hi guys,

i have one question on how desperate tactics works. does the wording printed strenght apply to both characters the one in play and the one in my hand?

so does this situation work?

I play one raiding fleet from my hand. discard the top 8 cards from my opponents deck. then i give the raiding fleet +1 strenght through naval escort. i play desperate tactics and return the 9 strenght raiding fleet to my hand and put the 8 strenght raiding fleet in play. discard the next 8 cards from the top of my opponents deck.

Card Text:

Desperate Tactics:

Any Phase: Return an Army character you control to your hand to put an Army character with a lower printed STR into play from your hand. At the end of the phase, return that character to your hand if it is still in play.

Two problems with that scenario:

First, the comparison is printed STR. By saying "with a lower printed STR," the comparison is printed STR to printed STR. There is nothing in the card text implying that one card's printed STR would be compared to some other characteristic of the other. So, no, you cannot use STR modification to swap copy A for copy B.

Second, Raiding Fleet's Response only works when you play the card from your hand. Desperate Tactics puts the card into play. "Playing" a card is not the same thing as "putting it into play." So even if you could use Desperate Tactics to do a Raiding Fleet shuffle, you couldn't trigger the Response because you have not met the play restriction of "playing" the Army.

thanks for the answer. i completely forgot the fact of DT is putting the card into play.