R Discard up to 2 face down cards from your card pool: After your Combat Phase begins, attacks you play this turn get +X damage. X equals the number of face down cards you discarded from your card pool.

Is that X a constant after you pay the cost, or can it change as you discard more cards? The wording is markedly different from all of Alex's other support.

I don't think it changes because it's counting the number of cards that have been discarded up to that point.

it doesn't refer to the amount of cards discarded for the cost, just cards discarded.

if you discard more cards from the card pool, the value of X will go up

So after you activate the effect, the X continues to go up as the amount of cards discarded goes up? Kind of like Jaguar Revolver's X?

I think that's the meat of what GH said, and that's a great precedent to remember this with.

Heehee, I want to play something with this dude, Night Side Stance and Raw Talent now...

Another question occurs to me: Once the R's pump has been applied to an attack, that instance is set in stone, right? Meaning, additional cards discarded during the resolution of the attack will have no effect on the damage pump it has already received. So in the combo I set out above, Raw Talent does it's +1 thing after discarding a face-down card, but Alex doesn't return to re-pump the attack because the value of his X changed.

right, the ability has already been applied once.

and no, this is not like JR - JR has been ruled at having all values of X defined the moment you play it, and will not fluctuate.

i'm not even all that comfortable with the way this ability is worded either and it may need some looking into, as i'm certain the intent was to have the bonus be equal to the amount of cards discarded BY the ability

GouHadou said:

I'll be sure to play this deck THIS week instead of after our Air event then lols. This ruling makes some sense in the context of "Have the character's support do some of the same thing as the character, but weakened". "A Clouded Mind" has a similar mechanic to Alex-4's R: but also destroys itself, for example.

Follow up question to this,

Do you need to discard at least 1 facedown card to activate the R? Since the cost is "up to 2" can you choose to Activate it for zero, then have the effect increase as the turn continues on from Raw Talent ect?

failed2k said:

if RT discards a facedown card, then yes