48 minutes ago, BigBadAndy said:

Well, saying someone is being ridiculous is not name calling. It’s a description of an action. Name calling would be “you are ridiculous.” I suppose I could say “this is just you advancing a laughably unlikely interpretation of the rules which is not likely to ever be raised by anyone in the real world, which I think is ridiculous.” But since he put his previous response in a haiku I’m guessing he appreciates the elegance of “you being ridiculous” more. But if I’ve triggered anyone they are free to file a complaint.

EDIT: Speaking of triggered, @Poposhka please tell me that’s a digital image or a dry erase marker on a card sleeve and that you didn’t write in the actual card...

I don't think I should have to explain how a negative characterization of someone's actions or words reflect on that person. It should be obvious. Would it have been better if I said that your last sentence was rude and unconstructive? I'm aiming less for aspersion than I am civility; the only thing OP has done is express a different opinion.

5 hours ago, twinstarbmc said:

No, no, I'm not trying to be a tricksy little hobbit here. I'm genuinely asking the community, because I can see it being interpenetrated either way. A strict RulesAsWritten person could make a legitimate argument that, since a creature with elusive has been attacked, a second attack at any other Elusive creature would go through. I agree that it feels like it should apply to each Elusive creature, but we can't play how it feels (Biomatrix Backup?), we need to go with what's written.

No, it really can’t.

A creature with elusive is a specific singular creature with the elusive trait.

Any creature with elusive is, as stated, the universe of creatures with elusive.

Instead of trying to feel your way through how a card works, it might be helpful to apply the basic rules of English grammar, which void all “confusion” on this matter.

9 minutes ago, Derrault said:

Instead of trying to feel your way through how a card works, it might be helpful to apply the basic rules of English grammar, which void all “confusion” on this matter.

Which rules are we talking about here? The Germanic? The French? The Latin? The Greek?

2 minutes ago, Derrault said:

No, it really can’t.

A creature with elusive is a specific singular creature with the elusive trait.

Any creature with elusive is, as stated, the universe of creatures with elusive.

Instead of trying to feel your way through how a card works, it might be helpful to apply the basic rules of English grammar.

I would appreciate it if you did not insult my grasp of English. I take grate pride in my love for, and knowledge of, the English language. I spent three years college as an English major. I've written game rules. Clarity is key, and in this case, there is room for disagreement. I've already suggested, changing a single word in the rules would make it perfectly clear, and I wouldn't even be here causing such distress.

I don't know how I can illustrate this any clearer. The first time I attack any of your Elusive creatures, that is "the first time a creature with Elusive is attacked this turn." The second time I attack any of your Elusive creatures, that is "the second time a creature with Elusive is attacked this turn." It's a tautology, for crying out loud.

I want to meme this so bad.

Be nice. Be nice. Be nice...

42 minutes ago, twinstarbmc said:

I would appreciate it if you did not insult my grasp of English. I take grate pride in my love for, and knowledge of, the English language. I spent three years college as an English major. I've written game rules. Clarity is key, and in this case, there is room for disagreement. I've already suggested, changing a single word in the rules would make it perfectly clear, and I wouldn't even be here causing such distress.

I don't know how I can illustrate this any clearer. The first time I attack any of your Elusive creatures, that is "the first time a creature with Elusive is attacked this turn." The second time I attack any of your Elusive creatures, that is "the second time a creature with Elusive is attacked this turn." It's a tautology, for crying out loud.

If that is the case, why not question them all? Every single creature ability has "a creature" as part of the glossary definition.

52 minutes ago, 10Ten said:

If that is the case, why not question them all? Every single creature ability has "a creature" as part of the glossary definition.

You know, I would, but Elusive is the only one in the entire Glossary that says "the first time." Most others I've seen are worded like "When a creature with [keyword]...." Assault, Destroyed, Play, Reap, Fight, Skirmish... they are worded in such a way that they happen every time the condition is met. Elusive is the only one that happens once and goes away. So, if we're going to reword Elusive to work as assumed, I submit the following:

Elusive (the way we wish it was worded)

When a creature with the elusive keyword is attacked, if it is the first time that creature has been attacked this turn, it is dealt no damage and deals no damage to the attacker in the fight.

This keeps the wording consistent with other creature keywords, and removes the ambiguity.

The rule book is not written with plurality in mind, check the wording in the rules for Taunt, Skirmish and Hazardous for examples.

4 hours ago, twinstarbmc said:

I take grate pride in my love for, and knowledge of, the English language.

