One Stood Against Many : Play: Ready and fight with a friendly creature 3 times, each time against a different enemy creature. Resolve these fights one at a time.

Hi All,

The rules say i must complete the text of a card if possible. If my opponent has one creature, i would ready and fight. Would i then be able to ready two additional times (even though my opponent has no more creatures to fight)?

Thanks in advance for the help.

Just once.

Once after the initial ready and fight that is.

ok cool. that is the way we ended up playing it. I assume this is because you cannot reap between the cards effect finishing, which would make sense. thanks folks!

Based on the previous interpretations of Ready and fight (where if the opponent has no creatures, or you are restricted from fighting by a card effect) and in following the rule of "Do as much as you can", you would ready your creature, then fight the opponent's creature. You would then ready your creature again, but you can't use it to fight, as it's restricted by the requirements of One Stood Against Many. That action card is now resolved. If the friend creature that you are using is of the called house, you would be able to reap with it.

This is the step-by-step - the end result is the same as previous posters:

1. ready creature

2. fight and kill opponents last creature

3. ready creature

4. can't fight, nothing there

5. ready creature, we are already ready though

6. can't fight, nothing there

The creature is now ready, and if it is the active house you can still use it to reap or do an action. But the card has resolved, so you can't ready it again.

Does One Stood Against Many force the player to use the same creature 3 times? the phrase "a friendly creature" seems ambiguous.

3 minutes ago, Poposhka said:

Does One Stood Against Many force the player to use the same creature 3 times? the phrase "a friendly creature" seems ambiguous.

" A friendly creature" is is a singular. if you could use more that one, it would be 'up to 3 friendly creatures', or 'Ready and Fight with 3 different friendly creatures.' There is no ambiguity here.

3 minutes ago, xbeaker said:

" A friendly creature" is is a singular. if you could use more that one, it would be 'up to 3 friendly creatures', or 'Ready and Fight with 3 different friendly creatures.' There is no ambiguity here.

How would you word it if you HAD to fight with 3 friendly creatures that may or may not be the same creature 3 times? your two examples are "up to" and "different"

3 minutes ago, xbeaker said:

" A friendly creature" is is a singular. if you could use more that one, it would be 'up to 3 friendly creatures', or 'Ready and Fight with 3 different friendly creatures.' There is no ambiguity here.

Also the title of the card - ONE stood against many 😁

1 minute ago, Poposhka said:

How would you word it if you HAD to fight with 3 friendly creatures that may or may not be the same creature 3 times? your two examples are "up to" and "different"

"Ready and fight with friendly creatures 3 times"

1 minute ago, xbeaker said:

"Ready and fight with friendly creatures 3 times"

man, you should work for FFG and clear up their cards, do i get to fight with all friendly creatures 3 times?

2 minutes ago, Poposhka said:

man, you should work for FFG and clear up their cards, do i get to fight with all friendly creatures 3 times?

ok, how should your theoretical card be written? How should OSAM be written?

Choose up to three friendly creatures, ready and fight up to a total of three times with the chosen creatures.

Edit: I guess the second “up to” isn’t even necessary

Poposhka is right about it being ambiguous, but it is more a problem with the English language than the card itself. Between the card's name and the existence of relentless assault, it is clear what OSAM is supposed to do.

This is a big part of why Magic's rulebook is so large. Removing ambiguity from English is a very time consuming task.

3 hours ago, Poposhka said:

How would you word it if you HAD to fight with 3 friendly creatures that may or may not be the same creature 3 times? your two examples are "up to" and "different"

I'd name the card "Three stood against Many." 😀

25 minutes ago, TheSpitfired said:

I'd name the card "Three stood against Many." 😀

Then we can rename HoW to “Horseman of Occasional Conflict”

17 minutes ago, Poposhka said:

Then we can rename HoW to “Horseman of Occasional Conflict”

BMB to "Active Bio-Matrix Backup"

This is fun. We should be careful though, we are probably giving FFG future cards!

7 hours ago, Poposhka said:

How would you word it if you HAD to fight with 3 friendly creatures that may or may not be the same creature 3 times? your two examples are "up to" and "different"

It’s completely unambiguously telling you to use one creature that readies and fights three times (assuming it survives).

And the answer depends on if the 2nd and 3rd ready/fights only occur if the prior creatures chosen survive.

Reminder: One Stood Against Many : Play: Ready and fight with a friendly creature 3 times, each time against a different enemy creature. Resolve these fights one at a time.

