So what we actually have now are 3 different possibilities right? We know they don't start negating wounds until they are played, but we debate whether or not they can count wounds that happened before they were played. So we get these:
1) Swiftly and Softly and King's Mail both can count wounds that occurred before they are played.
2) King's Mail counts wounds before it is played; Swiftly and Softly doesn't.
3) Neither Swiftly and Softly nor King's Mail count wounds from before they were played.
I don't suppose any would argue 4) S&S counts wounds but King's Mail doesn't. Maybe a poll would be useful, even it it's not final.
Been digesting a lot of the discussion recently. Pretty sure my logic for 1 must be wrong at this point, even if my conclusion somehow isn't. I'm still pretty on the whole thing to be honest.
I reread some of Phallen's and Zurcamos' discussion on gemp recently. This was primarily based on King's Mail - Why can King's Mail look back if S&S can't, especially when the snapshot rule doesn't apply?
How would the King's Mail example compare to Citadel of Minas Tirith being (somehow) played after a skirmish was lost?
I might raise a similar question - what happens if King's Mail is transferred to and fro mid-skirmish (Surrendered Weapons), or discarded from play and replayed (Swordthain)?
If it helps, I can simplify my stance in three points now:
•
Swiftly and Softly and
King's Mail have different text
• We have no right to give
Swiftly and Softly text it doesn't have
• The additional text in
King's Mail means something
Perhaps an oversimplification, but it's the basis of my view. Point 1 is obvious to everyone, but doesn't prove anything alone. While point 2 goes pretty much uncontested (someone will let me know if I'm wrong), it easily counts out the first possibility to me. I haven't seen a compelling reason for me to believe that the event can take into account things which have already happened if it doesn't say that it can, and there's no basis for arguing anything which isn't explicitly prohibited is allowed. The trigger phrase argument needs more words and other arguments aren't explained well enough for me to understand them - a personal failing, I suppose.
Point 3 is the one doing all the heavy lifting - if they aren't worded the same and they don't mean the same thing they can't do the same thing, leaving only the second possibility. The main argument in favor of the first possibility (as I understand it) is that one is an event and one is a possession, so they
have to be written differently for the meaning to be the same. As a skirmish event, various people have said, its scope is a skirmish phase and spelling that out would be pointless. While it is potentially true that they would have to be written differently for the same effect, there isn't much reason for me to think that this is the way to do it. The best I can do to make this argument work is to say that event order doesn't really matter - every event is played in a skirmish phase and lasts for that phase, beginning to end.
Whirling Strike and then
Swiftly and Softly is the same as
Swiftly and Softly and then
Whirling Strike. Unfortunately, Legion made an excellent point which doesn't give that defense an leg to stand on.
One card that is similarly flavoured is The Tale of the Great Ring. The fact that Decipher felt they needed the "(or was)" suggests that actions only look at future effects unless otherwise stated.
If skirmish order truly didn't matter, "is played" would be the same thing as "was played." Indeed, there would be no reason to ever say "was" in a skirmish phase (or any phase) because everything may as well happen all at once. The only way around this is to violate point 2 and give the event text it simply doesn't have.
Lastly, I'll try to present a coherent argument against the third possibility by highlighting the meaningful difference:
Swiftly and Softly: Stealth. Skirmish: At sites 1T to 5T, cancel a skirmish involving a Hobbit. At any other site, prevent a Hobbit from taking more than 1 wound.
•King's Mail: Bearer must be a Man. Bearer takes no more than 1 wound during each skirmish phase. If bearer is Theoden, he may not take wounds except during a skirmish involving him.
The reason
King's Mail is able to "look back" while
Swiftly and Softly is not is because of the scope of
King's Mail's effect.
During tells you when the effect takes place,
each tells you how many times, and
skirmish phase tells you what. The important thing is that any given skirmish phase minus any part of that skirmish phase is
no longer a skirmish phase. It's part of a skirmish phase, maybe even most of one, but not a skirmish phase and not the scope of
King's Mail. It didn't help much last time, but there is a basis for my argument in the rules:
Skirmish Phase Summary
Free Peoples player chooses a skirmish.
Players perform skirmish actions.
Resolve that skirmish and assign wounds.
If any skirmishes are unresolved, repeat this procedure.
A skirmish phase is that series of steps - exclude any of those steps and you've destroyed it. A skirmish phase is not a length of time, though a length of time can be used to describe how long a skirmish phase is lasting. If
King's Mail didn't "look back," it wouldn't be able to fulfill its effect. It absolutely has to look at
all of a skirmish phase in order to look at a skirmish phase, which the card does tell us to do. Herein lies the problem for the third possibility.
As far as I can tell, the logic here applies consistently for any card. So
Citadel of Minas Tirith must consider the turn as a whole (meaning it couldn't heal even if it were somehow played after a skirmish loss), because otherwise it wouldn't be considering the turn. I'm confident that this line of thinking can handle any rabbit hole of hypotheticals without becoming inconsistent with the rest of the game.
Because
King's Mail is a possession, its text stays with it. If any
companion took a wound in a skirmish and had
King's Mail transferred to it, all future wounds would have to be blocked. If
King's Mail were then transferred to some other companion, wounds would be fair game on that companion again. So Gamling could play
King's Mail on himself after being wounded by
Desert Soldier's text, negate the wound from a
Whirling Strike, transfer
King's Mail, and die to
Red Wrath all in the same skirmish.