This came up in a rules discussion today. When the Corp player uses the Purge Virus Counters action are all virus counters in play discarded? The definition in the rule book for the action says to "remove all virus counters hosted on cards" (boldfaced in the rulebook).

So, that lead us to the question of are all virus counters considered to be hosted on the cards they are on even if the card dosen't actually use the word "hosted?" There are some cards that specifically use the term and some that don't.

Example 1. Imp

Place 2 virus counters on Imp when it is installed. Once per turn, you may remove 1 hosted virus counter to trash a card you access at no cost (even if it cannot normally be trashed).

Example 2. Medium

Whenever you make a successful run on R&D, place 1 virus counter on Medium.

Each virus counter after the first on Medium allows you to access 1 additional card from R&D whenever you access cards from R&D.

Am I correct that both Imp and Medium lose all virus counters if the Corp purges?

In my experience, yes. The virus counters are associated with specific cards, and are therefore hosted by them.

Hosted is just a generic term that isn't used on all the cards that get tokens (virus, power, advancement, etc).

When the corp purges, if they're virus tokens, they all go away

That was my understanding but I wanted some other opinions. With some card games I've played, I've learned that sometimes what a card doesn't say can be as important as what it does.

Whenever something is on a card, be it another card or a token, it is hosted there.

It's counter-intuitive, but yes, the corp purges everything that is a Virus token. Conceptually, it's the Corp running Macrosloft Securing Essentials on their servers-- not on the Runner's hardware.

It'd be nice if it was "purge all virus counters hosted on Corp cards". But then what would you do to a virus counter hosted on a Runner card that's hosted on a Corp card?

Maybe there'll be a "Rootkit" card in the future-- Corp cannot remove virus counters from Runner cards. =)

Given that all current cards that host virus counters are runner cards, an effect that says the corp cannot purge virus counters on runner cards would seem a bit out of place

I like to think of it as patching security loopholes that the viruses were targeting. Then once the security is updated all the old viruses are obsolete, and so they don't count for anything.

quote name="Sordeq" post="812462" timestamp="1373575464"]

I like to think of it as patching security loopholes that the viruses were targeting. Then once the security is updated all the old viruses are obsolete, and so they don't count for anything.

I like that.