4 hours ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

I want to meme this so bad.

Be nice. Be nice. Be nice...

Is this what's tempting you?

Just now, dperello said:

Is this what's tempting you?

Yes, yes it is. 😁

“The first time a creature with the elusive keyword is attacked each turn, it is dealt no damage and deals no damage to the attacker in the fight.”

If you think there is an ambiguity here, how about we cast about for the intent. But where could we look, you say? How about the reminder text! Maybe it casts a glimmer of illumination on this conundrum! Let’s see!!

”(The first time THIS creature is attacked each turn, no damage is dealt.)”

Are there truly those present who wish to patently ignore the transparently clear intent of this reminder text simply to argue in favor of a contrived ambiguity?

Again, please stop. The rule and the reminder text make the intent clear. And please don’t invoke rules from other games about the role of reminder text. I could invoke rules from Panzerblitz and the invocation would be similarly irrelevant.

1 hour ago, RobertK said:

Again, please stop. The rule and the reminder text make the intent clear. And please don’t invoke rules from other games about the role of reminder text. I could invoke rules from Panzerblitz and the invocation  would be similarly irrelevant.

I'm sorry this upsets you so, but I will not be badgered into silence. I will wait for an official ruling, which I have already requested. In the meantime, if you cannot participate in a respectful manner, there are plenty of other threads for you to engage in, which will probably cause you less stress than this one.

3 minutes ago, twinstarbmc said:

I'm sorry this upsets you so, but I will not be badgered into silence. I will wait for an official ruling, which I have already requested. In the meantime, if you cannot participate in a respectful manner, there are plenty of other threads for you to engage in, which will probably cause you less stress than this one.

Honest question, if the rules can be interpreted either way (granted I believe your way is a huge stretch but I'll acknowledge it's possible) do you not believe the text on the card is at least a hint at clarifying the intent? Or do you believe it to simply be a misprint?

8 minutes ago, twinstarbmc said:

I'm sorry this upsets you so, but I will not be badgered into silence. I will wait for an official ruling, which I have already requested. In the meantime, if you cannot participate in a respectful manner, there are plenty of other threads for you to engage in, which will probably cause you less stress than this one.

I am pretty far from upset. 🙂 But I think your persistence is likely to mislead those that come here for rules clarifications. I don’t badger; I bludgeon.

Cheers.

10 minutes ago, TwitchyBait said:

Honest question, if the rules can be interpreted either way (granted I believe your way is a huge stretch but I'll acknowledge it's possible) do you not believe the text on the card is at least a hint at clarifying the intent? Or do you believe it to simply be a misprint?

Honest counter, what about the Elusive creatures without reminder text? Do we reference some other card, or the rulebook? Hopefully, the rulebook, since that should be the go-to source for, y'know, rules.

That said, I think the reminder text could simply be an oversimplification that is unfortunately not exactly how the rule truly is. I'm sure there are concrete examples in other games where the reminder text for a keyword didn't quite match the actual effect of that keyword. I will not seek them out, however, for I fear the research would be far too time consuming.

9 minutes ago, twinstarbmc said:

Honest counter, what about the Elusive creatures without reminder text? Do we reference some other card, it the rulebook? Hopefully, the rulebook, since that should be the go-to source for, y'know, rules.

That said, I think the reminder text could simply be an oversimplification that is unfortunately not exactly how the rule truly is. I'm sure there are concrete examples in other games where the reminder text for a keyword didn't quite match the actual effect of that keyword. I will not seek them out, however, for I fear the research would be far too time consuming.

Cards without the reminder text are not really relevant as they don't help clear any intent up. The rule book of course is the go to source and it provides two potential variations of how it plays out not providing a definitive answer to you so we reach out for any other mention of how it works and we get the cards with said reminder text as the only other source. Yet not a single card that has the reminder text says it plays out the way you think it does, everyone that has said text says the opposite. This means either all those cards are wrong about how the rule works or you're mistaken. Again I agree that the rule book is the ultimate arbiter of how the effect works but when you're coming from two different permutations of HOW the effect plays out shouldn't the ultimate clue towards a real answer be the next closest official material at hand?
It seems to be you think the cards are a typo as they give absolutely no ambiguity to this question.

14 hours ago, twinstarbmc said:

No, no, I'm not trying to be a tricksy little hobbit here. I'm genuinely asking the community, because I can see it being interpenetrated either way.

All discussion aside, are we going to ignore that twinstarbmc said they could see the rules being interpenetrated?

