Hi, first post here.

It seems to imply that I can allocate a damage point to an enemy unit or a zone in the enemy capital? Is this the correct interpretation?

GG

Yes, it is the correct interpretation.

If I am remembering correctly the consensus is that you can assign it to opponents capital but they can then decide in which zone to actually apply it.

Can you please support that statment?

Beacause I cannot se how you can assign damage to the capital without asigning it to a section of it. And i can't find the "they can then decide in which zone to actually apply it" mecanic anywhere.

Shooot, this is a debate too? I just assumed the "Defend the Border" player got to assign the damage where they want. Of course, this is not clarified anywhere in the rulebook. I hear it is on the 13th page of the FAQ, 2nd paragraph, but to gaze at the FAQ would drive a man insane. This is why Nate and Eric have kept the FAQ hidden from our eyes... to protect us.

I'm told that the Inquisition has a copy, but they are carefully tracing its heritage to eliminate the corruption of any who have seen it...

Quest. While Defend the Border 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. Quest. Forced: Place 1 resource token on this card at the beginning of your turn if a unit is questing here.

The Card...

DOES NOT SAY you DO get to target a specific zone.

Then Rock Lobber says "Battlefield. Action: Pay 2 resources and sacrifice one of your units in this zone to deal 2 damage to one section of any capital (limit once per turn)." Using the terminology "deal damage to one section of any capital"

DOES NOT SAY you DONT get to target a specific zone. Followers of Mork goes out of its way to state "Forced: After this unit enters play, each player takes 2 indirect damage. ( Players allocate their own indirect damage.)" Also, Warpstone Meteor does the same "Forced: After your turn begins, each player must corrupt one of his units in this corresponding zone or deal 1 damage to his capital . ( Players decide where their own damage is assigned.)"

Sadistic mutation: Attach to a target unit you control. Forced: After the attached unit deals damage in combat, deal 1 damage to one target unit or capital. Same story huh?

Keystone Forge says "Kingdom. Forced: After your turn begins, heal 1 damage to your capital . " and everyone assumes you get to choose what zone you heal, even though it is phrased just like DEFEND THE BORDER.

I DECLARE THAT, given the evidence before me.... dum dum dum..... the card text is POORLY WRITTEN, INCONSISTENT and UNCLEAR!

There is no answer to be found, so you have to ask Nate to help us read his mind. A lot of card effects riding on this interpretation.

Until the FAQ comes out with an official ruling, I'm going to play DTB as the owner of this card gets to choose where the damage is assigned. Though the card is not absolutely clear on this, it just makes the most sense to me.

ditto!

power to the gamer.

Mateoo beat me to the punch pointing out the different examples where the game allows different players to decide where the damage is assigned. In my mind it suggests one of two things.

1. The designer specifically wrote the card that way so that the using player would not have the same degree of control if the damage got allotted to the capital versus picking a target unit. I could see this as a balance/costing issue for the card effect. Sniping a unit can have ramifications and sometimes massive ones at that. Sniping a section of capital would seem to have much greater ramifications.

2. The designer was not paying that much attention and the wording was not tightened up.

My approach is to assume that every thing written on the card is done so for reason 1 and I try to play it that way. Particularly when I see other cards that specifically approach the situaion in a different ways. put another way, Mateooo's examples reinforce in my mind that this was a conscious decision to NOT give the Defend The Border player that much control over the damage assignment. i could easily be wrong!

Anyone send this to Nate yet?

Nearly every game I have played has had this issue. Where the designers meant the same thing to happen in two different places, but worded them differently. It's a shame that there isn't a bit more editing in that area amongst all games.

Unfortunately this is one of those problems with designing and testing and redesigning and then retesting cards, things get changed for one reason or another (usually out of clarity, though sometimes the effect of the cards themselves were vastly changed) and now similar effects have different wording... I have discovered though that most of the time the wording is different on a similar effect it is on purpose to create a more limited or far reaching effect.

The "silvered" rule for CCG's is that the cards tell you what you get to do. Because DtB does not say you get to choose the zone you only get to choose the capitol. The card also doesn't say you get to add a unit from your discard pile into the zone of your choice to defend an attack, so you don't. Whether this is the designers intent or not is immaterial (at least until they tell us how they want us to play the card), what matters at this point is that the card does not tell us that we get to the zone, so we can't. If Nate says otherwise, I'd be very surprised if the card didn't receive errata changing the text to read zone instead of capitol in the FAQ.

