Lots of heroes just don't have much ability to contribute against the Chairman, and anything that makes him even slightly more unforgiving is a Big Deal.
A good rule of thumb for game design is that every situation should have an answer. With this ruling, if you don't happen to have a damaging innate, there is nothing whatsoever you can do to stop Informant from playing an extra card. And that's bad design. (It is a rare example of bad design in a mostly excellent game, but it stings particularly because it's not inherent in the game itself, it's entirely due to Christopher's handed-down edict, which I strongly believe he should reconsider.) As long as you can use a quick Charge to kill the Informant as the first action of the round, she's merely a threat. Without that option, she's pretty much an insurmountable one.
So… yeah. Its possible. Nighly impossible is nice and all, but its obvious that people beat him without that ruling given the… dun dun duh… Statistitics project… He is only lost to about 43% of the time, in about 250 games.
This is completely meaningless, because there is no way for the statistics to prove whether every one of those games was played according to this Informant ruling. Heck, there's no way to know if any of them were AT ALL legal. I know for a fact that one of my six Chairman games, one of only two that I won, was largely clinched due to a FILTER Spy shooting at him when I'd forgotten he was immune to environment damage. That game ended with two heroes incapped, Nightmist at 1 HP when she went into Mist Form, and Scholar at 5 with Flesh to Iron. Would we have won if Chairman had kept a few more HP and not dealt relatiation damage to the Spy which helped him die before he could turn around and shoot us? I don't know. But even though I played that game at least slightly wrong, it's part of your statistics. They do NOT prove much of anything, because they don't archive all of the data that might be relevant, nor is there any way to verify that the data is all accurate. Hell, someone could just lie on the submit form if they wanted to try to prove something was true when it wasn't ("Nerf Omnitron, he's beaten me twelve games straight" or the like), though I doubt anyone would bother.