I was just reading through the March of the Damned spoilers list and thought of a possible combination using Countess Iseara to stack power on the Great Unclean One. I'm sure there are other applications but I'm not familiar with enough of the cards. I've looked through the rules to make sure that it would work and unless I'm missing something it should work.

In play are Warpstone Excavation, Countess Iseara, and the Great Unclean One. You have Veteran Sellswords in hand.

During your capital phase:

1. Play Veteran Sellswords (cost 0) for free to the zone with Warpstone Excavation, corrupting them.

2. Sacrifice Sellswords to add one power to Great Unclean One.

3. Spend one resource with Iseara to grant Necromancy to Veteran Sellswords.

4. Repeat until you are out of resources

There is an additional possibility depending on the game mechanics but some one will have to confirm this. If Necromancy remains in effect for the Sellswords even after they have been sacrificed for the second time, the player only needs to use Iseara once to apply it. If this is the case then you can cyclically stack infinite power onto Great Unclean One.

Thoughts?

We don't know yet, honestly. Normally a card loses everything that happened to it when it leaves play, but Necromancy is a bit weird in that it works from the discard. Did anyone send this in to James yet?

By default I'd say play it as if it loses Necromancy when it leaves play.

Yeah, I'm definitely leaning in that direction until there is something official. Also, I suppose Walking Sacrifice would be a better unit than Sellswords... forgot about them.

Necromancy only lasts until the end of the turn and then it goes on the bottom of the player's deck.

Wytefang said:

A clarification of this would be great since it can set up some pretty broken combos.

tacollector said:

If Sellswords have gain Necromancy until the end of turn, why do you spend on resource again ?

Iseara's ability costs 1 to activate.

The more I think about it, the more complicated the rules get if Iseara's granted Necromancy stays with the unit when it leaves play. You'd have to make a special exception for Necromancy that it doesn't go away when it leaves play, but only if it goes to the discard - otherwise things that bounce back to hand or go on the bottom of the library (etc etc) would keep Necromancy, which wouldn't work.

I think it makes things much more neat if the unit forgets about the granted ability when it leaves play just like everything else. That said, you never know - has anyone sent this one in yet?

Logic pretty much demands that an object changing zones (hand to play, play to discard, discard to play, discard to deck, etc) loses any attributes it had gained in the zone it started in and reverts to the printed abilities on the card. Otherwise very strange things start to happen when cards are shuffled back into the deck, returned to hand, etc... anytime a card goes to a zone which is potentially random or has information masked from one of the players.

A simple case... consider Greatswords and Called Back. If I play Greatswords, then return them to my hand with Called Back then play them again, how does my opponent know it is the same Greatswords? Couldn't they easily claim the Greatswords is a new copy, and therefore doesn't have the first gained power? Even if it is very unlikely that the player would play a 'fresh' copy, their opponent could easily claim they did. If the rules require a judge or third party to verify ordinary game states, the rules are broken.

So yeah, lets wait and see...

Clamatius said:

Then the card doesn't exist in game terms (out of play, not active). Not sure why there's any confusion about this??

Clamatius said:

Yeah I think it's highly likely that the unit would looks the ability upon returning to the discard again. Even still, if you had a few resource tokens built up and could afford to pay for it over and over it allows a rather nice repeatable power boost.

I'm not sure if anyone has sent this in... not familiar with who to send it to or how.

Wytefang said:

Give Lobber Crew Necromancy w/ Iseara's ability.

Play Lobber Crew from the discard pile for 2. Sac Lobber Crew to use its ability. Lobber Crew goes back to discard.

...

where it stays at end of turn, since the card no longer has the necromancy keyword (assuming objects that change zones revert to their printed form, as we are speculating is correct here).

Next turn, rinse, repeat.

Get it?

I don't need help understanding how this supposed combo works - it doesn't work more than one time though, that much seems pretty apparent. As usual, too many people are over-thinking things in these always interesting forums.

Why couldnt it work more than one time per turn?

Either the unit loses Necromancy once it leaves play and you could pay 1 to give it Necromancy again and then pay it's cost to play it again

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The Unit continues to have Necromancy once it leaves play and you can just pay it's cost to play it again.

