The active side has priority ??

By Svarun2, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

in the new FAQ, it said that the active side has priority.. well what does that mean actually... does it mean that the active side resolves the effects first (witch might actually be a disadvantage quite often ) , or that the active side gets to decide in what order the effects resolve...

There are lots of cases this is important , but i will point out 1 :

Tattiana can return to town at the start of the Ol turn... so can she prevent the Ol from spawning and then return to town, leaving the OL with no window for spawning... (or is her ability interrupting the OL)...

pretty much the same problem with Thalia

The FAQ ruling actually only applies to resolving cards played by opposing factions on the same trigger.

well still what does the priority thing mean ... as i said earlier ...

and how to cope with that kind of problems.. ?

well what we did is we threw Tattiana out of our hero pile, because she is imbalanced anyhow ...

Regarding the cards, it is pretty clear. The card of the active side is fully resolved first.

Regarding your "problem" with Tahlia or Tatianna, there is nothing to resolve. If these heroes wait with their movement/glyphing out until after the OL has activated his first monster, then no more spawning - it´s that simple.

I haven´t played against Tatianna yet, but I don´t regard her as broken. Just a little annoying, like Boggs or Kirga.

well she is imba because she can always run into an unrevealed area and then port back after the OL cant summon anymore...

Ok how does her ability interact with dark charm, poltergeist etc ..

ah yeah ... the OL whants to activate a monster then in response Tatianna chooses to teleport to town (if the OL activates a monster she can not teleport anymore) ... so was that an interrupt? because if it was then the OL can still summon after she ports...

Since nothing points toward Tatianna´s special as being an interrupt, it is a start of turn effect of the OL´s turn - and all start of turn effects may be resolved in order of the player´s choice whose turn it is (in that case the OL).

So, if the OL plays a Dark Charm or a Poltergeist, Tatianna may only glyph back to town when the OL tells her to.

that is what i wanted to hear.. but that is not what the rules clearly state...

if now you are saying the OL can tell her when she has to port back, she can not interfere with spawning...

That is what the FAQ states, for the time being.

Probably worth a FAQ clarification?

i think that it is yes ;)

svarun said:

if now you are saying the OL can tell her when she has to port back, she can not interfere with spawning...

svarun said:

if now you are saying the OL can tell her when she has to port back, she can not interfere with spawning...

Well, I guess she can always forgo to use her special, if the OL puts her in an unfavorable timing position.

the question kind of goes like this : does "priority" mean that the active side gets to decide in what order things resolve, or does it mean that the active players abilities resolve first... and if the whole priority thing works for other things beside card abilities...

Parathion said:

Since nothing points toward Tatianna´s special as being an interrupt, it is a start of turn effect of the OL´s turn - and all start of turn effects may be resolved in order of the player´s choice whose turn it is (in that case the OL).

The FAQ answer is somewhat unclear:

"When multiple events may occur “at the beginning of a player’s turn,” such as a hero affected by multiple different status effects like Burn and Bleed, that player may decide in which order to resolve them."

It's not obvious whether "that player" refers to the player whose turn it is or the hero who is affected by multiple status effects. In previous forum discussions, when generalizing this precedent to simultaneous actions that occur at other times (such as exhausting a shield vs. rolling for a tunic), I believe people have generally taken it to mean the affected player or the "owner" of the effects, not the player whose turn it is.

Going with the active player is arguably a simpler reading of that sentence, and avoids problems with simultaneous effects "owned" by different players, but it also means that the exact same effects might have their order determined by a different player under different circumstances (e.g. you control the order of your defenses if you're attacked during a hero turn, but not if attacked during the overlord turn), which is pretty weird.

And it's probable that the FAQ writers weren't thinking about that when they wrote this answer and haven't given the issue any consideration whatsoever.

Parathion said:


Regarding the cards, it is pretty clear. The card of the active side is fully resolved first.

That's not at all clear. This has been discussed before; here's a post I made discussing four different ways of resolving the Crushing Blow vs. Blocked issue depending on how you interpret that answer.

