Prism of Many Views

Each player plays with the top card of their deck faceup. ACTION: Exhaust Prism of Many Views to discard the top card of a player's deck.

Lev'l 15:13

Prophecy. Play during any player's draw phase. ACTION: Place this card face up on your deck. RESPONSE: After you win an arcane struggle, discard Lev'l 15:13 from the top of your deck to choose 1 character. Give that character 2 wounds.

Since the prophecy is already face up on the deck due to the Prisms's ability, can the prophecy's response be triggered?

My answer was yes, but I was asked by my opponent to get confirmation. Thanks in advance for your help.

Shub-Gyrl said:

Odd. I'll reread that insert, thanks!

I've read again the Seekers of Knowledge insert and I see nothing there that would stop a player from triggering a prophecy after Prism of Many Views exposes it?

Send it to Damon. I don't have the insert in fornt of me, but if it does not say something about it, I could argue both sides of it, but to be honest I'd be somewhat surprised if PoMV allowed the triggering of the prophecy. It is placed on top of your deck, and is treated as an active card by doing so. Without that I'm not sure there is any facility to allow it to be triggered…

but this is mostly by inference. It isn't that hard to imagine the ruling going the other way.

If Prism reveals it, it is still in the deck, but simple in the "revealed" state, whereas if it has been played via its effect, it creates the lasting passive effect that can trigger. The difference is the actual card state.

Ahh, I did not look at it from that angle! I agree but I don't have to like it!

Prophecies are a bit clunky and I thought I'd found a way to make them less so.

Thank you community for your input!

Danigral said:

Sorry for the long delay after that I'm posting, but I didn't have the SoK rules sheet at hand until now.

I think prophecies may be triggered if they are face-up on the deck, no matter how they entered that state.
Usually card effects can't be triggered from out-of-play by the rules, but there are already some cards that supersede this rule. For example Local Sheriff: "Action: Pay 1 to return Local Sheriff to your hand if it entered your discard pile this phase." That effect is implicitly stating that it can be triggered out of the discard pile.

It's the same with prophecies. All their responses read "Response: After X, discard this card from the top of the deck to do Y." So they're also implicitly stating that they're triggerable from out-of-play.

To me, the section in the SoK rules sheet reads like an example for the regular use of prophecies, not like a rule. Especially since it only describes what happens if you use the prophecy's Action, but not what happens if it is face-up on top of the deck through some other way.

But like Penfold said, it can easily go both ways, and Danigral made an excellent explanation for the other way.
I send a rules question to FFG, so we have confirmation.

SoK sheet:

Prophecies
When a player plays a Prophecy event card from his hand, triggering its Action effect, the card is placed face up on top of his deck. Each Prophecy event then has a triggering condition, which, when met, allows an effect to be triggered from the top of its owner's deck. If an effect would cause the Prophecy event card to move from the top of a player's deck before its Response effect is triggered, the Prophecy card is turned face-down before resolving the effect.

Received a very fast answer from Damon Stone - I've been wrong, the Prism doesn't allow prophecies to be triggered.

Thanks for the official confirmation HP and Damon!

HilariousPete said:

So that would also mean that Prism can prevent the use of prophecy cards, since the card placed on top face-up would change to being played on top face-up.

So that would also mean that Prism can prevent the use of prophecy cards, since the card placed on top face-up would change to being played on top face-up.

No, what matters is how that face-up card got there. Prism only allows for a card that is in your deck to be physically flipped over. It hasn't changed it's state as a card in your deck, and you normally can't trigger cards that are actually in your deck. Prophecies however are played on top of the deck through a triggered effect, which allows for the effect on the prophecy to be triggered. It is creating a special state which physically is on your deck for purposes of drawing or manipulating the deck, but is also triggerable.

It's confusing as heck, but hey.