As is frequently and consistently the case, the newest BP has led to new rules questions. Here's one of mine, with more to follow, I'd imagine:

Helbane's Raiders - Dark Elf Unit - 4R, 2L, 2P, 2HP - "Elite. Warrior. ACTION: When an opponent discards one or more cards from his hand, deal 1 damage to target unit."

Does your opponent have to be the one who does the discarding or can this work in conjunction with my usage of the Scout keyword power??

this doesn't seem confusing to me.

If you are able to scout your oppenent, then he will discard a card from his hand, and you deal a damage to a target unit.

Yup, n' Harpies, too!

Well the issue is that YOU as the scouting player are the one who draws and discards the card, not your opponent and Helbane's Raiders says it has to be the OPPONENT doing that activity, not you as the Scouting player.

Wytefang said:

Why do you draw a card for the Scout ability? It just says that if that unit survives combat, an opponent must discard a card. Helbane's Raiders triggers whenever an opponent discards a card, not when you discard a card, and it doesn't matter what caused them to discard. If they discard one or more cards, you can deal a damage.

Wytefang said:

I suppose that's one way to read the rule. Another way to look at it is you're just choosing which card your opponent will discard.

Oh, you meant choose and discard, not draw and discard? That makes more sense. I couldn't figure out why you thought Scout allowed you to draw a card.

Hellbane's Raiders definitely works with Scout. Scout just says the attacking player forces his opponent to discard. He does not even choose the card that is discarded (since its random). And the player who is forced to discard is the one doing the discarding, so Hellbane's Raiders would apply.

Not entirely correct - Scout clearly tells you to (via the wording on the Shades Unit) " discard one card at random from an opponent's hand if this unit survives combat."

That implies, fairly clearly, that I am the one as the owner of the Shades to do the actual random drawing and discarding from my opponent's hand. In that regard, it would NOT trigger Helbane's Raiders power based on its specific wording.

I would be shocked if the raiders didn't trigger from scouting. Send it in to James or add it to the FAQ update thread.

Why? I've made a nearly air-tight case for them NOT working. If he rules that it still works, he violates the wording on the cards. Not my fault that I noticed this discrepancy.

What up, Fangster? Long time, no type. I was just pokin' around and happened in here. The funky thing about the wording on Scouts is that it seems as if you're discarding a card from your opponent's hand. But, in truth, you can't discard someone else's card any more than you can sacrifice someone else's units. By definition, discarding is only possible by the person whose hand the card is in. One of the biggest problems we're facing in the W:I community is a tendency towards heavily literal interpretations of cards. Despite the now-lengthy history of hobby card gaming, FFG is still struggling with many of the thorns that other card game companies did years ago. But even with this fact, most of these gaffes of verbiage can be clarified and corrected with straightforward rules knowledge and honest interpretations thereof. That said, play it as your group sees fit!

Also a case of whether you follow the abbreviated stuff on the card or the rules.

"Scout
After combat damage is applied, the controller of
any surviving participating unit(s) with the Scout
keyword forces his opponent to discard one card at
random from his hand for each of his participating
units with Scout that survived the combat." (p. 16)

emphasis added

Another case would be Counterstrike, which on the cards isn't stated as uncancellable, but is in the rules.

I figured I should answer the "why" question, but Lazarus saved me looking it up. Overseer Lazarus said:

This.

Wytefang said:

Yeah, I was basing my answer completely on the rulebooks definition of Scout, as Dam quoted above. And then I think its pretty clear that your opponent is the one doing the discarding. You could make the argument that card text overrides rulebook text, except I doubt that applies to the summaries of keywords printed on the card. If it did, then cards with Scout and no summary could work differently than those with both the keyword and the summary. For keyword definitions, the updated rules/FAQ should always take precedence over what is written on the card, otherwise keywords will not work uniformly on all cards.

Overseer Lazarus said:

that's the point... :-)

Cool. I really wanted this to work with Scout so I'm not unhappy with the clarification here. I should have checked the rulebook first, anyway, to see a different wording of Scout.

No worries, thanks everyone for chiming in.

Overseer Lazarus, thanks for popping in - hope you are doing well, same with you, Dam (you rock!). I agree OL that people can get too hung up on literal wording but I also think that THAT is probably the safest way to be when it comes to deciphering rules issues, otherwise you're left trying to ascertain intentions of the designers and that's a slippery and confusing slope at times.

Or it wasn't a literal enough interpretation. " discard one card at random from an opponent's hand if this unit survives combat." The keyword causes the discard of a card from the controller's opponent's hand. But since the card is clearly coming from the opponent's hand and going to their discard pile, they are discarding the card (despite the opponent's unit causing the discard).