Problem portion: "Ready and fight with a friendly creature 3 times"

English is not a context free grammar. This means that the same sentence can mean different things if said in different settings. In our particular example, when an adverb of frequency is used in a sentence with an object, you are dependent on context when determining if the adverb of frequency describes just the verb, or if it describes the combination of the verb and the object.

Examples:

John has killed a bear 3 times. (This obviously means 3 different bears)

A bear has fought John 3 times. (This obviously means the same John)

John has seen a bear 3 times. (Unclear if it is the same bear or not)

Unfortunately, there is no way to easily format a sentence to clarify this without adding more words specifically to do so.

John has seen the same bear 3 times.

John has seen a bear 3 times. It was a different bear each time.

John has seen a bear 3 times. It is unknown if the bears were different bears.

"John has seen 3 bears" also works for the different example, but switching 3 from an adverb to an adjective can have other consequences.

In my opinion, this would work just like Zakiel's ability to ready and fight with a neighboring creature. If there's nothing to fight, then you can use the creatures if they are of the active house. It's not ready and use, so you wouldn't be able to use them to reap or abilities if they aren't active house. I would still think that you ready 3 creatures. If there's nobody to fight, then there's no damage dealt and fight doesn't go off, also creatures don't exhaust to fight. They still would be readied though... i think

As mentioned, the text is ambiguous, though from context ("One" stood against many) we can assume it's meant to be the same friendly creature each time. To clear it up, they probably should have said something like "Choose a friendly creature. Ready and fight with it three times..."

17 hours ago, Poposhka said:

How would you word it if you HAD to fight with 3 friendly creatures that may or may not be the same creature 3 times?

"Repeat "Ready and fight with a friendly creature" three times."

or

"Ready and fight with a friendly creature. Ready and fight with a friendly creature. Ready and fight with a friendly creature."

3 hours ago, Revert said:

Reminder: One Stood Against Many : Play: Ready and fight with a friendly creature 3 times, each time against a different enemy creature. Resolve these fights one at a time.

Problem portion: "Ready and fight with a friendly creature 3 times"

English is not a context free grammar. This means that the same sentence can mean different things if said in different settings. In our particular example, when an adverb of frequency is used in a sentence with an object, you are dependent on context when determining if the adverb of frequency describes just the verb, or if it describes the combination of the verb and the object.

Examples:

John has killed a bear 3 times. (This obviously means 3 different bears)

A bear has fought John 3 times. (This obviously means the same John)

John has seen a bear 3 times. (Unclear if it is the same bear or not)

Unfortunately, there is no way to easily format a sentence to clarify this without adding more words specifically to do so.

John has seen the same bear 3 times.

John has seen a bear 3 times. It was a different bear each time.

John has seen a bear 3 times. It is unknown if the bears were different bears.

"John has seen 3 bears" also works for the different example, but switching 3 from an adverb to an adjective can have other consequences.

A bear is singular mate, it’s always the same beat in those scenarios.

If you wanted to denote that John has seen three bears, you’d literally say that.

Ie “John has seen three bears.”

31 minutes ago, Derrault said:

A bear is singular mate, it’s always the same beat in those scenarios.

If you wanted to denote that John has seen three bears, you’d literally say that.

Ie “John has seen three bears.”

You could say "John has seen three bears" to make it less ambiguous, but saying "John has seen a bear three times in his life" is perfectly valid, and it could easily have been three different bears. It's the whole "John has seen a bear" bit that is being affected by the three times. I could say "I've been on a 'plane three times in my life" and I think most people wouldn't assume I'd been on exactly the same 'plane each time. Now, if you said "the bear" or "this bear" or "that bear" then yes, it would be definitely referring to a specific bear.

49 minutes ago, Showsni said:

You could say "John has seen three bears" to make it less ambiguous, but saying "John has seen a bear three times in his life" is perfectly valid, and it could easily have been three different bears. It's the whole "John has seen a bear" bit that is being affected by the three times. I could say "I've been on a 'plane three times in my life" and I think most people wouldn't assume I'd been on exactly the same 'plane each time. Now, if you said "the bear" or "this bear" or "that bear" then yes, it would be definitely referring to a specific bear.

No, it actually can’t be three different bears. A Bear is indefinite only in the sense of ‘which specific bear’.

Being on a plane three times actually is saying you’ve only boarded the one plane three times. If you wanted to indicate that you’ve been on three separate planes (and felt the need to specify that each was only boarded once) you’d could say it as “I’ve been on planes three times in my life, each time a different one.”

Edit: To be clear, I’m not saying that people don’t violate the actual meaning of words or grammar routinely, but it is still incorrect usage.