So I decided I would give Chester one last go before he leaves us for legacy format.

Since I am going to be running him in our Air tourny today, I thought I would ask some questions to see what does and does not work.

My questions are mainly about his second ability.

R Commit, discard 1 momentum: After your opponent commits foundations to pass a control check, they mat not play enhance cards or abilities for the rest of the turn.

1) Do they have to have commited more then 1 foundtaion in order for me to react?

2) If they use a card like say Soul of Ling-Sheng Su, sicne the CC mod happens after they make the check, can I react to that as commiting to pass?

Thank you for your helps (yes, helps)

1. Can respond if they only commit 1. It's just looking for any number to be committed to pass a check.

2. No, Soul is being committed to pay for the cost of its ability.

Tagrineth said:

I'd have to disagree with you there. If it was "one or more foundations" or "any number of foundations" sure... but committing one foundation isn't committing multiple foundations.

where in his ability do it say he has to commit multiple foundations? Chester is looking for the fact that his opponent is commitiing foundations to pass a check, not the number of them. Example, they make a check and fail by 1, they say i am going to commit foundations to pass this check and proceed to commit the 1 required, then chester reacts.

Chester's just looking for the general case where any number of foundations are committed to pass a failed check, 1 or more.

I fail my CC by one. I commit one foundation.

Did I commit a foundation? Yes.

Did I commit foundations? No. I only committed one foundation.

Singular vs plural. It's not hard.

aslum said:

Ya, but by the way you're stating it, the opponent would have to commit two foundations or more for the ability to be played. However, I think if the card was meant to be used in the way you're describing it, then the card would say "after your opponent commits two or more foundations." After all, why go to the trouble of printing the card "after your opponent commits foundations", if they really meant "after your opponent commits two or more foundations" instead?

If they had wanted it to work off of just 1 foundation being committed they could have worded it any number of ways:

"After your opponent commits one foundation"

"After your opponent commits any number of foundations"

"After your opponent commits one or more foundations"

The only one that would be problematic is the first example, in that it's specific enough that it could imply that committing two foundations wouldn't trigger the trigger. As far as "what they meant for the card to do" ... that's a moot question. All that matters is what they actually printed on the cards. Hopefully Mr. Hata's grasp of the English language is a little firmer then Dave's was, and we will see a lot less of this kind of ambiguity in the future. In the meantime deciding a card works other then the way it says it does because you think that's what the designer intended is unsupportable.

aslum said:

Dude.

Stop it.

You're taking this way too far as you normally do.

Be quiet before this gets heavy.

Chester only needs 1 foundation minimum to be committed for his R.

End of story.

That is all.

- Hanzo.

Too far? I beg to differ. If the rule arbitors or game creators would like to errata the card that's fine. However you can't just change the way the English language works to suit your whims. That's just stupid. It's not like it's ambiguous in the slightest.

breathe easy peeps.

Aslum's got a point here (although Chester does work as ruled), so there's no reason to jump on him about it.
Unfortunately, the templating for abilities wasn't solid and there are a few cards, like chester, which don't follow the 'common wording.'

long story short: Chester does trigger from only one committed foundation (even though his wording isn't airtight)