Coney In A Trap -- Immune to Card Effects or Framework Level?

By madd-dawgg, in Rules questions & answers

Posted at
(References at the bottom of post)

My intuition is "No. It's still immune" because at the end of the day it's a card effect. However there is this quote that makes it fairly ambiguous to the point where I'm leaning toward that it is not immune.

From Caleb: " However, the ranged and sentinel keywords do not target the enemy, rather they affect the character they appear on and allow it to take advantage of framework actions that no enemy is immune to. "

Coney in a Trap doesn't explicitly 'choose' the enemy and it seems to operate more at the 'framework' level rather than the 'target' level. Essentially, the card itself is not affecting the immune enemy specifically, but rather, buffing me the player, stating, I am unable to be attacked by the next thing that I engage. I'm allowed to engage enemies, I'm allowed to play this card, and rather than directly stating this specific enemy, at the framework level, I'm no longer allowed to be attacked because it modifies the rules of the game, not the enemy itself. It's a stretch, but I really think this is the case.

I'm allowed to engage 'immune' enemies, thus prompting this card's 'Response:' allowing me to play it. It doesn't 'choose' the enemy itself at any point. Just references the enemy. The ruling on Quick Strike (and Hands Upon the Bow) is that it works against 'immune' enemies because it functions at the 'framework' level. This feels very, very similar. If I'm allowed an out of phase attack by modifying the rules, wouldn't I then be allowed to deny an attack by modifying the rules?


Cards and quotes below---

Coney in a Trap

Event. Cost: 1.

Play only if you control a unique character with the Ranger trait and another unique character with the Warrior trait.

Response: After you engage an enemy, that enemy cannot attack you until the end of the round.

Joe Bosco

The Mûmakil #9. Lore.

Quick Strike

Event. Cost: 1.

Action: Exhaust a character you control to immediately declare it as an attacker (and resolve its attack) against any eligible enemy target.

"...for he that strikes the first blow, if he strikes it hard enough, may need to strike no more." Gandalf, The Two Towers
Sara Biddle

Core Set #35. Tactics.

Hands Upon the Bow

Event. Cost: 1.

Action: Exhaust a character you control with ranged to immediately declare it as an attacker (and resolve its attack) against an enemy in the staging area. It gets +1 during this attack.

"We live now upon an island amid perils, and our hands are more often upon thr bowstring than upon the harp."
Haldir, The Fellowship of the Ring
Magali Villeneuve

Shadow and Flame #131. Tactics.

"Hi Thaddeus,

I wanted to follow up with you on this question because I revisited my original answer with my coworkers and we agreed that Hands Upon the Bow and Quick Strike can be used to attack enemies with "immune to player card effects" because those two cards are targeting a character and not the enemy. (The bit about "an eligible enemy target" on Quick Strike is only there to clarify that non-ranged characters cannot attack enemies engaged with other players when resolving its effect.) Dunhere and Great Yew Bow don't work against enemies that are immune to player card effects because they do directly target the enemy.
This means that when playing The Battle of Five Armies scenario, you could in fact use Hands Upon the Bow to attack Bolg in the staging area.
Sorry for the confusion with my original answer. I hope you are enjoying the On the Doorstep expansion!
Cheers,
Caleb"


And for the "Framework" Explanation

Hi Jan,

You cannot attack an enemy that is immune to player card effects in the staging area because the game does not afford players those kind of attacks as a normal framework action. Therefore any player card ability that allows you to attack an enemy in the staging area, such as Haldir or Hands Upon the Bow, would not work on Host of Angmar because it would be immune to those effects.

However, the ranged and sentinel keywords do not target the enemy, rather they affect the character they appear on and allow it to take advantage of framework actions that no enemy is immune to. So you can use sentinel to defend the Host of Angmar while it is engaged with another player, and you can use ranged to attack it.

The Host can be tackled a couple of different ways: 1. You can dog-pile it with a lot of characters, including your friend’s ranged characters, combining their total attack. Cards like For Gondor! can help with this strategy by giving each attacking character +1 ATK. Or, 2. You can build up several super high attack strength heroes with lots of attachments that grant attack bonuses, such as Gondorian Fire and The Black Arrow. Since the Host’s engagement cost is 50, an event like Unseen Strike can help in a pinch.

I would say that having several characters with the ranged keyword is very important in a multiplayer game so you can pile on the attack strength regardless of who the Host is engaged with.

Cheers,

Caleb

Posted at

I'd say that the phrase "that enemy cannot attack you" doesn't buff you as the player, it debuffs the enemy. And therefore while the card could in theory be played after an immune enemy engages you (because that's targeting a framework step), its effect (which targets the specific enemy that engaged you) would fail to resolve. And so you'd just have wasted a resource for nothing. (In fact, since you're not allowed to play cards that have no potential to change the game state, you'd probably be forbidden from playing the card in the first place.)

The reason this is different from Hands Upon the Bow is because although "attack an enemy" is a framework effect (and Hands Upon the Bow just expands the power of your normal framework-granted attack, letting it reach into the staging area), there is no framework effect that grants the effect of skipping over the attacks from one enemy (or even all enemies) engaged with you. Since the framework doesn't give any way to have attack immunity from engaged enemies, the only way to have it is via a card effect, and therefore enemies immune to player card effects are immune to that one.

