sorry if this has been answered before.

Corp has toll booth. There is a parasite on it with 4 counters, making it currently strength 1

Runner has Ice Carver in play and runs. "All ice is encountered with its strength lowered by 1. "

Is the ice trashed before the runner has to lose 3 credits? I was reading somewhere about the active player choosing the order of effects, and if it is the runners turn, could he choose to process Ice Carver effect first, then parasite, killing it before he has to pay the 3*

In a follow up question, lets say that there was only 2 parasite counters on the ice, but the runner has datasucker in play with 2 tokens on it. "Hosted virus counter: Rezzed piece of ice currently being encountered has -1 strength until the end of the encounter. "

That says "currently being encountered", so I think you would have to lose 3* from tollbooth before you get to use it, whereas Ice Carver says that the ice is encountered at strength -1.

Paul Grogan said:

Ice Carver says Ice encountered has its strength lowered by 1 which makes things a little tricky. I suppose you could argue that as the Active Player the runner could pick Ice Carver then Parasite to resolve before Toll Booth. Part of me thinks that the timing needs to be officially updated as otherwise it feels like the Runner is getting a bit of an advantage when initiating the run. One would think it should be the other way since the Runner is entering the Corp's home territory.

Paul Grogan said:

See above answer. Ice Carver and Datasucker have different syntax but effectively say the same thing.

I don't have my book with me, but is there a rule that says 0-strength ICE is trashed? I thought there is a card with rules text that says if the ice is reduced in strength to 0 (by the card effect) it is trashed, but I don't remember anything in the rulebook that made this a blanket rule.

Originally Posted by kpyke:

I don't have my book with me, but is there a rule that says 0-strength ICE is trashed? I thought there is a card with rules text that says if the ice is reduced in strength to 0 (by the card effect) it is trashed, but I don't remember anything in the rulebook that made this a blanket rule.

Parasite is a specific virus that causes ICE to be trashed when it reaches 0 strength. Normally ICE would not be trashed at 0.

**First time using the FFG forums, forgot to use the quote button, couldn't figure out a way to do it manually because of the efidm number.

Ice Carver and Parasite are Constant Abilities .

Tollbooth is a Conditional Triggered Ability .

Datasucker is a Paid Triggered Ability .

Constant Abilities are always in effect and therefore the ICE would get the extra -1 strength from Ice Carver and would be trashed by the Parasite before the Toolbooth 's ability would have an opportunity to trigger.

Even if Ice Carver were reworded to "When you encounter ICE, its strength is lowered by 1." the result would be the same. Now, it is a Conditional Triggered Ability . Since there are now two Conditional Triggered Abilities trying to resolve simultaneously, the active player (the runner) gets the first opportunity to act and can choose to resolve the Ice Carver 's effect, removing the Toolbooth before its ability can trigger.

The second case is a bit fuzzier. In other LCGs they have stated that Conditional Trigger Abilities are resolved before Paid Triggered Abilities (since they can only resolve when the triggering event occurs). However, I can't seem to find anything in the rulebook to this effect. I will be submitting a question to Lukas for clarification. Assuming they rule the same way, the Tollbooth will always trigger and resolve before the runner has an opportunity to use the Paid Triggered Ability of Datasucker .

Thanks Brad for the detail. So right now, you are saying that to combo with Ice Carver and Parasite works ok before Tollbooth kicks in, but you are checking with Lukas about if Datasucker is involved. Works for me

From the rule book:

Simultaneous Effects
When one or more abilities have the same timing trigger or
can be triggered at the same time, each player chooses the
order his own abilities trigger. A player can trigger an optional
conditional ability before a required conditional ability if they
both have the same trigger condition.
If players ever want to perform simultaneous effects at the same
time, the player whose turn it is resolves all of his effects first.

So the question becomes, are "encounters" and "encountered" considered the same trigger, for all intents and purposes?

The rule book breaks the "Confrontation Phase" down into "Approaching" and "Encountering" ICE, but encountering is not broken down any further. Taking the rule book at face-value here seems to imply that all "Encounter" related triggers happen simultaneously.

Therefore, the active player (the Runner) gets to resolve all of their triggered effects first, and then the other player gets to resolve theirs.

The thing is that Parasite triggers off a new condition caused by the effects being triggered as a result of the encounter, so I would assume you need to resolve all of the current effects before Parasite can resolve its trigger, since the original effects were technically simultaneous.

So, taking all that into account, I would say that the Runner needs to pay the 3* or the run will end.

Furthermore, if the Runner does not pay the 3* for Tollbooth, I'm not even sure that Tollbooth would be trashed at all. Technically, Tollbooth's triggered effect ends the run, which ends the encounter, which ends the effects from Ice Carver, removing the condition that would cause Parasite to trash it. However, the condition for parasite did exist briefly, so does that mean that its effect is already triggered and queued up, or is only triggered once all current simultaneous triggers are resolved?

With regard to this point, I have to lean towards Parasite being forced to wait until all of the simultaneous triggers resolve before being triggered itself and therefore not actually being able to destroy Tollbooth since without the effects of Ice Carver.

Obviously, if the runner pays the toll, Tollbooth would be toast.

One final note here, I use Ice Carver in my example because both it and Tollbooth are automatically triggered by the encounter. The Datasucker, on the other hand, has a paid ability that can be used during an encounter. If you were to only have the Datasucker and not the Ice Carver, I would say that the Tollbooth definitely triggers first because it happens automatically whereas the Datasucker can be activated once a certain condition exists but doesn't trigger as a result of that condition.

**Edit** I just noticed Brad's response and we're almost on the same page, except that I'm not sure if I agree that Ice Carver is a constant effect. If it was, I would expect it to read "All ICE has -1 strength" or "All installed (or rezzed) ICE has -1 strength".

