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Redemption® Collectible Trading Card Game HQ => Official Rules & Errata => Ruling Questions => Topic started by: browarod on January 10, 2012, 01:06:30 AM

Title: Special Initiative
Post by: browarod on January 10, 2012, 01:06:30 AM
I RA with an NT female. Opponent blocks with King Nadab and recurs a battle winner from the discard pile. He has initiative and plays the battle winner he got from the discard pile. Can I play Magnificat to negate Nadab and send the card back to the discard pile thereby indirectly negating his battle winner?

King Nadab (Ki)
If King Jeroboam I is in your discard pile, search discard pile for one evil enhancement with an O.T. reference and put in hand.

Magnificat (Di)
Negate special abilities on characters. If used by a musician or N.T. female, set aside an Evil Character in battle for 2 turns.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: Chronic Apathy on January 10, 2012, 01:14:13 AM
I don't think so. I think that once you play the enhancement in battle like that, it would stick.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: Prof Underwood on January 10, 2012, 01:28:41 AM
I also don't think so.  My understanding is that when you have "special initiative" you are limited to playing interrupts that target the SA that is causing your character to be removed from battle.

At the point you are talking about, the character SA is no longer the problem.  It is the enh that is removing the character from battle, and therefore they would need to play a negate/interrupt of the enh or an interrupt the battle (which would interrupt the enh) + something (ie. getting rid of the opponent's character or negating it).
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: ChristianSoldier on January 10, 2012, 03:05:13 AM
To use special initiative you need to interrupt/negate the ability causing the removal. In this case if you first played Words of Encouragement then played Magnificat you would stop the card (even just by negating King Nadab) however you can't just play Magnificat even though it would indirectly negate Nadab.

Or at least that has been my understanding of Special Initiative.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: TechnoEthicist on January 10, 2012, 07:18:58 AM
Wait...so cascading negates no longer work either???? When did I miss this??? Something doesn't seem right about this...
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: SomeKittens on January 10, 2012, 09:37:21 AM
Wait...so cascading negates no longer work either???? When did I miss this??? Something doesn't seem right about this...
Cascading negates still work, just not in the case of the special inish.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: Deck Metrics on January 10, 2012, 10:11:32 AM
what does the term " cascading negates" mean?
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: Alex_Olijar on January 10, 2012, 10:17:39 AM
what does the term " cascading negates" mean?

It's a term used to describe the relationship between negating one card causing the indirect negation of another card.

Example: My opponent blocks with Nebuchadnezzar (while a Daniel hero is in play) and searches Dream. He draws three and chooses not to play an enhancement. If I then played Magnifact (to negate character abilities), I would negate Nebby's search for dream, which would indirectly negate the draw 3 that my opponent received, and Dream would return to the deck.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: browarod on January 10, 2012, 10:30:04 AM
Wait...so cascading negates no longer work either???? When did I miss this??? Something doesn't seem right about this...
Cascading negates still work, just not in the case of the special inish.
But why not? Special initiative requires that I interrupt/negate the card removing me, so why does indirect negation not qualify for that? Indirect negation is still  negation....
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: Alex_Olijar on January 10, 2012, 10:47:16 AM
Wait...so cascading negates no longer work either???? When did I miss this??? Something doesn't seem right about this...
Cascading negates still work, just not in the case of the special inish.
But why not? Special initiative requires that I interrupt/negate the card removing me, so why does indirect negation not qualify for that? Indirect negation is still  negation....

While this is true, indirect and direct negation are treated differently by the rules.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: Professoralstad on January 10, 2012, 11:00:11 AM
That's what makes special initiative special. I agree with the above that Magnificat wouldn't work in that case.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: TechnoEthicist on January 10, 2012, 11:29:52 AM
Alex, can you explain your point further? If I negate the character's ability, then the battle winner could not have been played and would return to discard. How is this any different than if I negated and discarded an evil character who played a battle winner, that enhancement would no longer have a source to be played on (a la My Lord and My God, Joseph Before Pharaoh, etc)? If I negate the ability of the EC it's as if that card never existed...
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: Professoralstad on January 10, 2012, 11:47:58 AM
When you have special initiative, the only thing you can do is negate the card targeting you, and it has been ruled that you have to negate the card directly. It may be more intuitive to some that indirect negation would work, but it has been ruled the opposite. I don't know if there is a particular reason why that is, but I don't think it's really too complicated to say that the rule for special initiative allows you to play an interrupt/negate that targets the card removing you.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: SomeKittens on January 10, 2012, 11:52:57 AM
Alex, can you explain your point further? If I negate the character's ability, then the battle winner could not have been played and would return to discard. How is this any different than if I negated and discarded an evil character who played a battle winner, that enhancement would no longer have a source to be played on (a la My Lord and My God, Joseph Before Pharaoh, etc)? If I negate the ability of the EC it's as if that card never existed...
In the case of special inish, the negate/interrupt MUST target the SA causing the removal.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: Chronic Apathy on January 10, 2012, 12:02:17 PM
This is the reason why if King Omri blocks while Gates of Samaria is out, it can very easily be an auto-block. Because you're required to specifically target the card removing you (in this case, Gates of Samaria), targeting Omri isn't allowed (assuming that Gates of Samaria has reduced the hero to */0).
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: Alex_Olijar on January 10, 2012, 01:17:26 PM
Alex, can you explain your point further? If I negate the character's ability, then the battle winner could not have been played and would return to discard. How is this any different than if I negated and discarded an evil character who played a battle winner, that enhancement would no longer have a source to be played on (a la My Lord and My God, Joseph Before Pharaoh, etc)? If I negate the ability of the EC it's as if that card never existed...

