For Desparate Tactics, can I pay the cost to return an Army to my hand if I cannot trigger the effect? For instance, to save The Bastard's Elite from being taken control of when I lose a MIL challenge? I've seen lots of posts regarding "Pay X to do Y" type of costs, but usually from the perspective of determining what the cost is. Thanks in advance.
Pay cost without ability to trigger effect
Since the army in your hand is not chosen as a target, I'd say it's possible (but I'm not sure by any means).
sabrefox said:
For Desparate Tactics, can I pay the cost to return an Army to my hand if I cannot trigger the effect? For instance, to save The Bastard's Elite from being taken control of when I lose a MIL challenge? I've seen lots of posts regarding "Pay X to do Y" type of costs, but usually from the perspective of determining what the cost is. Thanks in advance.
I would have to say yes.
The only stipulation for initiating an effect is being able to actually initiate it. You couldn't play Distraction if there were no characters to target (say you're doing this because you don't want extra cards in hand for some reason). Distraction requires you to choose a character as part of its initiation and you are unable to do that and so can not play it.
With Desparate Tactics you don't have this issue. It's only initiation is the cost of returning an Army to your hand. Man, and it's an Any Phase . Save Cavalry Flank from Valar ? Interesting.
mdc - you mean you'd have to anticipate a Valar and play that event pre-plot, right? Once the Valar is revealed, you can't change the moribund destination of NCF without a save or replacement effect and Desperate Tactics is neither of those.
Sorry if I'm misunderstanding - just thought that was worth clarifying for others.
I'm not the best at coming with non-obvious uses for cards so I wanted to check with the community to be sure. It seemed like it should be allowed, as far as I could tell.
And yes, you'd have to predict the Valar'd - guess wrong and it'll cost you 4 gold for nothing.
doulos2k said:
mdc - you mean you'd have to anticipate a Valar and play that event pre-plot, right? Once the Valar is revealed, you can't change the moribund destination of NCF without a save or replacement effect and Desperate Tactics is neither of those.
Sorry if I'm misunderstanding - just thought that was worth clarifying for others.
Not to mention, Desperate Tactics is an any phase action, not a response.
Khudzlin said:
doulos2k said:
mdc - you mean you'd have to anticipate a Valar and play that event pre-plot, right? Once the Valar is revealed, you can't change the moribund destination of NCF without a save or replacement effect and Desperate Tactics is neither of those.
Sorry if I'm misunderstanding - just thought that was worth clarifying for others.
Not to mention, Desperate Tactics is an any phase action, not a response.
Yes to all of this. Sometimes I forget that almost every normal word in the English language has very specific context in this game, LoL.
Honestly I'm rather surprised by this answer, but looking it up in the FAQ I found (on pg 13):
The word choose is always used to denote a target. If an event does not have the word "choose," then it does not have a target.
If you do not have a valid target for an event, you may not play that event. Not all events have a target.
All event cards have an effect, and may be played whether or not the effect has any result.