Smoke Bomb + Stealth Bot + Mistform

Not sure if this has been found before (a forum search says no), but my group found something interesting in a game the other day:

Nightmist had mistform + necklace out and was at highest HP and tanking for everyone. Wraith got Smoke Bombs out to get her to absorb lowest-hp villain damage as well. Unity gets out Stealth Bot at lowest HP, and the heroes redirect all villain damage to hero targets to it, which then gets redirected to Nightmist and gets lost in the mist.

Is this interpretation correct? If so, is it too good? It's harder to set up and a little bit more fragile than pre-errata'd chastise + stealth bot and only works on villain damage, but that's still a lot of damage prevention.

As long as NM is the hero target with the highest HP, and Stealth Bot is the Hero target with the lowest HP, this should work.

It's a fair amount of setup, only works on villain damage, and is vulnerable to both equipment destruction AND ongoing destruction. But against the right villain, in the right environment, it's a combo that's pretty much a game-winner, yeah.

Sorry to necro this thread, but I have the first two cards of this combo in play and I'm unclear on how they interact.  If Stealth Bot is the lowest HP, is it possible for me to have her take damage for the heroes, or does it always get redirected to the highest HP hero again even after being redirected to Stealth Bot?  I see the two powers as being an infinite loop, except that Stealth Bot is optional, so the game keeps asking you if you want to use Stealth Bot, but every time you "click yes", you hear a little windows "thunk!" noise and the game asks you again, so the only way to proceed is to "click no".  Is this correct, or are the Smoke Bombs possible to override?  In other words, does the check to see whether Smoke Bombs has applied to a given damage instance happen only once, or again and again until the game state is satisfied that their mandatory effect is doing what it has to?

Since it's not clear what happens, I'm ruling for the current game's purposes that Stealth Bot can't accept any damage instances while the Smoke Bombs are in play.  So Unity will be cannibalizing the Bombs next, even though they're sort of handy (well, "quite" handy I'm told).

No it falls under order of operations wheer you may choose the order the effects resolve so you could send the damage to either of them.

This is correct;  OoO doesn't stop things from happening unless their conditions stop being met, and Stealth Bot and Smoke Bombs don't have that problem, so you would just loop around until you give up on Stealth Botting.

What would happen if it was two mandatory redirections contradicted each other, like Scholar's redirection and Smoke Bombs?

I thought that each redirection only happens once - if Smoke Bombs has already bounced some damage to another target, it can't then do it again if the damage gets bounced back to the original target. Unless it was ruled at some point that they can just keep bouncing it.

They can loop, they can happen infinite times.

Smoke Bombs - Alchemical is an interesting dilemna.

 

For resolutions sake I would say heroes choose the result, but for following current rulings you just broke the game.

I thought this too. Was there an updated ruling?

Its not an issue if Scholar is not the lowest HP hero, as an attack would try to hit whoever is the lowest, smoke bomb to the highest, then Scholars Redirection would resolve bringing it to him sans the -1 damage (because the redirect to Scholar was not due to smoke bombs, at least thats my understanding).

If Scholar was the lowest, thats a bit of a sticky wicket. But ultimately you as the player have to say no more smoke bomb redirects and just concede that scholar will be taking the damage and just take yourself out of the infinite loop.

That was more of a forum consensus doing the "only happens once" thing wasn't it? I think really the only thing that happens once is the -1 damage rider on the smoke bomb redirect

Based on the ruling that's linked in Spiff's FAQ, yeah, infinite redirection is okay and just won't apply the reduction from Smoke Bombs more than once: https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/rules-answers-from-christopher-at-pax-4082

But if you apply Smoke Bombs first and then have Scholar redirect to himself, it certainly seems like the -1 from Smoke Bombs would still apply.

Why?

The first post in that thread, relating the ruling from Christopher, talks about redirecting with Smoke Bombs first and then to Stealth Bot for a total reduction of 2.  Or adding in a redirection to Legacy afterwards, and getting the Smoke Bombs reduction but not the Stealth Bot reduction, because the bot's reduction applies to damage taken by Stealth Bot rather than specifically damage that Stealth Bot has redirected.  Both of those outcomes involve the reduction from Smoke Bombs sticking around through later redirections. So if we're treating the rulings in that post as valid, which we seem to be, there's your answer.

Ok I got ya thanks

 

The problem is neither is optional.  Both are automatic.  The same with Enduring Intercession and Alchemical Redirection.

 

One possible interpretation:  

Both Enduring and Alchemical do not have the "Whenever" language.  Lead, Smoke Bombs and Stealth Bot do.  It is possible that that is significant and that Enduring and Alchemical only redirect the first time, after that redirection they don't care what happens.

Also note that Fanatic's divine sacrifice woes not say whenever, but Naturalist's redirect does.

 

 

I tend to think that is not significant, but you never know.