If the EC is targeting you for discard via an enhancement, you can't target the EC without negating the enhancement.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: BubbleBoy on January 10, 2012, 01:35:27 PM
what does the term " cascading negates" mean?

It's a term used to describe the relationship between negating one card causing the indirect negation of another card.

Example: My opponent blocks with Nebuchadnezzar (while a Daniel hero is in play) and searches Dream. He draws three and chooses not to play an enhancement. If I then played Magnifact (to negate character abilities), I would negate Nebby's search for dream, which would indirectly negate the draw 3 that my opponent received, and Dream would return to the deck.
If Nebuchadnezzar said, "Search for .... Cannot be negated if no Daniel hero is in play," then I think that would be a good example, but as is, if there is a Daniel hero in play, Neb can't even search at all, so that doesn't work.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: Alex_Olijar on January 10, 2012, 01:40:53 PM
what does the term " cascading negates" mean?

It's a term used to describe the relationship between negating one card causing the indirect negation of another card.

Example: My opponent blocks with Nebuchadnezzar (while a Daniel hero is in play) and searches Dream. He draws three and chooses not to play an enhancement. If I then played Magnifact (to negate character abilities), I would negate Nebby's search for dream, which would indirectly negate the draw 3 that my opponent received, and Dream would return to the deck.
If Nebuchadnezzar said, "Search for .... Cannot be negated if no Daniel hero is in play," then I think that would be a good example, but as is, if there is a Daniel hero in play, Neb can't even search at all, so that doesn't work.

Ahh, oops. I was remembering wrong. I thought his ability was the way you described.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: ChristianSoldier on January 10, 2012, 04:10:19 PM
You have to interrupt/negate the card causing the removal, an interesting case (although one that may not be possible with the cards that exist now) for the King Omri + Gates of Samaria combo is that you could play a card that said "Interrupt a fortress and negate a character" ability to stop it.

Special Initiative is only restricting what cards you can play, a card that interrupts/negates the card causing removal, but assuming the card does interrupt it, it can indirectly negate the card (such as in my above example of a hypothetical card that interrupts a fortress and negates a character or my earlier example of Words of Encouragement + Magnificat on a non-musician/NT female).
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: Minister Polarius on January 11, 2012, 04:14:42 PM
That is correct. You can play anything that will interrupt the SA removing you. What follows from that is up to you. For example, if you attack with Simon and are blocked by Enchanter, you could play Reach followed by Wheel Within a Wheel to get out a new Hero. That's one example of a way to use special initiative to get around removal without even negating it.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: slugfencer on January 11, 2012, 08:42:51 PM
Alex, can you explain your point further? If I negate the character's ability, then the battle winner could not have been played and would return to discard. How is this any different than if I negated and discarded an evil character who played a battle winner, that enhancement would no longer have a source to be played on (a la My Lord and My God, Joseph Before Pharaoh, etc)? If I negate the ability of the EC it's as if that card never existed...

If the EC is targeting you for discard via an enhancement, you can't target the EC without negating the enhancement.

Wow, so this new special initiative rule does affect other older ways we used to rule cascading negates such as this example. Ach, I hope I can rememeber that! ???
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: SomeKittens on January 11, 2012, 08:45:53 PM
Just remember that in a case of special initiative, you MUST do something about the ability causing special inish directly.  You cannot do something about any other ability on the board.
Title: Re: Special Initiative
Post by: browarod on January 11, 2012, 08:53:36 PM
Just remember that in a case of special initiative, you MUST directly do something about the ability causing special inish.
FTFY.
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