I notice he didn't try to bust that Decipher loves Elves
I don't know anything about the important people back then, but he did a very bad job explaining why Shire isn't for beginners (though I don't disagree with him) and defending against escalation. And we all know
Orc Slaughterer should've been written with something other than de-italicized helper text (the word "additional" comes to mind).
Kreggers, that's the idea I had dubbed the "nebulous modifier holding pen," that there's some sort of meta-zone where players keep track of those things. My thinking is that erasing game text of a card is different from discarding a card, so the answer to your question is the answer to what happens. The big issue I'm seeing is under "effects" in the Comprehensive Rules 4.0: "The source of an effect is the card on which that effect is printed." If we trace back effects to their source, the source should still exist.
Vile Creature still exists, but his text does not which is a distinction from
Vile Creature being killed, discarded, or removed from the game.
Perhaps it's enough for the card to still be there, even if there's nothing you can point to that created the effect. It just feels awkward to me. If
Easterling Army uses its ability to give itself +1 and then
Star-glass is used, you may as well swap that card out with
Goblin Patrol Troop (in a perfect example race and culture would stay the same... Just pretend). When would you ever be able to point to that minion and say "this minion is making itself strength +1"? I know, I know, the players can say "I remember 5 seconds ago when you used the text before it was gone." But now that it is gone, how can we still look to it? This isn't undoing an effect or even canceling it, this is erasing it. You all seem to think I'm arguing
Star-glass is The Terminator, and I'm saying it's the Infinity Gauntlet.
But Merrick's article makes me think about a slightly different angle: if Decipher ruled on it today (or 15 years ago), how do I think they would? Probably with the majority opinion, setting up some sort of meta-zone for modifiers. It was probably a mistake to delve into strength bonuses because strength isn't game text (though I think the two outcomes are connected), so look back at what this means for
Her Ladyship. You play her, spot Gollum, and choose Aragorn. Now there's this modifier floating around that says Aragorn can't be assigned to a skirmish. By that logic, it's no longer related to Shelob or even Aragorn, it's just out in that nebulous holding pen for modifiers. Now if I make
Uruk Fighter fierce and hit him with
Star-glass, can I say that he's still fierce because the game text isn't his? Of course that's silly, and none of you are trying to say that. But then how can something different be said of Shelob's text, that the modifier is applied and now simply exists?
What about a card along the lines of
Lookout Uruk (with what could be my new favorite awful flavor text), is the site still a Battleground regardless of whether his text exists? Obviously not, but it's a modifier so why wouldn't it end up in the nebulous holding pen with the rest of them? And here's why I tied in strength values: if it doesn't make sense to put game text or keywords in a nebulous holding pen, why does it make sense to put values for strength or resistance there? And if they're not there, they gotta be somewhere -- if that somewhere is the source, then it makes sense to me that it can be removed. I still acknowledge that the strength value isn't game text. Regardless of how
Star-glass affects the strength of already-used
Vile Creature,
Plotting will always make him strength +2 and
Hidden Even From Her can't make him fierce.
So that's where I'm coming from, hopefully if that makes sense then it will be easier to point out where I'm wrong. I'm stubborn, but I know I'm not infallible
I just don't think your arguments so far have addressed my concerns. I'm making ground towards the rest of you on strength values (believe it or not), but I haven't budged on
Her Ladyship so it's hard for me to bridge the gap on why the results are different.