clever hobbits

[bebpc]

so i think i can use clever hobbits and discart my oponet gollum condition right?but how it works if the oponet  have a deceit in play?

[NappyKorn]

well if your opponent removes the twilight to prevent them from being discarded they won't add to your strength and damage, but if the opponent only has 1 deceit in play you target it first then his other conditions. However if he has multiple copies out he just uses 1 copy to prevent the other from being tossed and then prevents the others.  Clever Hobbits stated that each discarded in this way now if he prevents them from being discarded they aren't discarded and you get no bonuses from it. Hope that helps.

NK

[TheJord]

Also, you could play Clever Hobbits and then continually attempt to discard a condition until they ran out of twilight.

[bebpc]

thats is what i want to know i can discart one , he prevent, discart it again, he prevent until runs all the pool?

[TheJord]

Yes.

[sgtdraino]

Clever Hobbits vs Deceit has recently been an issue of contention again. I'd like to know if the above ruling is definitive: Can Clever Hobbits truly trump Deceit by targeting it over and over until there is no more twilight?

Current discussion on the issue is here:

http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,8217.15.html

[sgtdraino]

Also, you could play Clever Hobbits and then continually attempt to discard a condition until they ran out of twilight.

I'd like to continue the discussion on whether or not the above actually does hold true or not. For starters, here is the official ruling on Fortress Never Fallen from the CRD:

FORTRESS NEVER FALLEN  4 U 276
The effect of this condition's special ability
when the card has more than one token is
simultaneous. Several conditions are discarded
at the same time. Siege Engine responds to these
discards by preventing all of them.
You have three tokens on Fortress Never Fallen
when you use its special ability. You select three
Shadow conditions to be discarded (including my
Siege Engine), and discard Fortress Never Fallen.
I use the response special ability on Siege Engine,
which technically saves all three conditions, but
then I discard Siege Engine to pay its own cost.

The first issue being whether Clever Hobbits discards conditions one at a time, or simultaneously. It seems to me that the FNF ruling makes it more likely that Clever Hobbits discards simultaneously, UNLESS a response action breaks up this process.

The second issue has to do with what happens (or doesn't happen) when X is greater than the number of conditions on the table. For example, suppose FNF has 5 tokens on it, and the only conditions on the table are two copies of Deceit, and one copy of Final Strike. 3 twilight in the pool. FNF is activated, X=5, the card says discard 5 conditions. Deceit is used to prevent three discards, but once that is done, FNF still mandates that 2 more conditions be discarded, and 3 conditions can still be spotted in play. Must two more conditions still be discarded? Or are the three conditions still protected for the remainder of the action by Deceit?

Why, or why not?

Third issue: When using a card that discards multiple conditions, I find that many players have a tendency to believe there is only a "single sweep," or that the action is broken down into sub-phases where you first target all the conditions you can target, then you attempt to discard them, and then you aren't able to target any more. The question is, is this actually based on any sort of rule or ruling? As far as I can tell, it is not. The act of playing or using a card that discards multiple conditions in a single action is just that: A single action. During the course of that action players might do things one at a time for the sake of expediency (it is difficult to literally pick up 12 cards simultaneously), but so far as the game is concerned, everything is conceptually happening at once, and a response action simply pauses that single action, which then continues after the response action ends. Is my understanding correct? Why or why not?

Issue 4: Clever Hobbits says, "Discard any number of Gollum conditions." At what point is X defined in this equation? Is it defined at the start of the action? If so, can I declare some ridiculously high number, like 40, to make sure I get rid of them all? Why or why not? OR is X variable during the course of the entire action? Do I just keep discarding Gollum conditions until I decide to stop? Why or why not?

Issue 5: Some conditions, such as Deep in Thought or Saruman's Power, discard ALL conditions. Conceptually this happens simultaneously, even though the cards are actually discarded one at a time for expediency. What happens when an action like this is interrupted by a response that prevents a condition (or more than one condition) from being discarded? One "sweep" is made, and at the end of it conditions can still be spotted on the table... yet the effect of the card says to discard ALL of them. The Comprehensive Rules say:

If the effect of a card or special ability requires
you to perform an action and you cannot, you
must perform as much as you can and ignore the
rest.

So, do the remaining conditions on the table still get discarded to satisfy the "all" requirement of the effect? Or does the response action that prevented the conditions from being discarded earlier continue to protect those conditions for the remainder of the action? Why, or why not?

Issue 6: Response actions which prevent a card from being discarded. Does such an action literally only prevent a card from being discarded one time, or does such an action prevent a card from being discarded for the duration of the entire action attempting to discard it? Why, or why not?

When addressing Issue 6, it may also be useful to think about response actions which prevent other things from happening. Do such actions protect cards from the entirety of an action, or from the specific part of that action they are preventing?

I'm really looking to see lots of references to the official Comprehensive Rules and Current Rulings Documents as people address these issues. If we can nail down specific answers to these, grounded upon official rulings, I think it will form a consistent basis of how many condition discarding cards (as well as response actions) are meant to be interpreted. Thanks in advance for the help.