Just thought I'd ask for some clarification on a broad rule. From what I understand, if two cards would come into effect at the same time, the one that was played first takes precedence, correct? So, if Legacy has both fortitude and superhuman durability in play and would normally take five damage, he would instead take either one damage or four damage, depending on which was played first?
See, assuming I am interpreting this correctly, I have two serious problems with this rule. First, it seems incredibly arbitrary and silly, and actually means that your cards are frequently going to be interfering with one another if not played in exactly the right order. Second, it forces the players to keep track of what order they played there cards in. In the example above, it is frequently the case that one can go for many many turns before superhuman durability actually triggers, since many villains prefer to kill the heros with bugbites. As a result, there are many cases in which by the time it actually comes into effect, no one remembers which one you played first.
As a result, my group tends to house rule that when two effects activate simultaneously, the players get to decide what order they happen in. Perhaps this makes the game a bit easier, but it also streamlines the process tremendously, and makes the game much simpler to keep track of.
Again, if I am misinterpreting the rules here and its actually much easier than I'm giving it credit for, please inform me, I would very much appreciate it. I would like to think I'm just making things harder than they need to be.
I think when it all comes down to it, the rule of the day is "Have fun." For some people, this would include following all the rules to the letter (such as the arbitrary rule you are speaking of). On the other hand, other people would be happier with house rules to streamline the entire thing. After all, this game isn't a competetive one: it's cooperative. The main point of it is to have fun :)
Basically, play however you want to :) No one is stopping you :)
You are interpreting the rules correctly. You've also hit upon one of the most common house rules. Many people play where you choose the order hero cards take effect, while keeping villain and environment effects in their strict rules-as-written order. This keeps the challenge mostly high, while eliminating annoying situations like this where you get a 3 damage swing because you played the cards in the wrong order.
I play rules as written, but I totally understand why people use this rule and it's not drastically overpowering. Most of the effects it tends to boost are only situationally useful anyway.
And really, it doesn't tend to matter very often, but I've never really had an issue remembering when cards came into play when it did matter.
I definitely understand the interest in the home rule, though. Just don't use it, myself.
I wanted to make one additional comment. Not trying to be argumentative or anything - just want to make sure we all have full context on this.
When designing a game, some very challenging decisions have to be made. For those of us who have played Magic, we've seen the more complex side, where a 50+ page (I have no idea how big the Magic Comprehensive Rules are at this point) plain-text document of hard-core logic and elaboration is needed in order to manage the challenging situations that arise because of timing issues, the versatility of the game's fundamental structure, and the impacts caused by the specific implementations within that structure.
To avoid something that complex in SotM, a game with close to that level of versatility, the >G designers had to come up with something that would be straight-forward and clean, something that would allow for ease of play over complexity. One of the decisions made to avoid the timing rules Magic had to come up with was to implement the card-order rule, which resolved a great many issues and provided a clean structure in which things interact.
What you see as "incredibly arbitrary and silly", I see as elegant and clean. But that's my opinion on it - I'm not saying your opinion is wrong (it isn't - it's an opinion ), I just want to make sure you understand the context.
Alright, I guess that all makes sense, and thank you Katsue, I hadn't thought of putting the cards in order like that, we usually just arrange our cards however we want once they've been played. I may indeed stick with they whatever order you want rule for the hero cards. I admit, it doesn't come up that often, the example of fortitude and superhuman durability is just one of the more exgregious examples of some unfortunate results of the rules as is. a difference of three damage is quite huge, and can make or break a game, especially if it happens multiple times. It just seems odd and doesn't make sense to me thematically. Why can Legacy practically shrug off one one five damage hit and get pummelled by another one, simply because he played his cards in a different order? I can see the logic behind it as a way of keeping things orderly, but it still doesn't make much sense to me, and I feel like it makes the cards less reliable, since you can't always count on them to be as helpful, even when faced with the exact same problem. It seems like penalizing a character for something completely out of there control (i.e. what order they draw certain cards). I can see your point, but I'm still left unsatisfied by this particular rule.
I play my cards alphabetically... stopping at J to play any international cards that may be around.
Ha, but seriously. I see your point about it being difficult to keep track of at times and all, so to that extend we just do our best in figuring out the order and if a question comes up... well we just fudge it to whatever is most fun. I don't think there is anyway of ruling it that would make it avoid some sort of conflict in all possible scenarios.
As far as penalizing players for random card draw... isn't that kind of the point though? You can only play the cards you draw, so in a way that penalizes by not letting you use powers or one-shots you haven't drawn yet. Thematically a hero should have all his tools available pretty much from the start, not have them pop up mid-fight as you draw the card. The way I reconcile that is by thinking of it as what was possible for the character to do at the time based on situational or physical constraints. In the case of card order allowing you to reduce one instance of damage as opposed to another instance of the same damage based on the order the cards were played, I see that as maybe Legacy being able to see one attack coming and properly brazing for it, while the other caught him unaware or on uneven footing, etc.
), I just want to make sure you understand the context.