Chancellor of Sol said:

The other ruling supported the "wording of the rulebook" as well, depending on how you interpret the Concurrent Resolution rule. He apparently chose to reverse his ruling to apply it to the simpler interpretation. The other interpretation just had a lot of "what if's" involved that are more easily resolved by interpreting it this way.

The rulebook is obviously not cut-and-dry about it either way, or the question would never have come up in the first place (nor would Corey have made that initial ruling).

After some thought I realize the (final) ruling changes gameplay quite a bit. Not only does the attacker now have the advantage, but, as a result of the attackers advantage, players will be more inclined to attack earlier in the year than before. both of which i think are good things. I can't say for sure until I see it in action a few times.

Just a word of advice.

Don't make this to be more than it really is.

For most units in the game it won''t impact their ability at all whether they are on offense or defense.

The unit who's creating the most issues is the Berserker, simply because his ability involves a conditional sacrifice cost.

No other unit has a similar ability.

Overall, I like the fact that the offense gets a ( slight ) advantage for a change, makes gameplay that more interesting.

DarkElf said:

That and it only really matters for a few corner cases where there are limited units in a battle. I think it's safe to say most battles in this game will involve more than one or two units per side and so situations where this degree of timing will even matter are relatively rare. Yes, it gives the attacker an advantage, but not a huge gamebreaking one.

I hope the updated FAQ gets worded very clearly on this one. I can just see people saying ....hmmm attacker goes first... I routed / killed your unit therefore your unit has no effect.

Callistan said:

They would clearly be wrong, and I don't think anyone would let that stand. It goes just how it says in the rulebook.

broken said:

Agreed. The concurrent attack rule clearly says that if the cards are pulled, the cards are resolved; thus, if, during the damage part, the attacker kills some untis, the defenders damage still applies.

The ONLY reason the Berserker thing is an issue is because it requires a "standing" Berserker to be destroyed; thus, during the Special phase, if the Attacker's Pegasus routs the last Berserker, the Berserker's Special is still "triggered" - but since there are no standing Berserkers left, the trigger is a dud. However, if the Berserker was the attacker, and a Necromancer was the defender, and the Berserker uses his special to blow up and kill the Necromancer, the Necromancer's special would still trigger, as it does NOT require a "standing" Necromancer - and thus, 2 more Reanimates would be added to the battle.

For what it's worth, that order matters, too, with Berserker/Necromancer, as if the Undead side has no more Reanimates left, the Berserker blowing up may free up some Reanimates to use.