One of my play group came up with a new question today given the declaration/resolution ruling on Deathmaster, which caught us by surprise.

I have a Repeater Bolt Thrower in play with 1 development. I activate it for 1 resource to do 1 indirect damage to my opponent. In response, my opponent plays Demolition targeting the development. Does the Bolt Thrower do 1 indirect damage or 0?

Hi!

Once you've triggered an effect, you've payed all costs for sure. The "1 cost-1 damage" took place, even if not apllied yet.

Well, it isn't covered by the "illegal target" section of the FAQ, since there is no target involved. It obviously depends on whether the payment portion of the text 'locks in' the value of X, or X is 'updated' based on changes in the number of developments. The FAQ is silent on the subject, so your guess is as good as mine.

I sent it in. I didn't think there was anything in the rules that covered it, but I figured I could easily have missed it.

There is no specific and direct text about this but once you've paid X as defined by the card text, X has been defined for every part of the card. There is no way to prevent the damage from being assigned. X must be paid to trigger the effect at all.

So I sent this question in:

Background: I have 1 development and a Repeater Bolt thrower in my
battlefield. I activate the Repeater Bolt thrower 10 times for 10
resources (all stacked in the same LIFO que so none have resolved
yet).

Q1: If my opponent then destroys my development and the que
resolves, how much indirect damage does that deal? 10 or 0?

Q2: If instead of letting it resolve after my development gets
destroyed, I play Wake the Mountain and get 3 developments in my
battlefield (1 start - 1 destroyed + 3 WtM = 3 total), what will the
indirect damage be? 0, 10, or 30?

This is what James' responces were:

1) X is determined when you declare the action and spend the resource.
In this situation, you would be dealing 10 instances of 1 indirect
damage.

2) Again, X is determined when you declare the action and spend the
resource. The indirect damage dealt would still be 10 instance of 1
indirect damage.

-

Too bad too, that would have been a great idea. Activate bolt thrower 50 times for 0 cost each (if I had 0 developments in my battlefield). Then, slap down a Wake the Mountains at the end of that chain and do 150 indirect damage. Oh well, back to the drawing board...