OK, I'm new to card games, either CCG or LCG, so maybe I don't understand how they work as well as others. But it seems to me DtB gives you the power to redirect the damage. By using the word redirect, doesn't it give you the choice of where it goes if you choose to redirect it to the capital?

No.Take a look at how the card is worded. IT says target unit and capitol, not target unit and zone. It could very easily have been a mistake, lazy language, or some sort of change in how the card originally read. We are left with two choices then, believe the designers new what they were doing when they wrote the card this way or assume it was a mistake and play it differently. I always assume they meant what they said. Sometimes even this means examing the rules more closely to figure out how it is played as written, which means I may get it wrong, it is after all an interpretation, if it is not clearly spelle dout in the rules, but there is a big difference between me assuming the card is written correctly and then misapplying the rules than assuming the card is wrong and adding my own card text or rules to govern it.

Does that make sense? Each player needs to make their own decision about which of those two choices they are going to follow on any given card, but so far there have been about four cards that couldn't be figured out by assuming that the designers meant what they said and then applying the rules directly to them from there.

Dormouse,

I do understand what you are saying in regards to the capital. It only says capital, and therefore we would have to make an assumption in order to assign the damage to a specific zone. However, what is not an assumption is that someone has to assign it. If I play the card, I have ownership of it. Since I have ownership then why wouldn't the owner redirect the damage. It doesn't say that your oppenent gets to choose where it goes either.

Now let's look at Followers of Mork.

Forced: after this unit enters play, each player takes 2 indirect damage (Players allocate their own indirect damage.)

It says "indirect" which is a word I don't recall anywhere else in W:I to date to refer to the type of damage. Then seems to give a definition for indirect with (Players allocate their own indirect damage)

I would be interested to see another card with indirect on it in a future BP and that would be the word that means a player assigns his own damage.

The designer of this game does spell it out on this card that you assign the damage. I would think they would do the same with DtB.

This card I believe does have a flaw because you must make a decision on how the card is played. If I play the card, my opponent is justified in saying I don't have the authority to assign the damage to a specific zone, but I could argue that neither does he.

I will rule that the owner of the card can redirect the damage to the zone he chooses based on I believe this is the intent of the designer, which is how I try to play all cards.

I eagerly await the FAQ.

the term "target capital" has not been defined yet.

the trend seems to suggest that "targetting a capital" does not mean you get to "target a specific zone" unless otherwise stated.

This is only an assumption (one I bet will pan out) but we will need to wait for clarification from nate

I pity new players who don have access to this forum

I just want to clarify that, how the damage goes from being assigned to the capital, to be asigned to a capital section, is not mentioned at all , both in the rules or at the card. (why not randomly deterimined? even distrubution? calling Nate everytime the effect activates and ask him for the section?) Thus saying that, letting the other player asign the damage to withchever zone that player likes, is like playing as the designer wrote the effect, is false.

So if you want to play the effect as vritten then, the player assignes the damage to the oponents "capital", and it stays there doing nothing (since the rules only take in to account damage on capital sections and not damage on the "capital"). That wuld mean cards like Fortres only cancels damage done to the "capital" and not to capital sections, since the text reads "capital" not "capital section". Since i dont think anyone wuld agree with playing it that way, playing it like the designers have written it is not really an option.

As a side note: In every instance the rules mention asigning damage to a capital, that damage is being asigned to a capital section (by the asigning player).

Honestly witchever the ruling will be, the card text is the case of " a mistake, lazy language, or some sort of change in how the card originally read". (To me, missing "(the capital owner asignes the assigned damage)" is worse than "section" after capital)

(Now i se that this point might alredy have been made, but sice i've alredy vritten it, i'm posting it)

You can play the card (all of them actually) however you want, but that does not get you away from the simple rule that the cards you play tell you what you can do when it comes to modifying the rules or game state of another card. This card does not say you can't do an infinite number of things, it does say you can target a capitol... we know what a capitol is and we know what target means, we don't need a separate definition for the two words together. If I can target the capitol as an effect the card grants me, but it does not say I get to make any other choices regarding it but someone must, the only player left is the owner of the capitol. If you don't want to play this way, that is fine... but don't be surprised if someone starts using your own logic against you and adding effects to a card. What argument are you going to use against them?

