I am curious about a very specific situation with the card "safe place".

Scenario:

I have "Safe Place" in play with 2 ember on it. I also have 4 ember in my pool.

Question: Do I need to say "check" in that situation? Or do I not have to? If my opponent takes their turn and my ember remains the same, do I have to forge a key or can I chose not to? Safe Place says "You may spend ember..."

My opinion: I think I would need to say "check" in this situation because I think the card is meaning to say that if you have more ember than a key costs, you can choose to not spend all of the ember on "Safe Place" and if that is right the card might read better saying "When you must forge a key, you may spend ember on Safe Place.

Thoughts?

The rules say (my emphasis):

Quote

When a player’s turn ends, if that player has enough Æmber in their pool to afford a key, the player announces “Check!” so that their opponent knows the forging of a key at the start of that player’s next turn is imminent.

So, technically, since you only have 4 Aember in your pool, then by a strict reading of the rules, you would not need to declare Check. That said, I think it would be good form to do so regardless, since you are overall able to forge a Key next turn.

I'd say you don't have to use it if you don't want to, including not forging if you don't want to for whatever reason. It reads as optional to use the aember on Safe Place, to me, whether you have enough to forge in your pool or not.

Since the use of Aember is optional from the Safe Place, I would say that you aren't required to call check. If you feel like casually mentioning it to your opponent to be nice, do so at your own peril, since if Safe Place is destroyed, all the Aember on it goes away.

Does that mean i can forge a key with 2 ambers in my pool and 4 ambers in pocket universe/safe place ? or i must have 6 amber in artifact to do that im confused can we confirm if we can do that?

This was just clarified and you must forge a key if possible.

Some cards have effects that allow Æmber on these cards to be spent when forging keys. If there is enough Æmber on cards with this effect you control combined with the Æmber in your Æmber pool to forge a key you must do so during Step 1.

As for check, as others mentioned, its just good form/sportsmanship IMO