This rule dispute came up tonight. In two parts:

Part I:

Blue was the Mirror, Green had the Mirror flare.

Blue called for a reversal of digits and revealed a 08 card (now worth 80). Green revealed a 14 (now worth 41) but then played his Mirror wild flare, which replaces his card with a copy of his opponent's card.

So, Green now has an 08 card up instead of a 14--but is it worth 8 points or 80?

Green thought it was straightforward--the flare made it as if he had played a 08 card from the beginning, hence his 08 is worth 80. Other players argued that since the Mirror's power is used during Planning, it no longer operates during the Reveal phase. Mirror uses his power while the cards are face down on the table, before they are revealed. Green countered that the Mirror's power can't just be thought of as taking place while the encounter cards are face down on the table. The impact of Mirror's power continues into Reveal and Resolution.

Blue eventually conceded, but differences of opinion remained among the players as to what the correct ruling was.

Part II:

Later in the game, the same two players faced each other. Blue again called for a reversal and revealed a 06. Green revealed an 08. At this point, Purple Cosmic Zapped Blue to undo the reversal and give Blue the higher total. Green had to concede that if Mirror's power was still "in play" the last time, it ought to be Zappable at this point, even though it seems wrong to be able to Zap this power after the cards are revealed.

Thoughts?

Part II is easy: You can only play Cosmic Zap as an immediate response to the use of a power (technically, it's a response to the declaration of the power's use). Once the power begins to have its effect, or (in the case of powers that queue up results for later) some other effect begins to take place, it's too late to zap the power. Mirror is used in Planning and queues up an effect that takes place in Reveal — but you cannot zap it in Reveal. Purple's play was illegal.

Part I also seems very straightforward to me: Wild Mirror copies the opponent's card either before or after Mirror's effect kicks in. Personally, I believe the flare happens after (since Wild Mirror is discretionary and Mirror is a queued effect that is mandatory once it's invoked). However, this distinction is completely moot because both players' encounter cards are mirrored at the same time . Either Green copies an 08 and then they both get mirrored to 80s, or the 08 gets mirrored to an 80 and then Green copies it (as an 80). Either way, Green gets his 80.

I don't see where Blue has a case at all. Is he arguing that Wild Mirror somehow got played after Green's card was mirrored but before his own card card was mirrored? Or does he think the encounter cards are somehow 80 and 41 for resolution purposes but 08 and 14 for copying purposes? That doesn't make sense; once Mirror's effect occurs, it is as if the ink has moved around on the cards ... proceed forward with your newly minted Attack 80 and Attack 41 cards.

For comparison, consider that when Emotion Control is played, both players have actually "revealed" Negotiate cards; nobody is considered to have revealed an Attack card even though they physically did so before the Emotion Control happened. This is important for cards and rules that say things like "if your opponent revealed at attack card". Yes, he technically did at one moment, but for gameplay purposes he did not . Too many things would break otherwise.

Trying to say that Blue had an Attack 80 ten nanoseconds ago but now has an Attack 08 long enough for it to be copied, and then will have an Attack 80 again fifteen nanoseconds later at resolution time just doesn't make sense.

Thanks for replying.

Blue would respond that the Mirror's power doesn't say it moves the ink around on the cards. It says it changes the value , which is then resolved at the end of the encounter.

Is there any documentation or analogy that would allow us to decide which vision of the Mirror's power is correct? Obviously, the ink is not literally moved around on the cards. Mirror's power creates a fiction in which it is as if the ink had been moved around. The question is, does the Mirror wild flare participate in that fiction, or does it not have access to the realm in which the ink has been moved around?

chaka said:

I don't see how that changes anything. If that's Blue's argument, he has to apply the same logic to Wild Mirror. At some point, Mirror will flip both cards. At some point Will Mirror will make one card match the other. It doesn't matter what order those two things happen in ... Green will still get an 80.

chaka said:

There is no reason to treat Wild Mirror any differently than Mirror; they both move the ink. Either

• Wild Mirror changes the ink on the 14 so it looks like 08, and then Mirror changes the ink again on the 08s so they both look like 80s; or
• Mirror changes ink so the 08 and 14 look like 80 and 41, and then Wild Mirror changes the ink again on the 41 so it looks like 80.

Anything else is just unnecessary complication for the sake of trying to change the outcome to make the loser happy.

Are you saying that Blue's claim goes like this?

1. Mirror schedules the 14 to change to a 41, and schedules the 08 to change to 80.
2. Wild Mirror schedules the 14 to change to 08.
3. MIrror goes off, changing the cards to 41 and 80.
4. Wild Mirror goes off, overdubbing the 80 into an 08 again (so the argument would presumably be that it was somehow "scheduled to become a particular number" rather than "scheduled to copy the opponent's card").

If so, I have to say that looks, sounds, and smells like first-class rules lawyering to me: a lot of maneuvering to try to get one effect to apply and the other effect to not apply. Wild Mirror isn't designed to copy what another card used to be , nor is it designed to copy a card and then lock out any further modifications. It's designed to turn a card into a copy of the opponent's card — whatever that opponent's card happens to be at the moment Wild Mirror executes.

I'm not aware of any explicit rule that says "the ink moves around" (that was just my analogy), but there are game components going back to the 1970s (Emotion Control and Deuce come to mind) that clearly operate retroactively, changing what you physically did into something different. If rules lawyers want to make that into something more complicated in order to win an argument on one particular encounter they lost, I guess they can try to do that, but they will have to be prepared to give explanations for the things that break when they try to apply that same logic in other situations.

Blue probably needs to go to Wikipedia and read about Occam's razor, and then present a compelling case for why a complicated and counter-intuitive algorithm that results in an 80 being "copied" as an 08 makes the game more fun and easier to understand for the largest number of players.

What color did you play in that game?