Good evening everyone

I'm trying to make a deck with abuse of corpse lake but I have some questions regarding motley crewman ability.

For those who don't know the text: Any effect that discards 1 or more cards from an opponent's deck discards an additional card.

My questions about this guy are

1) The passive effect from the motley is modifying the discard effect?

For example, I have a frostfang peak in play and the opponent must discard an additional because Motley Crewman is in play. is it considered that the additional discard is because of the frostfang or because of the motley crewman passive? This question is to clarify wherther if I have to claim power or not from corpse lake when the second discard is a character

2) How Iron Fleet Raiders works with Motley Crewman?

Playing this deck, it seems that the efffect from Motley Crewman doesn't affect Iron fleet raiders skill. Any explanation about this?

3) How Goodswood Attendant works with Motley Crewman?

I would think this was an obvious scenario (it doesn't affect) but while playing it someone told me that if I chose the discard option, it would work since it is a "discard from the top" effect.

Many thanks for future answers

Because Motley crewman is modifyng the discard of the effect, any additional cards discarded are considered to have been discarded by that effect. If it said, "response: any time an effect discards a card, discard another card" (or something smilar), then it would be a new discard effect. But it specifically says that any discard effect discards an additional card.

As to it's interaction with Iron Fleet Raiders, because the discard on that card is the cost to trigger the effect, no additional cards will be discarded. There is a distinction between costs and effects in this game, and Motley Crewman specifically alters discard effects. As for Godswood Attendant, the card, despite the fact that you're looking at it, is still the top card of the opponent's deck, so Motley Crewman still considers the effect to be discarding cards from the opponent's deck and will interact with it. Same goes for cards such as Raiding the Reach.

If the additional card was considered to be discarded passively by Motley Crewman's effect - rather than by the original (though modified) discarding effect - then two Motley Crewmen would feed off of each other in an endless loop and discard an entire deck after a single card is discarded.

J_Roel said:

Many thanks for the responses

How it would work with Rading the Reach? You discard 2 (or 3 depending of season), put the other 2 back and then 1 more gets discarded due to Motley effect?

alquimista said:

Should work that way. The cards are put back on top of the deck during the reolution of the Response, and Motley Crewman kicks in during the passive step of Response resolution, *after* the effect has resolved completely. So you effectively get to choose the card discarded by the Crewman.

Ratatoskr said:

In terms of Raiding the Reach, yes an extra card will be discarded from the 5 you reveal. It will come out of the ones that you put back on top of the deck. Technically, you do not get to "choose" the extra card that is discarded, but it practical terms, since you put the cards back in any order, you do end up choosing which one it is.

ktom said:

Hnh. I thought he worked like CS Robert, who is worded quite similarly. So what's the difference? Is it that CS Robert says "When Robert…", and the "When" gives it a point of initiation, making it a passive effect, whereas Motley Crewman has no "when"?

Correct. The fact that Bob has timing language ("when") and Motley Crewman does not actually makes their wording very different.

ktom said:

Yeah, totally makes sense. I apologize for the confusion. Shouldn't post without thinking…in my defense, I said that it "should" work, not that it "does" work…

Oh, it does work in the sense that "Raiding the Reach" will discard 3-4 cards instead of 2-3. It's just that the extra card is discarded by the event, not by Motley Crewman.

It is really, really important that Motley Crewman doesn't discard anything itself. If it did, then when Motley Crewman #1 discarded the extra card, Motley Crewman #2 would kick in (passively) as a result of that discard and discard another card. But then, since the effect of Motley Crewman #2 discarded a card, Motley Crewman #1 would have a new "trigger" to initiate its passive effect - so it would kick in (passively) and discard another card. And so on. And so on until there was no deck left.

See why it's so important to recognize the card as a constant effect, not a passive one?

Just out of curiosity, if it's winter and you have three Motley Crewmen (Crewmans?) out, do you look at the top 5 cards and simply discard a sixth? I would think so, but want to make sure the event doesn't create a sticky situation in the wording of choose and discard X cards (where there aren't 6 to choose from)…

Technically, Motley Crewman does not increase the number of cards you "choose," only the number of cards that you "discard." You choose the cards to discard, rearrange the leftovers, then discard the extras. (So in practical terms, if you have 1 Motley Crewman, you effectively choose the extra card that is discarded by choosing the order in which the other cards are returned to the top of the deck before discarding the extra card.)

So in your scenario (Winter + 3), you would choose 3 cards, put the other two back on top of the deck in any order, then discard 6 cards (the 3 chosen, plus the next 3 on the top of the deck).

Ok, all clear to me now. Many thanks to all!