We's Bigger:

Lower the cost the next unit you play this turn by 1. This unit comes into play with 1 damage on it.

Defend the Border

While DTB has 3 or more resource tokens on it, redirect the first point of damage done to your capital each turn to another target unit or capital.

Thinking about the rules for simultaneous events (active player decides order to play them) and the word cancel (which, presumable, means the damage/card/etc ceases to exist)

my interpretation of these two cards

We's Bigger: if you play 2 or more of these cards, the unit should come into play with only ONE damage. There is nothing in the card which says "add 1 damage". It simply states, it comes into play with one damage. So if you resolve each card in order.

first we's Bigger: cost for next unit is lowered by one, it will come in with one damage

second We's bigger played: lower the cost by one more (now -2 cost). It will come in with one damage (ONLY ONE DAMAGE).

its probably the designers intention to say "add one damage" but that is simply not how they wrote the card.

By "Read the rules, dummy" interpretation, and not trying to guess the designers intention, 2 We's biggers = 1 damage

Now Defend the border

player one inflicts 1 damage to player 2's capital

player 2 has 2 defend the borders that are fully stacked with tokes to have 2 full effects

1st point of damage is canceled, obviously. player 2 decides to use his DTB #1 to cancel the first damage (simultaneous actions, active player decides order)

at this point, that "first point of damage" has been canceled, and is NO LONGER DAMAGE. The 2nd DTB is not triggered

this is similar to damage that is inflicted by a unit with sadistic mutation. If a unit with SM does one damage in combat, and that damage is canceled, SM DOES NOT trigger, because NO DAMAGE WAS INFLICTED. DTB doesnt say first damage ASSIGNED. It says first damage DONE to the canel, implying APPLIED DAMAGE

why is this important? well

now player 1 inflicts 1 more damage to player 2's capital

player 2 NOW CAN USE THE 2nd DTB to cancel what is now "the first point of damage to the capital".

That is different from prior interpretations.

I believe that by the EXACT wording of the 2 cards and rules of canceling, constant effects, and simultaneous actions

2 We's biggers result in only 1 damage to the summoned unit

and 2 Defend the borders can redirect the first 2 points of damage to its capital.

I make no judgements about the designers' intentions. but this is the exact wording of the rules.

mateooo said:

Other POV would be to read that unit comes into play with 1 damage for each We'z Bigga!, while the cost is lowered as well.

We'z Bigga #1: -1 cost, comes into play with 1 damage on it

We'z Bigga #2: -1 cost, comes into play with 1 damage on it

Unit comes into play at -2 cost, with 1 damage on it for each We'z Bigga!, so with 2 WB, 2 dmg. We'z Bigga! doesn't say comes into play with only one damage, nor does it say add one damage.

INTRO: I don't know what is exact right now, but I'll give my opinion.

I read exactly the OPPOSITE of what you read.

You said you didn't go through designers intention, but you did, IMHO.

We should READ THE CARDS and interprete THE RULES, not the opposite, that's what you're doing, IMHO, even if you say you don't in all our previous arguments.

We'z Bigga!

"...Comes into play with 1 damage" + "...Comes into play with 1 damage" = Comes into play with 2 damages.

That's what the card says.

YOUR REASONING would have been correct if you the card said: "...That unit comes into play DAMAGED ". That's the case you're talkin' about.

Defend the Border

Again, same issue. The card reads: "The FIRST point of damage [...] EACH TURN ."

We have a SINGLE FIRST POINT OF DAMAGE EACH TURN, not multiples.

The card doesn't say that you can redirect the FIRST damage from EACH source of damage...But the FIRST point each turn (absolute-imperative timing).

I know that noone can say "I'm right" about RULES application, but there's one thing I'm pretty sure: that's what I read.

you could look at the literal interpretations both ways. For WES BIGGER Im sure they meant to add a damage for each card played, but many of these rulings are based on ABSOLUTE literal interpretations.

a card saying "a unit comes with ONE damage point" means it does not come into play with TWO damage points. They should have said "add one damage token to the next unit played, because adding damage is a cumulative action, whereas "comes in play with one damage" is an absolute.