Posted at
1 hour ago, rmunn said:

The reason this is different from Hands Upon the Bow is because although "attack an enemy" is a framework effect (and Hands Upon the Bow just expands the power of your normal framework-granted attack, letting it reach into the staging area), there is no framework effect that grants the effect of skipping over the attacks from one enemy (or even all enemies) engaged with you. Since the framework doesn't give any way to have attack immunity from engaged enemies, the only way to have it is via a card effect, and therefore enemies immune to player card effects are immune to that one.

I guess the only thing that might let you avoid the normal attack in the combat phase of an immune enemy might be Oath of Eorl, since it explicitly shifts the normal framework steps of the combat phase.

Posted at

@rmunn has got the long and short of it. Just here to mention… I'm not sure if the OP realizes that the original Hands in the Bow ruling he cited was reversed a few months later:

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1086021/official-ruling-dunhere-hands-upon-bow-and-enemies

And of course, nowadays there's the FAQ gem reproduced at the bottom here:

http://www.lotr-lcg-quest-companion.gamersdungeon.net/#Rule240

Anyway, the usual rule of thumb, that the Quick Strike ruling is going to confuse the bejeezus out of people for other cases, seems to apply again here.

Posted at

Appreciate the replies.

Posted at

From Caleb:
"I'm happy to explain. The key to understanding how "immune to player card effects" works in this situation is to understand the difference between resolution of a card effect vs resolution of an attack. An enemy with "immune to player card effects" cannot be targeted by the resolution of a card effect, but it can be targeted by an attack. The resolution of card effect for both Hands Upon the Bow and Quick Strike is to allow a character to make an attack. This effect only targets the chosen character. When the subsequent attack is made, the player is no longer resolving a player card effect because the effect has already been resolved (i.e. the attack is being made). That player can now target the "immune to player card effects" enemy with the resolution of an attack.
Dunhere works differently. His ability is a passive effect that scans for eligible enemy targets. When searching for a target enemy, enemies with "immune to player card effects" would prevent Dunhere from being able to target them for the resolution of his effect. Great Yew Bow is even more straight-forward. To resolve its ability you must "choose an enemy in the staging area" but an enemy that is immune to player card effects cannot be chosen as a target when resolving a player card effect.
I hope that clears things up a bit. Thanks for your help in clarifying this!"

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/970104/immune-player-card-effects-official-answer/page/1

I actually think this is the definition I needed. The card is being resolved at the time of being engaged, not at being attacked. And again, it never targets the enemy. I'm honestly not convinced this is an open and close case. Coney in a Trap seems like it should work against Immune enemies to me.

Posted at

Think about this... Expert Trackers wouldn't be usable against an Immune Enemy if we agree Coney in a Trap doesn't work. They do not explicitly target. Rather, they occur as a Response to a game event. They are the 'resolution of a card effect' as Caleb describes. The difference is, that the effects are not 'attacks.' But surely, we can reference a card's threat value. So if we say that Expert Trackers works, but Coney in a Trap doesn't, then why?

Expert Trackers

Event. Cost: 0.

Response: After you engage an enemy, exhaust a Scout or Ranger character to place X progress tokens on a location. X is the engaged enemy's printed .



EDIT: Let me add: This is 'resolution of an engagement' vs 'resolution of a card effect.' Also the Conflict of the Carrock explicitly describes a card needing to directly interact with it, in order to be immune.

This seems to imply, to me, that indirect effects like Northern Tracker would work on Immune cards as well.

Conflict at the Carrock rules explanation:
The Carrock, a location card in the encounter deck has the text "Immune to player card effects." This text means that players cannot select The Carrock as the target of any card effect, and that The Carrock ignores the effect of any player card that would directly interact with it.

EDIT 2: It seems that the definition of Immune to Player Card effects has changed over time. Here is the one from The Hobbit on the Doorstep


Cards with the text “Immune to player card effects” ignore the effects of all player cards. Additionally, cards that are immune to player card effects cannot be chosen as targets of player card effects.

The sweeping "Ignore All" would then imply they do just that, they would ignore effects that indirectly affect them, such as equipment that buffs the player.

I really think a more accurate description of what "Immune" means is in order.

Something like how MtG defines "Protection from."

Maybe Immune means:
Cannot have player attachments.
Cannot have tokens placed on it as result of a player card.
Cannot be targeted or chosen by a player card.
If a player card effect would lower a printed stat, it doesn't lower it.
If a player card effect would prevent an attack, it doesn't prevent it.

Something like that. And then we can better understand how it works without the need for esoteric understanding of framework events or the differences between resolution of game events or resolution of player cards. As that just seems overly confusing when we could have an explicit explanation like that.

Sorry done ranting. Thank you for reading.

Edited by madd-dawgg
Posted at

Here we have Caleb suggesting Hands Upon the Bow can be used on immune enemies, which is not accurate.

Posted at
On 1/3/2021 at 12:36 AM, madd-dawgg said:

The sweeping "Ignore All" would then imply they do just that, they would ignore effects that indirectly affect them, such as equipment that buffs the player.

I really think a more accurate description of what "Immune" means is in order.

The first line is definitely wrong and has always been wrong, for as long as we've been asking for clarifications about what "immune" means.

The second line is right and has always been right, as long as we've been asking for clarifications about what "immune" means.