Any chance of getting this thread stickied? Sucks having to scroll to around page 5-6 to find it (yet too lazy to bookmark it ).

It makes me sooo sad that this thread isn't a sticky. It would have saved me countless hours of rule searching while I was learning the game. And reading it would probably eliminate a fair number of the questions that get asked on this forum. In fact, I just posted my brilliant idea to create this thread. Turns out someone was already on it and the moderators just didn't bother to make it visible. For now I guess I'll just bookmark it and bump it occasionally so that others can avoid my fate.

"Dwarf Ranger

Q. If multiple Rangers are destroyed by the same effect (e.g. Troll Vomit, Judgement of Verena, combat damage), do they trigger their damage on destruction?

A. No, they must be in play for their trigger to activate."

I'm confused about this ruling (and there is no link to research it further). If I have 4 Dwarves in play, say Zhufbar Engineers and and 3 Rangers, and someone plays Troll Vomit, there are many "destroy" effects happening at once. Don't I get to choose the order my units are destroyed in?

Could I choose the Engineers to die first, triggering all 3 Rangers, then a Ranger triggering the 2 remaining Rangers, then another Ranger triggering the last Ranger, then destroy the last Ranger triggering nothing?

No, all units go poof at the same time, thus your Rangers aren't in play anymore to kick in their Forced.

Dam said:

Thanks for that clarification. I think I may have been confusing units dying with effects that trigger on units dying.

Is it correct then, that for Altar of Khaine ( Kingdom. Action: If one of your units would be destroyed, you may pay 1 resource to instead return it to your hand. ) all the triggers occur simultaneously if Troll Vomit is played, and so the active player can choose which order to resolve the triggered Actions?

he active player would get to decide which order to resolve triggered actions, Troll Vomit is played, the opponent gets first opportunity to respond, then back and forth, all abilities then resolving in reverse order once both players have passed consecutively. IOW if you play Troll Vomit I get to trigger my Altar of Khaine and then you could trigger an effect if you like. If you have no effects to trigger you pass, and I could trigger it again. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. The end result is effectively me getting to return to hand as many of my units from Troll Vomit's destruction as I have resources.

dormouse said:

Makes sense, thanks. I'm not sure if this actually matters, but we would resolve the Troll Vomit before you could begin triggering Altar of Khaine, correct?

Also, hooray for thread sticky!

Entropy42 said:

Point is that AoK only saves units about to be destroyed, not units already in the discard pile. If you let TV resolve, then all your units would be in the discard pile and thus out of play, AoK couldn't help them anymore.

Double Stamp. May I triple stamp one?

I know I'm late to the party, but thanks for all the hard work in putting this together.

Dam said:

So you are saying AoK has to be triggered in response to Troll Vomit? Meaning that "about to be destroyed" requires you to predict what is going to happen? That doesn't make sense to me, and doesn't fit with ChaosChild's explanation in a different thread .

If AoK required you to predict that your units are about to die, you could trigger AoK in reponse to Troll Vomit, then someone could play High Elf's Disdain to cancel the Troll Vomit. Similarly, during combat, you would then have to trigger AoK in the action window between assigning and applying damage.

I don't know where ChaosChild got the "this is an action that you play as a reaction, so it's outside the usual action windows" part from. AoK is " Action: ", so it bloody well isn't outside any action window. If something is an Action:, it can only be taken during an action window.

Unless James ruled on this an dI missed it, Chaos Child is wrong. IT is an action that is played like an action, there are no "reactions" in this game, there are actions played that can start a chain and actions played in response to an action which get linked to a chain.

AoK looks at the current state of the unit you wish to use it on, is there some terminal effect or game state that if it resolves as is would destroy that unit? If the answer is yes then it is a valid recipient of the AoK's effect. You are correct that later in the chain another effect could remove the validity of the target, but we already have rules that discuss this.

That explanation for AoK makes sense to me, but how would it apply to a card like Hydra Blade ( Attach to a Target Dark Elf Unit. Corrupt that Unit. Attached Unit gains 2 Power. If attached Unit would be destroyed, you may pay 2 Resources to (instead of destroying it) leave it in play and remove all damage from it. ) then? Do you trigger it in response to some action that would destroy it, and then add a replacement effect that triggers when the card "would be destroyed"? The "would be destroyed" wording is the same as AoK, yet if you triggered Hydra Blade and resolved it in reaction to something that would destroy it, the effect doesn't really make sense.