And I think that if the first damage to your capital is canceled, it is no longer damage to your capital, and the next damage can be interpretted as the FIRST damage to your capital.

the final designer answer can be TOTALLY different, but simply look again at the literal interpretations, and see what you see.

Personally, i would prefer WEs bigger adding one damage for each card

and I would prefer Defend the Border to be useable more than twice if you have 2

no other quest is made worthless having a second in play.

Mateooo you aren't reading the cards completely as absolutes, you are trying to interpret them contextually.

Each We'ze Bigga must resolve in full in order to resolve at all. It is part of the same effect. If you hand me two coupons that each say take $1 off the price of admission. Receive one coke on entry. If I honor both coupons I should charge you $2 less and give you two free Cokes.

You are trying to combine the effects for one mass reduction and the two negatives as redundant, but you can't because the cards don't say to do it that way. Each one is resolved by itself in entirety.

Defend the border redirects the first point of damage done in a turn. All damage is assigned and applied in their relevant steps together. Which means only one damage can ever be "first" in each damage causing instance. Once that has been dealt with their is no longer a valid trigger for the second Defend the Border. The very designation of any one damage as "first" disallows any further triggering of any other DtBs.

I'd suggest you send the questions to Nate.

well, what you say is true about the coupon

but what if you have a coupon that says this

lets say an apple costs 2 dollars

you have a coupon that says

"the next apple you buy costs one dollar"

what happens if you have two of those coupons?

now if the coupon said

next apply you buy, reduce the cost by one dollar

you would have a differnent discussion

anyways, this is more an intellectual exercise.

I think wes bigger works better as you guys say it goes, but it is not worded that way, IMHO

Defend the border, however, I think is up for debate.

if damage is canceled, it is not dealt, correct?

so if damage to the capital is canceled, it is no longer damage to the capital?

I personally think Defend the Border works better if it is stackable.

anyways, fun rules debates. try to look at it impartially, and see if your opinion changes.

You bring up some good points, Mateooo, but your apple coupon analogy is actually the second paragraph you state, "the next apple you buy costs one dollar less", if you want to follow the example of We's Bigga correctly.

Then if you have two coupons, you can see it makes sense to some people (myself included, I confess) that the next apple would be two dollars less.

Consider if you were to resolve the 2 cards in order

Play 1st card -unit comes into play with 1 damage. (place one damage on the unit so that it will come into play with 1 damage counter.)

Play 2nd card -unit comes into play with 1 damage. (hmmm.. look, the unit already has 1 damage, if I place another damage counter, that makes it come into play with 2 damage counters, which is NOT what the card says.

the card SHOULD say "place 1 damage counter on the next unit that you put into play."

again, if we believe we should "follow the rules literally to find the answer" then follow the rules literally. I actually PREFER that the card plays as 2 damage counters, and will continue to play that way until told otherwise, but you have to admit, the WORDING of the card tells otherwise.

No one is infallible, even Eric and Nate, though they have made a very tight game... even more so with Chaos in the Old world. Mistakes are ineveitable and hopefully they will FAQ soon so they can clear up the ambiguities and possible errata.

While I'm on board with the We'z Bigga interpretation mateooo puts forth (see other thread), I disagree with the Defend the Border.

Triggers for dealt damage go off when the damage is assigned. I think we had established this earlier. Both copies of the card trigger off the same damage, and target the same point of damage. The first effect resolves and removes the damage, but second Defend the Border has already selected its target, The effect fizzles; you don't get it back because its target was removed.

mateooo said:

Nate has already ruled on DtB. It does not stack for all the reasons already given. He has not ruled on We'z Bigga.

mateooo said:

No, I don't think the difference in wording here is not what you think it means. But first if the card were put into play following the first We'z Bigga then it has already been played and is no longer a valid recipient of the reduction of the second WB. Both WB must be played first. Now, IMO, the reason the card is worded the way it is, is because if the card entered play and then damage was done, it would go through the assign and apply damage steps which would allow damage to be redirected or canceled and this card suddenly has little drawback, especially against something with toughness. Because the damage is essentially applied while it is still in an out of play game state, there is no way of avoiding the damage.

