My fleet takes 2 hits from enemy fire, allocated one hit to each Dread so they are now damaged but not destroyed.

Opponent plays Direct Hit! card ( Play : Immediately after the ship has been damaged) at same time that I attempt to play Emegency repairs. ( Play : At any time)

Which card fires first?

As per the rules,
You don't immediately announce which action card you're going to play when you want to play an action card.

When you want to play an action card, you announce something to the effect of "I want to play an action card!"
Then everyone else has a chance to say the same thing.

Then in Initiative Order, the action cards are resolved.

So whomever has the lowest initiative value from their Strategy Card gets to play their card first. (Except the Naalu, they always get to play their card first because they always have an initiative of zero)

To follow up on FunkyBunch's statement, this means that if the lower-initiative player has Emergency Repairs, it fires first thus protecting the Dreadnought. If the Direct Hit player is lower, it goes first and Emergency Repairs is useless.

However, in this situation, it's almost obvious what card is being played. Even if you don't announce it, if a player says they want to play an action card after you've damaged a Dreadnought, it's pretty certain they are playing Direct Hit! Thus, the Dreadnought player should be able to look at initiative to see if the Emergency Repairs will be usable or not.

I agree with the consensus above, however, just to play devil's advocate for a minute, what is the actual wording of Direct Hit? (I don't have access to my cards atm.)

If the cards says "Play immediately after a ship takes damage, destroy that ship" then would it even matter if Emergency Repairs gets played first? DH is still being played after the ship took damage and now the ship is being destroyed without reference to its remaining hits. Unless the implication is that the card fizzles because it is no longer "immediately" after the ship took damage, since ER got played in between, but if that's the case then any AC could be played in between to nullify the DH condition (which I think is unfair.) Then again, maybe I'm misremembering the wording on DH.

This is more of a "what if" question than any kind of implication about the actual resolution of this scenario. I agree that ACs are played in initiative order and I would in general allow ER to nix DH. I'm just letting my mind wander here...

Well, it's more the fact that Corey has ruled that Direct Hit CAN be "cancelled" by Emergency repairs. It should probably be in the FAQ, but it did come up on the old forums a couple of times, and it was confirmed by him that it should work that way.

You do make a good point, however. I think the logic behind the ruling was that if you repair the ship, while technically it was "damaged", it's not "damaged" at the time the Direct Hit! as played; ie, the damage taken was nullified before further things can be applied.

sigmazero13 said:

Well, good to know there's an official reason out there. Like I said I don't necessarily disagree with this ruling regardless of where it came from, I was just thinking of the cards and wondering aloud.

This is one of many examples that point out how bad the action card priority system in twilight is. Honestly they should just adopt "the stack" and apnap systems from magic.

I don't really see how it shows how "bad" it is. Having a lower initiative giving you an advantage isn't a bad thing. And in most cases, it's irrelevant anyway.

The thing I don't like about the Stack system in general is you get more advantage for being the second person to play a card in many cases. IE, reaction trumps action. Sometimes that can be good, but not always.

For instance, in the "Stack" system, if a Dreadnought took damage, if the DN player played ER first, and the other player played DH next, DH would trump, just because he played SECOND. If the order was reversed, ER goes first simply because HE played second. That doesn't seem like any better of a solution to me.

To be honest, I don't think the lower initiative thing is all that grand either, but I'd prefer it over the stack system - that way, you know beforehand whether or not it's worth playing the card you want to play. However, I'd personally prefer a system where conflicts are more explicitly defined, such as "Emergency Repairs ALWAYS trumps Direct Hit!" (or vice versa), so that timing is irrelevant at all.

The stack would eliminate the need to play the cards face down and also encourages strategic play, do you hold your emergency repair card incase they have a direct hit or do you play it out there hoping they don't?? a system that makes emergency repairs always trump direct hit or vice versa takes away some strategy and bluffing.

blarknob said:

And that can be a good or bad thing. I personally think that the "which one came first" method is more "random", and can lead to a stalemate. If one player has the Direct Hit, the other has Emergency Repairs, both sides may want to "wait out" their opponent, hoping they will play first. At what point do you say one side has to play? Who has to play first? Why?

The stack has just as many potential problems as the initiative order does. A "trump" method would avoid the issues inherent in both. Yes, there's less bluffing involved, but I don't think the Direct Hit/Emergency Repairs thing is about bluffing, anyway.

I don't like the stack idea, it doesn't add any extra strategy it just means play at the last possible moment.

Further, drastic house rules like you're suggesting there blarknob usually just alienate you from the player base and lead to confusion.

FunkyBunch said:

Well, not that I like the stack rule myself, but PsiComa's house rules/variants are about as drastic as you can get (and still have something close to TI3), yet they don't seem to alienate him.

Not that I play with them myself (too drastic for my tastes), but still

FunkyBunch said:

Notice I said "they" should adopt the stack and apnap system. They implied fantasy flight, I wouldn't use this system unless it was added to a revised edition of the rule book or a 4th edition or something.