Either way, I dont see why you cant play a unit more than once per turn. The only question is if you need to use Iseara's ability each time or not. I hope that you do and that makes the most sense to me, but I dont know for sure.

For sure, you can use Iseara's ability multiple times in the same turn. The question is if you give a Lobber Crew Necromancy once, if it retains it once it goes to the discard (so the first time costs 3 to bring it out and subsequent times cost 2, as opposed to 3). That is not clear from the written rules.

The thing is that once Necromancy is finished, per the rules, that unit goes to the bottom of the Draw deck. I'm not seeing where you think Iseara's ability would somehow interrupt the Necromancy keyword from completing itself??

It goes to the bottom of the deck when it leaves play at the end of the turn. That doesnt happen if you sacrifice or destroy the unit first.

...that was my point. Next time try reading my post (or, you know, the card text...) before insisting you know it already.

If you read the reminder text on necromancy, it says "you may play this card from your discard pile. If you do, put it on the bottom of your deck at the end of turn." If it turns out we are wrong on this and cards retain traits when they change zones, you end up with some really weird interactions. For example, if I necromancy a Wight Lord into play and then Pilgrimage it back to my hand, then play a new Wight Lord... do I have to put a card in my hand on the bottom of the deck? How is my opponent able to verify that the Wight Lord I played was or wasn't the same Wight Lord that was put into play by Necromancy and is therefore going to go away when the delayed trigger resolves at the end of turn?

Point being, if cards do indeed revert to printed form when they change zones (and, presumably, they are treated as a new object for the purpose of delayed triggers etc), the endless Lobber Crew + Iseara loop works. At this point, just have to wait for the rules confirmation.

The return-to-bottom-of-library trigger definitely only happens if the unit in play. The printed rules sheet in March of the Damned says so, IIRC.

So looping Lobber Crew with Iseara is fine, it's just a matter of whether the cost is 3 for the second time you do it in a turn, or 2.

ddm5182 said:

Didn't care enough about the concern over this combo to bother reading into it too much - unlike some here, I have other interests and other demands on my time. However, it's an interesting topic but hopefully they just errata this kind of stupid thing.

I wasn't terribly fond of this keyword when I first heard of it and I'm even less fond now - it's probably going to lead to way too many stupid and annoying abuses and rules issues. Perhaps this is the start of the end in some ways. This is how it usually goes with these kinds of games, after all. Sigh.

On a sidenote, looks like you're slipping back into your old snarky attitudes here in the forums again, DDM...c'mon man, you were making such great progress, too.

Also, I suspect that the easy fix will be that the unit has to go to the bottom of the deck, regardless of what happens with it. That may be the only way (although ungainly at best) to address this kind of issue.

oblivious..........

Wytefang said:

Honestly, I don't see an issue here. Yes, Isaeura's power is strong, but I would not consider it broken. Order has some recursion ability with Order in Chaos which is basically uncounterable, while in this case a single Zealot Hunter (or other creature removal) solves the problem. and the ability is appears on a 6 cost unitcard, which is a hero.

The other (not too many) necromancy cards don't seem op either. Wight Knight is strong, but it's cost 5, while other non-recursible creaturekillers tend to cost 2-3 (Zealot Hunter, Battle Pilgrims, Slayers of Karak Kadrin) and the dreaded Deathmaster cost 4.

Iseara and the other Necromancy stuff seem to be working as intended and are definitely not overpowered. Wytefang, I am not sure why you would even think that the Necromancy ability needs errata.

darke over at BGG noticed this in the FAQ (page 8):

Out of Play
Out of play is the deck, hand, and
discard pile zones.
If a card would go to an out of play
zone, it goes to its owner’s out of play
zone. A card that moves from an in
play zone to an out of play zone is
treated as though it were a new card.
Any effects connected to the card will
no longer affect it. The only exception
to this rule is any abilities that trigger
when a card moves from an in play
zone to an out of play zone.

So Iseara's granted Necromancy ability definitely won't stay with the unit if it goes to the discard. No need to ask James on this one.