Raging Gnome - Attack (ivys new finisher)

3 Diff, 3 Ctrl +2 Mid Block

3spd Low 7 Damage

All, Life, Void Ranged

After you play this attack, if you do not have at least 4 other attacks with a printed difficulty of 3 or less in your card pool, this attack gets -5 damage and its damage cannot be increased.

Ok so the argument here is my friend thinks that seeing as Holding ground and healer bother say Return to its printed damage you can use them to get the damage back to 7 even if u dont have "4 other attacks with printed difficulty of 3 or less in your card pool". i dissagree because in the act of returning the damage you are increasing the damage from 3 to 7. can we get a ruling here? wev been arguing about it for half an hour lol.

Cheers

Damage is only counted as increased when the card text features the words "This attack gets +X damage/increase this card's damage by X/etc." Cards like Holding Ground/Fight or Flight/Tae Kwon Do Zephyr revert the damage back to it's printed. While a consequence of using these cards may be that the damage does increase, it is not counted as an increase of damage by the game state.

So Holding Ground should work in this situation, and the attack would go back to 7 damage if it hit.

fight or flight actually says reduce this attacks damage. but that means ragnar's support will let you get a bonus on FOF without reducing it, at a cost

I would say that in this case the attack may NOT be returned to it's printed damage by Holding Ground or Zephyr. The difference I believe is in the wording. Fight or Flight states that the attack may not receive any more bonuses where a bonus is defined as being +X. In this case the card states that it's damage may not increase. Both returning a card to it's printed damage from a lower value and giving an attack a bonus serve to increase the damage. I would say that this card was carefully worded to prevent abuse with Zephyr and Holding Ground by side stepping the "no more bonuses" rule.

Theo said:

notice the wording here. it says that that damage can't be increased, as opposed to receive a bonus.

if the end result of any ability you use is that the damage of Raging Gnome becomes more than it was previously, it won't affect RG.

no to healer, holding ground, etc.

ed: SNIPED!!! so, in other words, *STAMP* for Baranor