No? Ok. Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’ll go sit in my timeout corner.

I kind of get what you’re saying but I don’t think you’ll win this one. To go back to your example even if creature B (with elusive) is being attacked during the second fight of the turn, IT is still being attacked for the first time, so it will trigger and resolve elusive accordingly.

Hope you get an answer soon. I hear the rules forum has Elusive...and hazardous. Keep your cleansing wave handy and at least get some aember out of it!

6 hours ago, Amanal said:

The rule book is not written with plurality in mind, check the wording in the rules for Taunt, Skirmish and Hazardous for examples.

8 hours ago, twinstarbmc said:

You know, I would, but Elusive is the only one in the entire Glossary that says "the first time." Most others I've seen are worded like "When a creature with [keyword]...." Assault, Destroyed, Play, Reap, Fight, Skirmish... they are worded in such a way that they happen every time the condition is met. Elusive is the only one that happens once and goes away. So, if we're going to reword Elusive to work as assumed, I submit the following:

Elusive (the way we wish it was worded)

When a creature with the elusive keyword is attacked, if it is the first time that creature has been attacked this turn, it is dealt no damage and deals no damage to the attacker in the fight.

This keeps the wording consistent with other creature keywords, and removes the ambiguity.

The keywords you mentioned are worded that way because they either can’t happen multiple times for a single creature in one turn (for example, Destroyed) or they aren’t limited to working once per turn (Fight).

Elusive doesn’t need to be reworded because it is already written correctly to function only the first time each round that the creature is attacked. With all due respect, you are simply wrong about the phrasing having two possible meanings. As it stands there is only one possible meaning.

13 hours ago, TwitchyBait said:

Honest question, if the rules can be interpreted either way (granted I believe your way is a huge stretch but I'll acknowledge it's possible) do you not believe the text on the card is at least a hint at clarifying the intent? Or do you believe it to simply be a misprint?

13 hours ago, twinstarbmc said:

That said, I think the reminder text could simply be an oversimplification that is unfortunately not exactly how the rule truly is.

So you basically think the reminder in most of the cards with Elusive are misprints because they say something that is not the actual rules (in your opinion).

I'm not a english native speaker and I can tell by reading the rulebook and cards that the elusive ability only applies to the creature being attacked.

But hey, I'll try:

The first time a creature with the elusive keyword is attacked each turn , it is dealt no damage and deals no damage to the attacker in the fight.

I'm getting that you are processing like this: the first time a creature with elusive is attacked in a turn, that one won't take or deal damage. But then the elusive ability/rule is triggered and therefore the next attack will be a second attack, not the first.

But also I think you are missing:

That "a creature with elusive" and "it" are refering to a specific creature. The "it" makes that creature the one relevant, not the entire battleline. "it" means each creature needs to be attacked a first time and then a second. See? It doesn't care if you are attacking a second time... The second different elusive creature you attack is being attacked for the first time and that's what matters. You can even attack with your third creature into another different elusive creature and again, that one was never attacked before in that turn, therefore it will be the first time.

You would be 100% correct if it was like "The first time a creature with the elusive keyword is attacked each turn, it is dealt no damage is dealt by either creatures and deals no damage to the attacker in the fight." Because then "a creature" is any target to satisfy this rule.

@Mushra93 Let me put it this way.

Imagine a rule. The rule of "WOOT!"

• WOOT!
  The first time a card is played each turn , the player playing it must exclaim, "WOOT!" Otherwise, [they suffer some kind of awful nasty horrible embarrassing penalty].

How would you obey this rule faithfully? Would you yell "WOOT" every single time you play a card, because it's the first time you've played that card that turn? Or would you only need to do it for the first card you play, and subsequent cards no longer apply to the WOOT rule? Does the rule functionally change if it's reworded to say "The first time each turn a card is played ..."?

While I'm always ready to accept rules ambiguities and point them out...and call for clarification when it's needed...I really don't see it here.

I DO see the issue, but I don't think a clarification is necessary. For reference, here's the language:

“The first time a creature with the elusive keyword is attacked each turn, it is dealt no damage and deals no damage to the attacker in the fight.” 

So there really ARE two ways to look at this: There's a first time a creature with elusive is attacked, and then there's a second time (and third, fourth, etc.). So here's the first approach:

Attack Elusive Creature A: Check language...is this the first time a creature with elusive has been attacked this turn? Yes, then no damage is dealt to either creature in fight.