For example, I have a 4 HP creature with 3 damage on it and a Hydra Blade. You play Flames of Tzeentch on my creature for 4. My creature "would be destroyed" so I activate the Hydra Blade's ability. We resolve my Hydra Blade, heal all damage from my unit, and leave my unit in play. Now your Flames of Tzeentch resolves, deals 4 damage to my unit, and my unit dies? Clearly that is not how it is supposed to work, but I'm really confused by the timing of when the actions are activated, paid for, and resolve. All the 'would be destroyed' rules in W:I seem odd to me, because I'm used to the way MTG does it.

I agree that the templating between Altar of Khaine and Hydra Blade is inconsistent. It also makes my head hurt trying to figure out how you cruft the effect into being an Action for the Altar.

The way that this works in M:tG is via "replacement abilities", which look like the wording on Hydra Blade. I think that this is a lot neater than trying to make it an Action, so I'd rather see errata on Altar of Khaine to bring it into line with the Blade.

I was talking this over with a friend today, and we came to this general understanding of why Hydra Blade doesn't share the same wording as AoK. AoK is an "Action", so it has to trigger during action windows, and thus it makes sense for it to trigger before a spell like Troll Vomit resolves. Hydra Blade is a "constant effect", not an Action, so it is always on the card waiting for its trigger condition to occur. If this triggered effect can interrupt the sequence of resolution and unit destruction (I am not clear on this), then it presents the DE player with an opportunity to pay 2 resources and save the unit. That's about the only way I could try to make sense of its wording with respect to how AoK works.

Just to make things even more interesting though, Chaosvt has just brought up another good "would be destroyed" question in the FAQ thread (post 21). If Lelansi is in a zone with 2 other units and someone plays Troll Vomit, does her ability return the other 2 units to their owners hand? Its a "constant effect", not an Action, so if we assume it works like Hydra Blade and acts as a replacement effect, then Lelansi is no longer in play when the other units "would be destroyed" so the effect is not able to trigger. If we assume it works like AoK, then it would trigger in reaction to Troll Vomit, and I guess the units are returned to their owner's hand?

It is a replacement effect. All units would be marked for destruction at the same time and removed from play together. The question, does her effect come into play interrupting the effect and sending all other units to the owners hand or does the effect resolve when the cards are removed from the table, and therefor unable to resolve if she is not in play during that time, is an important one. James has been asked hopefully a FAQ will be forthcoming and will include this answer.

So based on my reading of the new FAQ, I think Lelansi returns the units to your hand in this example. I would prefer to think of it as a replacement effect, but that term is more of a MTG thing, and is not defined anywhere in W:I that I can find. The closest I can guess is that her effect is a conditional effect that is triggered when they would be destroyed (when TV is played) and resolve when a trigger is met (after TV resolves). In that case, the replacement effect will still trigger when all the units die, even though she isn't in play, because "After card effects are triggered, they exist independently of the source. Destruction or removal of the source at that time will not affect the resolution on the card effect."

Ok, I have a question about Dwarf Ranger -if I decide that their shot goes into the opponent capital, who decides the zones this shot goes? Me or opponent? For example, if I sacrificed 7 dwarf units, can I decide, that all damage from Rangers goes into the opponent quest zone?

Itrogash said:

Yes, as long as a card says target, you get to choose. If it says "indirect damage" then they get to choose (and you are just choosing which player must assign the indirect damage). Since you are choosing the "target capital" you choose which zone of the capital. Though I guess that is kinda unclear from the rules. I suppose you could make the argument that you are just choosing the capital and your opponent chooses the section or zone. But, this combo was in the winning deck at worlds, and from reading about it, it sounds like the Dwarf player got to choose where the damage goes. That would actually be an interesting "errata" to Dwarf Ranger though that would make it slightly less powerful.

Updated with the ruling on Runefang of Solland (yes, you have to pay loyalty costs if you don't have enough, it's just the base cost that is set to 0).

Entropy42 said:

Ok, I found the ruling for this. You do choose which section of the opponents capital takes the damage.

Entropy42 said:

Oh, that's good. This ruling was very unclear and caused many arguments in the place where I play. It should be cleared up in FAQ.

I have another question - on the Mortella is written: "Play restrictions must still be observed." Is that mean, that the opponent cannot play tactics that are "Order Only" with her?

It's a good question, but no, I'm pretty sure that you can play Order Only tactics. It's more that the normal rules of the card still apply - so, for example, if you're stealing their Blood for the Blood God tactic you can still only target units in the battlefield.

I'd think that order only would be considered a play restriction

Order Only and Destruction Only are deck building restrictions.

From the FAQ: "Some neutral cards have the keyword Order Only. These cards cannot be used in a Destruction (Chaos, Orc, or Dark Elf) deck"

It says they cannot be used "in" a deck, not "by" a deck.

Also, Itrogash, I'll look into that thing about targeting a section of a capital in the Deckbox Rules Summary. I still have to update it for the newest FAQ anyway.