"You can play the card (all of them actually) however you want, but that does not get you away from the simple rule that the cards you play tell you what you can do when it comes to modifying the rules or game state of another card."

Is there anyone that is disagreeing with that? *confused* What the card "tells you" is what we are discussing...

"If I can target the capitol as an effect the card grants me, but it does not say I get to make any other choices regarding it but someone must, the only player left is the owner of the capitol."

That logic is flawed. It relies on that the player that uses the card effect gets exluded from where the damage is assigned, so the only player left is the capital player. But the logic used to do the exlusion doesn't exlunde the capital player anny less than the card player. (meaning "does not say I get to make any other choices" applies to both players.)

I'm going to take this step for step. A target is chosen (which is in this case the capital). The effect is applied to the target. The effect deals damage and thus as part of the effect the "damage is first asigned and then applied to the target in a manner similar to the way damage is handled in combat" (quote from the Non Combat Damage rules) The question "Who asignes the damage?" arises becase this is the first target that has more than one place to assign the damage to. In seeing how asigning damage is handled in combat and who is using the card, i cannot se how it wuld me annyone else than the player that uses the card that assignes the damage.

Well thats my resoning, and i don't think i've gone outside of confinment of what the card does or does not say.

"but don't be surprised if someone starts using your own logic against you and adding effects to a card. What argument are you going to use against them?"

I'm going to say likewise. Since youre logic adds more effect to the card than my does.

I'm not going to try and convince you, because you don't want to be convinced and aren't particularly open to the fundamental point of my argument, that the controller of a card gets to do what the card says, and no more. We've both said our arguments, we'll need Nate to clarify.

I do want to emphasize that it isn't that I think you are wrong in how it was meant to be played (I don't know), just that without any further guidance adding an effect that benefits the user of the card seems to be a big stretch when they could have just replaced capitol with zone if that was the intent. I always prefer to err on the side of caution, the one which makes the card slightly less awesome when there is no further evidence to direct us. The other option I would see as being valid based on the cards text... and one which I'm starting to think makes even more sense, is that the damage is redirected from your zone to the matching zone on the target capitol. Since the card does not give the owner the right or ability to select a zone in its text, and assuming that the owner of the target capitol is not the default for this card, it makes the most sense.

Its not that i don't want to be convinced, its that the logic for "the capital player assignes" doesn't add upp.

I do beleve that the controller of a card gets to do what the card says, and no more (and no less! which is often forgotten). But my argument has been that "card player assignes" can be within the framework of what the card says and "the capital player assignes" is way otside of it.

I dont think its adding an affect or that there is a big stretch. They have witten "during combat" when they culd have vritten "during the battlefieldphase" before. And how "Capital" is used in the rules and on the cards (like fortres and kestone forge) the word "capital" culd be exanged for "a capital section".

I do agree with when beeing in doubt, choosing the lesser awzum interpretation. (not that i wuld call any ot the interpretations of this card awzum. ) But when the alternative is made upp, without any support at all, outside of not beeing "card player assignes" (because it culd be argued that the card dosn't alow that, though that same argument dosn't allow the alternative either), im going to belive the more awzum interpretation.

Intresting last idea (even though that also sounds like a completly basles interpretation for the sole purposs of not being "the card player assignes" to me ). How wuld it work with Dwarf Rangers (they may do damage to the capital)?

This is not neseseraly to convince you, just to clarify my statements.

Edit: Yay, i know now how to edit. This post might be readable now.

Ignore this post. It has no function. (But DO read the post above )

Has anyone actually submitted this to Nate?

had a little insomnia last night, so I went ahead and e-mailed Nate about the "target capital" phrasing.

My insomnia was not in vain! Got an answer from Nate (see below)

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The player assigning or dealing the damage chooses the section.

So if your card says:

"Forced: After the attached unit deals damage in combat, deal 1 damage to one target unit or capital." (Sadistic Mutation), you would choose the section of the capital.

If the effect forces the opponent to deal damage to his capital and does not specify a section, that opponent would choose.

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I am liking sadistic mutation a lot more all of a sudden