The Last Homely House
Middle-Earth => Archives of Minas Tirith => Topic started by: Orophoin on May 30, 2022, 10:29:02 AM
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There's been some chat recently suggesting that Blade Tip can be transferred to Theoden bearing Hearken to Me, and also that it doesn't immediately get discarded. The wiki of Hearken to Me even suggests so.
the first part I agree with: Blade Tip is being transferred, not played on Theoden. But why do people say it shouldn't be immediately discarded? I've been going through the rules and there seems to be no mention that cards like this only work when played. Also, if there was such a ruling, surely it would have been put in as a clarification on the appendices of the rules?
Similar effects can be found on Shadowfax, GotM and The Watcher in the Water, Many Tentacled Creature. Why should MTC be any different?
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Linking a couple conversations that seem relevant:
https://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php?topic=8875.msg91884#msg91884
https://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,2872.0.html
GotM is actually the simple proof-case for how Decipher wanted these cards to work. "Discard all other possessions on bearer and bearer may not bear a hand weapon." If "Discard all other possessions on bearer" applied continuously, then there is no reason to state "and bearer may not bear a hand weapon." If the second clause was intended as reminder text for the first part applying continuously, then they wouldn't have limited it to hand weapons (and they'd probably have put it in parentheses.)
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If it's a question of what decipher intended, then why did they not put in a clarification like they did with so many other cards?
There is a niche effect that the second part brings. By not allowing conditions to be played on Theoden, you now can't play them on him to cycle your hand. Say there's just Theoden and your Ringbearer, now you can't even play Many Riddles, even if they would be immediately discarded.
As for GotM, this wording may have been to try to future proof a potential future version of an artifact Glamdring.
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Also some conversation here: https://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php?topic=7592.msg95675#msg95675
In defense of the intent crowd, I imagine a lot of these questions didn't come up until after the last CRD. GotM's wording leads people to believe that it shouldn't keep discarding other hand weapons regardless of what the rules say. However, in my opinion there's too much leeway and grey area to go for Decipher's intent in most cases. And even if GotM's intent is one thing, Hearken to Me's could easily be another. I'd call it a bug, I thought it was fixed when it came up on this thread although I see now that Shadowfax was the question at hand and I missed when Legion mentioned the issue with HtM.
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I used to think it would be possible to play Blade Tip with Hearken to Me (transferring it to Theoden), but after thinking about if for a while, I've actually changed my own mind, because of the line break between "Bearer must be Theoden" and "Discard all Shadow conditions on Theoden. Because the first line "To play, spot Gandalf. Bearer must be Theoden." is a one time, when you play it thing, (If Gandalf dies, you don't have to discard it.) I think the second line, "Discard all Shadow conditions on Theoden. Shadow conditions may not be played on Theoden." would be a continuous effect. No Stranger to the Shadows doesn't only work when you play it -- therefore only discounting the sites you can spot right then -- but rather keeps its effect through the game, even if you played it a site 1, still lowering site 9.
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GOTM is a set 17 card. I wouldn't hold any wording in sets 17, 18, or 19 as indicative of any intentional ruling or design, as those sets were designed and developed by a single dude in a basement as the whole enterprise collapsed around his ears. Loads of established verbiage were missed or ignored, but this should be taken as the cut corners it was rather than a well-thought-out intentional design. I would point out for instance the difference between the incredibly redundantly worded Erkenbrand's Horn vs the PC's errata'd version (https://wiki.lotrtcgpc.net/images/LOTR-EN18E096.1_card.jpg); the errata added only 1 word but removed a half dozen that didn't do anything. "Reshuffle your deck" is a holdover from SWCCG which always tells the player when to do that, for example; the dude was clearly getting crossed wires.
Durin's Bane is the example I would look to. In spite of the redundant "while you can spot the balrog" portion, it still has a continuous effect. You can also look to cards like Guma, where there is a continuous effect that requires a particular condition (it just happens to be restricted to a card with a particular title instead of a class of cards).