Parasite, however, is definitely a constant effect (forgot to double check the actual wording of that one before posting…) but I'm still not sure how it interacts with Tollbooth's effect which, in my scenario above, has technically already triggered before the trash condition was met. Can you trash a card that has been triggered before the trigger is resolved? If so, what happens to the triggered effect? Does it still resolve or does it "fizzle"?

Just heard from Lukas:

Conditional abilities are resolved whenever they meet their trigger condition. In this case, the "when encountered" conditional happens before there is an opportunity to trigger paid abilities. Hope that helps.

So, Conditional Trigger Abilities do resolve before anyone has an opportunity to use Paid Triggered Abilities.

Along similar lines, I wonder if Wyrm's "1*: Ice has -1 strength" ability affects all installed/rezzed ice… It certainly seems that way to me, based on the wording.

If this is correct, you could use this ability to trash Parasite infected ice that you aren't even approaching.

Keep in mind that even if it does work this way, you would need to be encountering some piece of ice to use the Icebreaker's ability and the strength modifier would only last until the end of the current encounter just like a typical strength boost.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

DefconX said:

Ice Carver's ability is a Constant Ability with a limited scope The tricky thing to grasp is that the ability of Ice Carver is ALWAYS in effect. However, the effect of the ability is only noticeable when the ice is encountered. The encountering of the ice is the only time the effect matters, but it is NOT a trigger. In order to be a Conditional Triggered Ability it would need to be reworded like "When you encounter ice, lower it's strength by 1."

Also, once a card is trashed you no longer has the ability to trigger any abilities on that card. So, if the Tollbooth gets trashed before the Corp has a chance to trigger its ability, it never can.

So the timing is now:

[Constant Abilities] --> [Conditional Triggered Abilities] --> [Paid Triggered Abilities].

Inside of each bracket all the simultaneous abilities for the active player are triggered and resolved in the ordered decided upon by the active player before all the simultaneous abilities for the other player are triggered and resolved in the ordered decided upon by the other player.

DefconX said:

I imagine we will be seeing errata on Wyrm soon I think it is implied that an Icebreaker can only interact with the ice you are currently encountering but I can't find any rules to clearly state that. Assuming you do not have to be encountering the ice to interact with it, as long as the Wyrm has strength equal to that of ANY piece of ice it could reduce it's strength to the point where Parasite's Constant Ability would trash it. I expect to hear that you can only interact with ice as you encounter it though…. yet another question for Lukas

Brad Harrington said:

yes, the trigger effects only effects the ice you are currently approaching with that breaker. As far as I can tell. Parasite can only be placed on rezed ice as well.

Not sure if this a a real combo.

Brad Harrington said:

Okay, that seems fair, I can totally get behind that.

I just always feel compelled to play Devil's advocate, if only to make sure that all interpretations and points are covered/considered.

Going back to our original scenario then, can we say that the Tollbooth should be trashed this turn as soon as either the newest counter was placed on Parasite (if the Ice Carver was already in play last turn), or as soon as the Ice Carver is installed (if it wasn't already in play)?

Brad Harrington said:

This also makes a lot of sense. If we expand it out a little more, we are basically looking at something like this:

[Constant Abilities] --> [Conditional Triggered Ability #1] --> [Constant Abilities] --> [Conditional Triggered Ability #2] --> … --> [Constant Abilities] --> [Conditional Triggered Ability #N] --> [Constant Abilities] --> [Paid Triggered Abilities]

With no allowance for any paid abilities to be used until the Nth conditional triggered ability is resolved. Sound about right?

Brad Harrington said:

Yep, I fired it off a while ago for confirmation, along with a few questions that we've more or less resolved already.

booored said:

yes, the trigger effects only effects the ice you are currently approaching with that breaker. As far as I can tell. Parasite can only be placed on rezed ice as well.

Not sure if this a a real combo.

That was the ruling that we made when we were giving the game a go the other night as well. I just thought I would throw it up for interpretation anyway (and really hope that we were wrong, haha).

**And I went and deleted the quote box by accident, dang. Editing posts on these forums is tricky business. I'm starting to despise their quoting system….

DefconX said:

Err, well, kinda… it's more of a priority system than a clear flow like that.

Constant Abilities are always in effect so before any Conditional or Paid Triggered Ability can be triggered you have to check to make sure there isn't any Constant Ability effects to resolve.

Each scenario is unique since a Conditional or Paid Triggered Ability may result in a game state where a Constant Ability effect now "matters" or a Conditional Trigger may now have its conditional met.

And we haven't taken into account Prevent or Avoid abilities

DefconX said:

Welcome to FFG Forum.. WORST FORUM SOFTWARE EVER!!!

The trick is that when you edit a post, you can not put in new quotes… so be carful with your submit button. If you want to use multi quotes you can… you need to quote a post, then copy all the text b4 submitting, then quote the next one…. and paste it into the new posting box…. when you do a submit it should work.. but if you ever edit.. you can not add new quotes and editing them is a real pain as well..

The site badly needs a way to switch to code mode at least it is the formatted posting boxes that screw everything up!

Brad Harrington said:

Haha, I'm just going to file this under "You say potato…" for now and call it a day. There are probably very, very few scenarios where the distinction would make a difference.

Official answer from Lukas (I wasnt expecting a reply so quick…)

Paul,

The Tollbooth would be trashed before its conditional ability triggered. You have two different constant effects (Ice Carver and Parasite) which combine to knock it off before the Tollbooth can force the Runner to pay credits.

Datasucker counters could not be used until after Tollbooth's ability. "When encountered" conditional abilities are resolved before there is an opportunity to trigger paid abilities. Hope that helps,

--
Lukas Litzsinger