Several of our games, usually involving the Lobber Crew, have raised the question of how playing actions "in response" works with units coming into play. In other games that use first-in-last-out resolution and also have cards that enter play permanently, one can usually only play such cards while no other cards are waiting to resove; additionally, when one attempts to play such a card, there is usually opportunity for response to occur before this unit actually enters play. Consider the following situation:

Player A has Reiksguard Knights in the quest zone (and no other units) and four resources.

Player B has a Lobber Crew in the kingdom.

Player A announces that he will play Pistoliers.

Player B uses Lobber Crew's optional ability "in response" to Player A playing the Pistoliers.

So, the questions are:

1. Does Player A specify the zone and pay the resource cost for Pistoliers prior to Player B's opportunity to respond?

2. Is Pistoliers in play and eligible to be sacrificed when the Lobber Crew's ability resolves?

3. Could Player A play another unit from hand "in response" to the Lobber Crew's activation? Could they do this even if it would leave them without resources to pay for the pending Pistoliers?

Anybody?

cyberfunk said:

Responses are often (always?) a tricky business. I know this from Middle-Earth ccg only too well.

"After paying the cost, Thyrus Gorman is placed in Kris’s battlefield." (p. 11)

I know that comes from the example, so maybe it needs to be taken with pinch of salt.

Where it gets tricky is is the Action of playing Pistoliers the full sequence of "announce, pay and play to a zone"?

"All costs must be played and any targets must be
chosen when the action is triggered, regardless of
whether or not the effect resolves immediately.

Once an effect has been paid for, that effect is a part
of the action chain, and the effect resolves even if the
source of the effect is removed from play." (p. 15)

The above would seem to indicate that you have to pay the cost to get the action into the action chain. So the second question in #3 would be no, you've spent your 2+1 for the Pistoliers when you announced them. But if you have more resources left, you should be able to play another unit in response, to sacrifice instead of your Reiksguard.

Resolve order

Your response of Unit X (if you have the resources and unit to play)

Lobber Crew (if you play nothing, Reiksguard are the only unit you can sacrifice)

Pistoliers into play.

Won't take much to convince me of otherwise, action-response-response-response chains have never been my strong suit, but that's the way it seems with a quick glance.

Regarding your questions, in summary :

#1: Yes

#2: No

#3: Yes. No, Pistoliers were paid upon announcement.

Thanks, Dam. That's how it seems like it should work to me as well, with the rules as written. There's definitely nothing in the rulebook to suggest that units can only be played on empty "action chains" and I kind of hope they leave the possibility open. I guess the only part that could be a little more explicit is the selection of a zone constituting a target, but that seems pretty reasonable.

All decisions and play requirements must be met in order for a card to be played. This would include naming the section the card will be played into (this is not an aspect of targeting it is a requirement of play).