I said it is pretty clear. The card of the active side is always resolved first - no more, no less. A played Crushing Block will always be resolved before a played Blocked. Any consequences or prerequisites regarding play order, refunding of threat or the like were not touched by my answer.

so what you are saying is that crushing blow is immune to blocked ?? Or that any other interaction between 2 cards played on opposing sides is resolved the same way... that has no sense to me whatsoever ... my subjective answer to this would be, that the Hero player needs to declare blocked first since " the active side has priority"( meaning( my subjective) that it should resolve in an order most suitable for the OL in this case), and then the OL can play crushing blow, or not play crushing blow after *... so basically when the dice are rolled the OL asks... ok so do you want to play something now... and if the hero does not, then the Ol can play crushing blow, or not play the CB...

* there is another question that ocures at this point ... can the OL see the result of blocked ( if it has worked or failed), before he gets to decide whether to play the CB on the particular attack...

I would deal that subject as pair the guard option. If you play blocked it get's resolved and then i can play CB or not. If i try to play CB and you play blocked i would have to say it works as a guard. If the block succeds then there is no longer a valid target for CB so it is canceled and the OL takes it back without paying the cost. If it is not then you can continue with your CB.

svarun said:

so what you are saying is that crushing blow is immune to blocked ?? Or that any other interaction between 2 cards played on opposing sides is resolved the same way... that has no sense to me whatsoever ... my subjective answer to this would be, that the Hero player needs to declare blocked first since " the active side has priority"( meaning( my subjective) that it should resolve in an order most suitable for the OL in this case), and then the OL can play crushing blow, or not play crushing blow after *... so basically when the dice are rolled the OL asks... ok so do you want to play something now... and if the hero does not, then the Ol can play crushing blow, or not play the CB...

* there is another question that ocures at this point ... can the OL see the result of blocked ( if it has worked or failed), before he gets to decide whether to play the CB on the particular attack...

Um, why would the Blocked get priority in your example? The OL is the active side in that case, since he was attacking most likely during his own turn (unless he played CB on a Mimic´s attack, during which he is also the active side) so CB has to be resolved first. That´s plainly written in the FAQ.

well what i wanted to say is, there should be a rule that tells the order in which the cards/effects should be played... i dont like the idea that the non active side can activate something after the active side, if there is the same timing trigger... as i said before there should be like a window of opportunity given to the the non active side, and if the "non active side" does not use it, then the "non active" side cant use it anymore for the same triggering condition...

because for instance the OL plays CB and the hero plays blocked and it does not fail and the OL gets the card back and does not pay for it... the heroes saw the CB card for free.. not really that big of a deal (in some rare cases it may be crucial ) but still if you can avoid that, i think it would make the whole thing better...

Parathion : what you are saying again is that most of the active sides cards are immune to the non active sides cards because they resolve first...

Yes, that´s my interpretation of the FAQ rule.

CB gets played and resolved, item destroyed.

Then the player may decide to play a Blocked, which would have no effect other than wasting the card.

There is no indication that the Blocked could undo the resolution of the CB.

But Antistone has already summarized some nice answers for a FAQ entry - hopefully the issue with playing order of cards and the like will be fully claer after that.

Considering the fact that they still haven't cleared up that mess of large monsters and terain i wouldn't be so hopefull. They seem to be really slow on getting rule support out.

Drglord said:

Considering the fact that they still haven't cleared up that mess of large monsters and terain i wouldn't be so hopefull. They seem to be really slow on getting rule support out.

That is exactly why we are trying to do such a detailed and methodical job this time (the detailed backgorund, multichoice answers etc thing). Because they've consistantly made a hash of things even when they had some of the smarter people here trying to help them.

Parathion said:

I said it is pretty clear. The card of the active side is always resolved first - no more, no less.

It's not obvious to me that that's necessarily what "gets priority" means. See the post I linked for details.

Um, not even if you read the FAQ question and answer in context: "Which card is resolved first? The active side gets priority"?! Are there (again) any linguistic subtleties that could give this a different meaning?