The card is not worded as a conditional check but an effect of using the card. Both effects must resolve. The card does not direct you to ignor, remove, or reduce any other damage, so none of those things can be done either.

Buhallin said:

Minor point of clarification, damage is dealt when it is applied. But you are right in that all DtBs look at the first point applied and will redirect that point. I think this may be part of the fundamental problem. DtB does not cancel anything but redirects the first point. Just quantifying a point as the first point means that all the others may no longer resolve and as a Constant Effect they have no trigger they all attempt to resolve on the same point of damage at the same time. One must resolve first. That first one assuming it resolves successfully stops all the rest from being able to resolve since the condition can no longer be met.

Action: Lower the cost of the next unit you play this turn by 1. That unit comes into play with 1 damage on it.

Good point, regarding We's Bigger and toughness, and the designers' desire to avoid the assign and prevent damage step, otherwise you might be able to cancel the damage from We's Bigger with another card. That makes me appreciate the planning that Nate and Eric put into it (and the obsessiveness with which we players dissect the game). Solid game logic!

So that explains why they worded the card different. Now we just need a final Eric and Nate ruling. Im guessing, and hoping, we get 2 damage, despite all of my points to the contrary, even though I love to be right.

Defend the border... man, everyone makes sense (and no sense at the same time).

Even if it DTB doesnt say cancel, you could wonder if a damage to the capital that is REDIRECTED ceases to be damage to the capital (since it was redirect, it becomes damage to some other target), and so stops being the first damage to the capital. But fortunately Eric and Nate have ruled, so Im done with that. I kinda hope they change it at some point, or maybe change it to say "remove one resource token from the quest to trigger its effect" so that there is some reason to have 2 of the quests in play at once. Every other quest has cumulative effects or some other reason to have mutliple quests in play.

mateooo said:

I really hope they don't, even if it's what's intended.

There really isn't anything in the wording to imply it gives two damage. I've always been a firm believer that especially in CCGs developers need to stick with what the card says, not what they want it to say, for clarity. If they errata it, fine, but if they just decide that it arbitrarily should be played differently than what the effect actually says it's a very bad sign for the future... If they do so for such a minor issue, which isn't going to be either common or gamebreaking, I worry.

But we'll see what Nate says on it, I guess.

well, one good thing about a living card game is that it is easy to fix a card, since there technically no "rarity" so a card can be reprinted and replaced in future sets.

Buhallin said:

good points.

And the winner is.... Reinterpretation despite what the cards actually says!! Congratulations, future chaos and confusion, your future is bright!

<shrug> Bad ruling and a bad sign for the long-term stability of the game, IMHO, but at least we've got a ruling.

The two sources of damage are not aware of the other's existence, and
both affect the card simultaneously when it comes into play.

So the card would come into play with 1 damage from Source A, and 1
damage from Source B, or 2 damage total.

bad for literalists, good for thematic gameplay.

Now why the hating on Defend the Border?

What are you talkin' about with that sentence? Sorry, I didn't get it, Buhallin...

The cards literally could be taken either way in a strict grammatical sense, but once you add in the way the card text states requirements, conditional checks, and effects this answer fits with how every other card is laid out.

I think the explanation is pretty much gibberish. It's inventing words which aren't on the cards, and don't exist conceptually. You simply cannot arrive at this ruling via standard English grammar. Designers who ignore what they wrote for what they wanted a card to do cause problems for the stability and understanding of games in the long run. Especially with the contradiction in absolute statements between the We'z Bigga ruling and others such as Defend the Border, we're quickly heading down a road where nobody will be able to figure anything out without sending off to Nate for it.

As much as I like the core rules of Invasion we shouldn't be running into this may inscrutables with such a small card pool. It worries me.