Attack Elusive Creature A (again): Check language...this is NOT the first time a creature with Elusive has been attacked. Stop, no ability is applied, creatures deal damage to each other.

Now here's the second approach (Scenario B):

Attack Elusive Creature A: Check language...is this the first time a creature with Elusive has been attacked this turn? Yes, then no damage is dealt to either creature in fight.

Attack Elusive Creature B: Check language...is this the first time a creature with Elusive has been attacked this turn? Yes...AND No. No, in that this is the second time A creature with Elusive has been attacked, but ALSO yes, this is the first time THIS creature with Elusive has been attacked this turn. So which outcome controls? Well, there's only one trigger requirement for Elusive to activate, and that if it's the first time a creature with Elusive has been attacked this turn. The proper trigger has been met in Scenario B, so Elusive will trigger.

11 minutes ago, twinstarbmc said:

@Mushra93 Let me put it this way.

Imagine a rule. The rule of "WOOT!"

• WOOT!
  The first time a card is played each turn , the player playing it must exclaim, "WOOT!" Otherwise, [they suffer some kind of awful nasty horrible embarrassing penalty].

How would you obey this rule faithfully? Would you yell "WOOT" every single time you play a card, because it's the first time you've played that card that turn? Or would you only need to do it for the first card you play, and subsequent cards no longer apply to the WOOT rule? Does the rule functionally change if it's reworded to say "The first time each turn a card is played ..."?

Do you realize you are ignoring the "it" that everybody is pointing out? You created an exemple without that "it". The elusive rule has the element you are missing: the creature with elusive must be attacked, "it" registerd the attacks, not the active player. You might be attacking for the 5th time in that turn, but that creature with elusive won't take damage if "it" is being attacked for the first time.

Look at my example

26 minutes ago, Mushra93 said:

You would be 100% correct if it was like "The first time a creature with the elusive keyword is attacked each turn, it is dealt no damage is dealt by either creatures and deals no damage to the attacker in the fight."  Because then "a creature" is any target to satisfy this rule.

You basically created that "WOOT!" ability this way. I think the problem is you read the elusive rule for the first time and got that conclusion. Now you are having a hard time deconstructing it.

51 minutes ago, Mushra93 said:

So you basically think the reminder in most of the cards with Elusive are misprints because they say something that is not the actual rules (in your opinion).

I'm not a english native speaker and I can tell by reading the rulebook and cards that the elusive ability only applies to the creature being attacked.

But hey, I'll try:

The first time a creature with the elusive keyword is attacked each turn , it is dealt no damage and deals no damage to the attacker in the fight.

I'm getting that you are processing like this: the first time a creature with elusive is attacked in a turn, that one won't take or deal damage. But then the elusive ability/rule is triggered and therefore the next attack will be a second attack, not the first.

But also I think you are missing:

That "a creature with elusive" and "it" are refering to a specific creature. The "it" makes that creature the one relevant, not the entire battleline. "it" means each creature needs to be attacked a first time and then a second. See? It doesn't care if you are attacking a second time... The second different elusive creature you attack is being attacked for the first time and that's what matters. You can even attack with your third creature into another different elusive creature and again, that one was never attacked before in that turn, therefore it will be the first time.

You would be 100% correct if it was like "The first time a creature with the elusive keyword is attacked each turn, it is dealt no damage is dealt by either creatures and deals no damage to the attacker in the fight." Because then "a creature" is any target to satisfy this rule.

You are 100% correct. 👍

Why this is even an issue is baffling to 99.9% of us.

Wouldn't it be better if they change that ruling to:

"A creature with elusive won't take neither deal damage the first time it is attacked each turn" ?

Because I kind of get that some people might understand that the trigger/condition is only " The first time a creature with the elusive keyword is attacked each turn" with that -a creature- having a meaning like "any creature"

1 hour ago, twinstarbmc said:

@Mushra93 Let me put it this way.

Imagine a rule. The rule of "WOOT!"

• WOOT!
  The first time a card is played each turn , the player playing it must exclaim, "WOOT!" Otherwise, [they suffer some kind of awful nasty horrible embarrassing penalty].

How would you obey this rule faithfully? Would you yell "WOOT" every single time you play a card, because it's the first time you've played that card that turn? Or would you only need to do it for the first card you play, and subsequent cards no longer apply to the WOOT rule? Does the rule functionally change if it's reworded to say "The first time each turn a card is played ..."?

That’s not a corollary because you aren’t expected to play the same card multiple times each turn.

Creatures are expected to be attacked multiple times each turn by different enemies however.