discard all conditions

[Gil-Estel]

Let's say I playing vs a fully equiped Hobbit deck. All kind of conditions lying around and I have Saruman's Power. But what if he has Scouring of the Shire? Does that get discarded immediately along with the rest or does SotS his trick first? Like saving a few conditions and then gets discarded as well?

[Anvar]

Saruman's power is about to discard conditions, so Scouring of the Shire can do its response action. It can save a number of them from being discarded until it is full of tokens - at that point all conditions not so protected are discarded.

That's what I reckon, at least.
Anvar

[Pepin The Breve]

  I Think Anvar is right. If there are say, 8 conditions on the table and you use Sarumans Power he/she can prevent four of this conditions of being dicarded and them get allong with the rest to the discard pile. So you choose the four conditions (adding tokens on Scouring) and when it gets 4 tokens it´s gone 

  Notice that some cards like Siege Engine prevents one or more conditions of being discarded. So if some player try to discard them all with, say, Sleep Caradhras, the text of Siege Engine could bu used to prevent all others to go away...

   Hope this help...

[Elf_Lvr]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Anvar and Pepin have this right.

[Kralik]

This isn't a direct comparison, but Plundered Armories has a clarification by Decipher that states when all minions are discarded, they are discarded at the same time. Below:

If a minion bearing a weapon is discarded due to losing a skirmish, Plundered Armories takes effect before optional actions triggered by winning/losing that skirmish occur. When an effect discards "all" minions (thereby discarding their weapons), they are discarded at the same time. None of those minions may have weapons played on them with Plundered Armories.

I think it would be the same with conditions: if you discard ALL conditions, it is done simultaneously with no chance to use Siege Engine, SotS, etc. Those conditions would be discarded before they could prevent others from being discarded.

[TheJord]

Kralik is correct

[Elessar's Socks]

Oh, so that's where the "simultaneous" ruling went.

I gotta agree with Anvar here. Scouring of the Shire triggers before it's actually discarded ("is about to be discarded from play"), giving it time to protect conditions, including itself.

If Scouring was worded like "Response: If a condition is discarded from play, play it from your discard pile" (similar to Plundered Armories), then it wouldn't work.

[Pepin The Breve]

   I think Elessar is right. Same with Siege Engine. It´s game text says "when one or more machines are about to be discarded..." So it responds to this situation (of discarding all conditions) preventing it and changing the effects wich now is "disacard Siege Engine Instead" (paying the costs...).

   I recall reading some example of this in the rulebook with a similar case envolving Siege Engine althought i´m not 100% sure...

[SomeRandomDude]

Anvar is correct.

[Kralik]

TheJord is correct.

Actually, I was just throwing my 2 cents out, but I'm not the rules guru here. The reasoning behind SotS makes sense, since it can "protect" itself, but a question on Siege Engine:

If there is only one Siege Engine in play, and all conditions must be discarded, who decides the order? As far as I understand it, either they are discarded all at once (and Siege Engine cannot be used) or they are discarded in some arbitrary order. If Freeps chooses the order, Siege Engine goes first and cannot save itself. If Shadow chooses the order, some other machine gets to survive and Siege Engine is discarded per its game text.

[Gil-Estel]

Anvar is correct.

Stop being Bib here...he's the one to answer this way and only then we turn in to believers.....

[TheJord]

Consider this alternative version of Kralik's example. I have Plundered Armories and the Free Peoples player decides to stay. I cannot discard the minions one at a time to activate PA.

You cannot decide what order to discard the conditions, they all get discarded, simultaneously (a rare occurence in LOTR)

[Pepin The Breve]

Well, you people have a point here but the trick is: Siege Engine responds to discard of one or more machines. So it´s actions take place before the condition itself (or any condition) is discarded, doesn´t matter if the freepeople player can or not choose discard Siege Engine first...

When i have time i will search where is teh example cited in the rulebook (or some sort of) that envolves this card to shead some more light into my argument...

[Elf_Lvr]

The point is in the wording, "about to be discarded." The action of Saruman's Power is about to resolve, saying all conditions are to be discarded simultaneously. Since any one of those conditions is  "About to be discarded..." the Response effect then triggers before the conditions are discarded (because about to discard comes before discard, obviously) and the conditions can be saved.

The "About to be..." is what separates Plundered Armories from Scouring and Siege Engine.

[Elessar's Socks]

If there is only one Siege Engine in play, and all conditions must be discarded, who decides the order? As far as I understand it, either they are discarded all at once (and Siege Engine cannot be used) or they are discarded in some arbitrary order. If Freeps chooses the order, Siege Engine goes first and cannot save itself. If Shadow chooses the order, some other machine gets to survive and Siege Engine is discarded per its game text.

They're discarded simultaneously.

Let's say you have 5 conditions in play, including Siege Engine. Opponent plays Sleep, Caradhras. At this point Siege Engine triggers: one or more (5) conditions are about to be discarded. As a response you can discard Siege Engine to prevent that, saving the other 4 conditions.

In fact the simultaneous ruling is needed for Siege Engine to work correctly. If conditions were discarded one at a time, Siege Engine will "see" only one condition about to be discarded, meaning it can only ever protect one (since it'll be discarded as the cost before it has the chance to protect others). But because conditions are discarded simultaneously, it can protect the rest of the lot at one go.

In contrast Scouring of the Shire does not discard itself as the cost. As the Free Peoples player, you get to choose the order in which to protect the conditions, triggering it once for each condition. (Incidentally, you can't trigger it more than once for the same condition, because after the first time, the "about to be discarded" situation for that particular card will be prevented.) It's only after you're done responding that the game moves on; at this point the rest of the conditions are actually discarded.

With SotS it's like having a bunch of conditions falling to the ground like leaves. You freeze time, place a support under some of them, and then resume time--the rest of the conditions drop, but the ones supported stay in play.