Hi everyone, I have a few question about daemon's dance (thinking aboit building a deck around it, if possible), but the first thing to do is to see if I have actually understood how it works :-D

will the following gameplay situation work for the triggering of the dance? (apart for the very obvious one)

a) there is a crown in play (for instance: meeren and it is summer). I play the dance. Someone plays a crown of azor ahai and makes winter (there is both summer and winter.) Can I trigger the dance, because it is sommer, but somene activate winter? On www.dashboard.org they say this will actually work, but I still have doubts. The explanation is that "Changing the season "to" something doesn't necessarily mean changing it "away" from something else." That made me thinking and I got the next situation....

b) I have a black raven in play. I play the dance. I play another black raven. Is summer, and then a new card make again summer. Will this an opportunity to trigger the dance? Because this situation is still respected: "Changing the season "to" something doesn't necessarily mean changing it "away" from something else."

thanks

SummerSeaCaptain said:

a. The explanation you reference from dashboard.org sounds correct to me.

b. I'd say that it never stops being Summer in this case. The first raven is not discarded until after the second one comes into play (I believe that this literally true, but even if the first Raven is discarded just before the second one technically comes into play, the first raven will still remain Moribund until the second one is fully in play).

mmm I think that it never cease to be summer, too. But technically it is summer because Raven1 is in play, then it is summer because raven 2 is in play. Season is changed from summer to summer (without interruption), and because of:

"Changing the season "to" something doesn't necessarily mean changing it "away""

it should still activate the demon's dance, because it doesn't matter that it was already summer.

SummerSeaCaptain said:

Now, I'm not a native speaker, so I usually refrain from discussing semantics, but to me the verb "change" certainly seems to call for a shift in status. In other words: If "Season is changed from summer to summer (without interruption)", then nothing has changed at all.

Ratatoskr said:

That it is exactly what I thought (I'm not a native speaker either). But the sentence on dashboard.org has thrown me off:

"Changing the season "to" something doesn't necessarily mean changing it "away""

It appears to me that in english you can actually change from summer to summer....? another commen, again on the demon's dance card, says that:

"Changing to something, doesn't imply also having to change from something else, if the two things aren't mutually exclusive"

All the comments on agotcards.org refer to the situation when it is season A because of Crown X, then Crown Y is triggered and now it is both Season A and B. There's nothing there that indicates a change "from Summer to Summer".

The situation is pretty clear IMO. Demon's Dance requires a change "to Winter or to Summer". That means that it triggers anytime an effect changes the game state from "Not Winter" to "Winter" or from "Not Summer" to "Summer". Doesn't matter if the other Season is active or not. In the example with the two Black Ravens, nothing changes, so Demon's Dance doesn't trigger. I mean, Black raven doesn't even say "Change the season to Summer" (not sure if it would make a difference anyway). It just says "It is Summer". "It is Summer" before the second Black Raven comes into play, and "It is Summer" after it comes into play, and there's no instant of it not being Summer in between. Where's the change?

EDIT: I think what is meant by the sentence that confuses you ("Changing the season "to" something doesn't necessarily mean changing it "away") is simply "Changing the season "to" Winter doesn't necessarily mean changing it "away" from Summer"

Oh yes I see it now. Thanks a lot!

SummerSeaCaptain said:

Let's say the White Raven is in play. You play the Black Raven - making it summer and discarding the White Raven so it is not Winter anymore. Obviously, Demon's Dance can be triggered. But what really happened here? Well, when the Black Raven discarded White Raven from play, it went moribund -- and was technically still in play, affecting the game while waiting for Responses to be done with, until the end of the window. That means that when you triggered Demon's Dance in the "obvious" situation, it was technically summer and winter at the same time because the Black Raven was totally in play, but the White Raven had not fully left play yet.

So notice what happened here: the season "changed" not because Winter ended, but because Summer began. We are doubly assured that this is the measure because we know that if Carrion Bird shuffles the Black Raven back into your deck (making it go from "Summer" to "nothing"), Demon's Dance cannot be triggered. It's not considered a "change" in the season because nothing different started. However, if there is no other Raven in play at all when you play your Black Raven, that does count as the season "changing" to summer. So it seems clear that a new season starting, not an old one ending, is the way to work with it in the game.

So while "changing 'to' doesn't necessarily mean changing 'away' from something else" is kind of true, it is more accurate to say that changing "to" involves something new starting, but doesn't necessarily require something else to end at the same time. Although if you want to get really philosophical and abstract, what ends when the season changes to summer is any sort of "not summer" status the game may have had.

ANYWAY (pay no attention to that man behind the curtain...), Demon's Dance Responds to a season starting; ie, the game gaining a new "status" of that season. And in the two crowns situation, the second season "starts," even when the other crown is still there and active (just like the moribund ravens).

With that in mind, reconsider the "Black Raven to Black Raven" example.

SummerSeaCaptain said:

Because we are defining "changing" the season as happening when a new season starts, I'd liken the Black Raven to Black Raven situation to trying to kneel a character that is already kneeling. It is not considered successful, because you are continuing something that already exists instead of making a new situation happen.

My 2-cents, anyway.