Until that point I will follow my own advice and use the current ruleset.

sigmazero13 said:

Neither player would have to play their cards first, they would simply choose to play a card when they have priority then other players would have the oportunity to play cards while the first card is on the stack waiting to resolve.

blarknob said:

I don't quite see what you are getting at. When you say "when they have priority", what do you mean? And if one player plays a card, the others would play cards while the first is waiting to resolve. But if the two cards in question trump each other, depending on which comes second, there very possibly COULD be a stalemate because neither would want to play the card first.

In the Direct Hit/Emergency Repairs issue, the ER person isn't gonna want to play it until he knows DH guy isn't going to, and vice versa - whoever plays second wins the action-card-skirmish, and thus neither player has incentive to play FIRST.

Here is an article about how priority and the stack works in magic:

http://mtgsalvation.com/794-priority-and-the-stack.html

Just take out all the magic specific stuff and you have a system that would serve twilights action cards very well. I was assuming you were familiar with those rules.

blarknob said:

I admit, I detest Magic. I will play it on occasion with a cousin or someone when they ask me to, because I try to be nice, but I have no interest in the game, and the convoluted rules is a large part of it. M:tG makes TI3's rules look like Candyland, when you start considering all the nit-picky nuances and interactions. Frankly, I don't think that it's a good example at all for what makes a "simple" game. Sure, it DOES work for people, but at the expense of simplicity. Maybe I'm biased, so my perspective may be flawed, but as successful as the game is, it's definitely NOT a poster-child for "clean, crisp, simple rules".

The page you link to is a prime example of that - that is a LOOOOOONG page for something that SHOULD be simple. In TI3, there are only a very, very few situations where Action Card order matters. Most of the time, action cards do not affect each other, and thus it wouldn't matter which order they were played in. Direct Hit!/Emergency Repairs is one of the few where interaction does matter.

I haven't read the whole page. Based on it's length, and my severe lack of interest in the game, I don't know if I want to. But I did skim it, and it's constantly referring to "priority", which I take to mean "who's turn is it to do something". This again leads to my original question about this - WHO PLAYS FIRST?

Based on my (admittedly very limited) understanding of the general Magic game flow, you typically cannot play cards unless it's your turn, or unless you are reacting to a card played by another player. Thus, it seems much easier to define WHO has "priority" - IE, who gets/has to play first.

In the case of DH/ER, this is not clear. DH is played in response to a ship being damaged. ER is played "at any time". Neither player is obligated to resolve their actions first. Thus, my question remains: WHO is required to play first? Since ER cancels DH, and DH cancels ER, the order DOES matter, but unlike Magic, there is no clear definition of who has "priority", or who must play first. The active player? This gives the defender the advantage. The lower initiative? Then how is it different than the rules as written?

Would it be possible for you to distill it, and describe how the stack system would work in TI3, using the DH/ER situation as a concrete example? It still boils down to who must play first - whoever does is at a distinct disadvantage.

sigmazero13 said:

An easy solution would be to change Direct Hit so that it dealt 1 damage instead of using the word "destroy". The card would function the same way (unless I'm missing something?) but the confusion with Emergency Repairs that Steve-O spoke of would be made clearer.

doul said:

It would eliminate the confusion that Steve-O presents, true, but it wouldn't solve the issue blarknob brings up - that of it coming down to whoever has initiative order taking the cake. If it did one damage, the timing of "which card first" would still be a factor.

What if players just rolled off and the person with the higher roll has their card win?

Zoombie said:

That just takes something that can at least be predicted ahead of time and makes it totally random. For some, that could work, but I think the idea was to make it more deterministic.

FunkyBunch said:

As per the rules on page 23 of TI3:
"If a player wishes to play an Action Card, he must publicly announce that he wishes to play an Action Card. Then other players, at this time, may announce that they also wish to play an Action Card...
...all the Action cards are revealed and resolved in order of play."

Why not just change the last part to "In the order played".

sigmazero13 said:

That should allow the person who acts first to seize the initiative. And there will not be a need to implement an outside game system and it’s corresponding FAQ.

If two players are decisive enough to initiate an action at the very same time; you could resolve it either by a decision from the Speaker or via a “For or Against” vote going clockwise starting with the player to the speakers left.

Just a few thoughts.

If it's in the order played, the player taking the casualties obviously has an advantage.
He could damage the DN and then faster then anyone can possibly say anything say "I'm playing an action card". Heck it could even be simultaneous with the damaging of a DN.

This is how we played some of the first few games, and it sucked. The initiative order has a pretty good balance. You can usually predict when you're going to be playing it and plan accordingly.

I would say that it is more thematic to let the "Direct hit" go first. That card means something like "the hit you made was so awesome that it blew up the entire ship". It's hard to imagine someone repairing that.