Can you kneel a character with a single attachment using Castellan's ability? He reads, "...kneel a character without attachments." Suggesting you can kneel any character without more than 1 attachment.

No.

FATMOUSE said:

While Penfold's concise answer is undoubtedly the best one possible, I'll throw in the following consideration:

By that reasoning, all the cards with the "No attachments" keyword could all take a single attachment. Or when the plot card Herding the Masses ("Non-unique characters cannot be declared as defenders.") is out, you could declare a single non-unique character as a defender in a challenge. And on, and on, and on....

This one really does boil down to reading comprehension. Stop fishing. Or, as Penfold so eloquently said, "No."

It honestly had less to do with fishing than I just happened to be looking at the card.

"Attachments" in the written context seems to imply "more than one attachment." Swap that into Castellan's text and it would read, "...choose and kneel a character without more than one attachment." Had Castellan read "any attachments" like Hatchling's Feast does I would have never brought it up, but it doesn't. By saying "any attachments" it's implied the amount of attachments can be one or more. By saying "attachments" it's implied the amount of attachments must be more than one. "Attachments" isn't equivalent to "an attachment" or "any attachments." Really, it's the term "without" that changes the meaning for me. "Without an attachment" and "Without attachments" seem to be referring to different quantities, IMO.

Whereas Herding's effect seems to be referring to the card type and not the quantity. Let's pretend Herding said, "Characters cannot be declared as defenders." This is equivalent to saying. "No characters can be declared as defenders." Now let's change "characters" to "character." It now reads, "No character can be declared as a defender." Whether using the plural or singular form of "character" the phrase has the same meaning and effect - no character can be declared as a defender - but when using the singular or plural form of "attachment" in Castellan's effect it can (and therefore does?) change the meaning.

I don't claim to be an expert on language, it's just within the context that's what it appears to mean to me. If it turns out that it means what you're both saying it does (and I'm really not looking to make a big deal out of this), I hope FFG uses terms like "any", such as in Hatchling's Feast, in the future.

EDIT: Forgot to mention the "No Attachments" keyword uses "any attachments" in its definition in the Rules.

FATMOUSE said:

Remember that there are language conventions within the game and that card text needs to be interpreted in light of those. The clearest, simplest, and most straight-forward interpretation of "choose a character without attachments" is "choose a character without any attachments." So that's what you go with. Reading a quantity into it, other than the presence or absence of the card type, really is adding in layers of complexity that aren't there.

If there is no functional difference between "without attachments" and "without any attachments", cards saying "without attachments" should be functionally errata'd for clarification and unification of terminology (there is no reason for there to be two different terms referring to the same concept).

hklown said:

My bad- I meant "technical" errata, not functional (I was busy not paying attention in class at the time!).

But seriously, I can't think of a good reason for a card game to have multiple, different terms for the same function. If one is clearer then the other (and even if you think it's pedantic, "without any attachments" is clearer then "without attachments" if the underlying ruling is that we're talking about a card having 0 attachments), then the clearer one should be used. Design should strive to eliminate ambiguity whenever possible, because there really is no justification for ambiguity, no matter how small.

Besides, as FATMOUSE pointed out, the "No attachments" rule is described as "without any attachments" in the rules, so it's clear that that is the intended way "without attachments" should be interpreted. Unless they actually mean what FATMOUSE said in his OP.

Which I think we can all agree, they don't.

hklown said:

hklown said:

hklown said:

Ultimately, it seems to be a mountain out of a molehill and the context of the game provides more than enough information to know that "without attachments" does not allow a singular attachment. If you asked a waiter to bring you a brownie "without nuts," and they brought you a brownie with a single big walnut on top, would you say you got what you asked for? Or if you asked for a burger without pickles and there was a single slice of pickle on your sandwich, did the person understand what you were asking for?

Even in common usage, requiring something "without x's" is pretty much never interpreted as "a single x is OK." I really don't see the ambiguity "without attachments" creates here that requires even technical errata.

While for all intents and purposes I agree with you- I don't think anyone seriously interprets "without attachments" to mean <= 1 attachment, it's a matter of principal. I've still yet to hear a convincing reason as to why there should be multiple terms for the same concept in any card game. I'm not saying we should call FFG and tell them to "STOP THE PRESSES!", but I don't see why when the next FAQ comes out, they can't just stick a note in with whatever other errata is there specifying that Castellan should read "without any attachments". I don't think design will have to labor over that for more then a few minutes.

So in short, there should not be multiple ways of phrasing the same concept, and design should strive to be as consistent as possible, which is why I'd advocate what is basically a minor change.

I think there is no functional difference between "without attachments" and "without any attachments," and while technically possible, Fatmouse's reading is a huge stretch from a pragmatics standpoint. Doctors Without Borders don't have a single border. If someone asks you to name a "person without kids", you're not gonna go and name someone who has one kid. Similarly, if a restaurant has a sign saying "no dogs allowed" you can't bring in a single dog. It's a different construction but you can apply the same reasoning (as ktom pointed out with the "No attachments"). It's a quirk of the language that this doesn't quite carry over to positive constructions, leading to the "1 or more" constructions we find frequently on the cards, or rather card players in particular are more likely to make a distinction between "with an attachment" and "with attachments", where in casual speech you'd be more prone to view them as functionally identical (="with at least 1 attachment").

hklown said:

hklown said:

When the game does use modifiers like "any," "more," or "most," it is always doing so in the context of comparing 2 or more things, as opposed to identifying a card with a particular status. The different context means that it is not the same concept.

So to me, the "basically minor change to make sure we don't have multiple terms for the same concept" argument isn't working for me because I really don't see the multiple terms being used. And if there are individual cards that are not coming to mind, I'd personally advocate changing the 1% that is inconsistent with the norm rather than changing the norm to match the 1%.

Most cards actually follow Castellan's format. In fact, Hatchling's Feast is the only card in the game that says, "without any ______," instead of, "without ______." I suppose the inconsistency threw me off. "Any" does imply a quantity and when you compare Hatchling's Feast with the likes of Castellan I don't think it's completely (perhaps mostly though ) unreasonable to see the both talking about quantities.

Anyway, I'm fine with Castellan. Wasn't trying to change him or anything. Just wanted to resolve the issue. Although, it would be nice if FFG were consistent with all of their card phrasing to avoid any potential confusion. While this incident may be extreme, and perhaps even a bit absurd, there's no doubt that many players have been mislead or baffled by the various ways a singular concept/action/etc. is phrased in this game; especially, when certain distinct terms and phrases have *specific* meanings, but other, otherwise similar, terms and phrases don't. (i.e. choose -- denotes a target, Do X to do Y -- is a cost, etc. vs. characters and character cards -- different phrases yet same meaning, kneel that character -- that character isn't a target, etc.)