Actually, I don't see that chaos.

YOU were convinced of the bad wording and I don't really know what's the matter with Defend The Border.

I play with 5/6 people and everyone reads what I read. Here, Nate ruled exactly what the majority of players understood.

Now, I DON'T SAY you're ABSOLUTELY wrong, but I say you're over-reacting. You're going on with this "war against bad wording" and I think it's not fair.

Open a discussion, but don't post "chaos is coming, the end of the world is near, Nate's not able to speak english" stuff, cause is useless.

I don't speak as a moderator: I speak as a user who spends time and money to give a help to the game and don't wanna be here staring at someone insulting game design (and sometimes PLAYERS) while the only thing we should do is write our opinions. LET'S SAY "there's a bad wording" but a complaint cannot become a "destructive concern".

If you wanna say something like this, mail them.

Bad wording happens even in MtG and in other games. These kind of errors are more likely in a fresh-new game, where wording and jargon are not so precise and need to be fine-tuned...Let's wait a bunch of BPs and then judge.

You don't help the game, nor the Community pointing out this issue in THIS WAY.

Write a Mail to Game Designers, suggest them a better way to word cards... They listen, believe me .

Peace

The issue is not a wording problem. The issue is how the developers respond to the wording problem. Do they respect the rules and what is in print, or do they ignore what the cards actually say in favor of ruling how they intended it to work? The latter approach, which they have taken here, quickly leads to a game where players have no hope of interpreting anything the least bit ambiguous. Waiting for more packs doesn't help, it makes it worse. Right now the card pool is small enough that these ambiguities and interactions are pretty limited, even if there are more than there should be. But such things grow at geometric rates as new cards are added. If a designer shows themselves incapable of managing decent wording discipline and catching strange interactions at this point, it only gets harder from here.

I'm not screaming doom and destruction, nor predicting failure, but as a data point it's a worrying indicator to me of how they approach the management of their game. I've hardly been the most vocal detractor they've had around here, or raised the most hell over the number of wording problems. I'm expressing a concern for discussion. Your approval over the validity of that concern is, thankfully, not relevant to my ability to express it.

I'm not arguing about the validity of your point.

And i've never said you're not free to express it.

I just say it seems just a bit "destructive". Nothing more.

There have been a couple of "misunderstandable" post and I just tried to point out that sometimes you went over the top (that's pretty clear).

But that's just MY useless opinion. You don't listen anything 'bout your own words.

About the Designers/Wording "problem": I see different wording problems, as you do. And I AGREE with some of your points. But I don't see ANY problem with the cards of this thread. I'm not english, but that's not difficult for me to understand what I read. I don't get your point anymore about the thread.

Some wording can be "misleading", but if you just say "designer's fault, everything's going worst" you don't help anyone.

I told you what I thought was right about the issue: mail them and suggest 'em a way to do better .

DB_Cooper said:

And here's where we differ.

I consider the issue of whether or not we can trust what the cards say as critical. The grammar on the cards is clear, but leads to an odd game effect which wasn't what the designers intended, and it wasn't most people's first interpretation. Instead of sticking with what the card actually said, we've got a ruling which really doesn't have any connection to the actual grammatical meaning of the text.

That's a step down the path of making every odd effect suspect. If cards can be taken at their text, there's very little argument. But at this point, intent has overridden text. When that happens, it's a very bad thing. Players always assume that the developer's intent was that the card works to their (the player's) advantage. So every time there's a strange effect or interaction, players start arguing the interpretation which benefits them rather than what the card actually says.

Discussing this does help people understand the current environment for the rules, which will exist regardless of whether you like it or not.

You say you don't understand the problem with Defend the Border - there is no problem in itself. But both it and We'z Bigga include absolute statements ("The first damage", "with 1 damage") and we now have two different rulings for how to handle them when you have double effects - one is per card, the other doesn't stack. Now we are left with nothing to do in similar situations but send off to the developers and hope for a response. That's not a good environment, but understanding the reality of it most certainly does help people.