Unforgiving Wasteland--A Choice?

Just wondering if this is a bug or not...

So I was trying to unlock the Haka variant today, and I finally had Unforgiving Wasteland in play.  Well, the environment took down Bunker--and the game asked me if I wanted to remove Bunker from the game.

I thought Unforgiving Wasteland said "whenever a target would be destroyed by damage from an environment target, remove that card from the game instead."  I didn't realize it was a "you may" remove that card from the game instead.  I thought it might have just been a solitary bug, but then next round, Wraith went down to the environment, and the same choice was offered to me.  Didn't realize it was a choice--I thought it was just automatically removed.

Anyone else experienced this?

It’s not a bug or a may. The issue is that you have two different effects , so you can choose what yo do. One effect is to remove them from the game instead of being destroyed, the other is to incap them instead of being sestroyed. Since both should happen at the same time, you can choose what happens first, and the other effect won’t take affect.

Yep, as Pydro said. This will be covered in the fireside chats update we're getting together to post soon.

Ah...guess I've been playing it wrong on the tabletop for years...

All of a sudden, it's not such a scary card.  Thanks!

Interesting.

So when Ronway and I arranged for Baron Blade to be dealt the final blow on his front side by an environment target and where not given a choice, that is a bug?

Yep.

Only it's not. I just checked and it turns out I am misremembering things and an idiot.

So nothing different from normal.

Wow...so we had it wrong all this time? Or was this something that's been changed? I thought that the Unforgiving Wasteland card overrode every destruction/incap situation. But I can see why this ruling makes sense - cool for the heroes, then :).

As I understand it, there was no official ruling on this, but just a generally accepted interpretation by the community.

I can give you a good argument for it to not be optional.

1.  "Would be destroyed" so the target does not have to be destroyed for the effect to take place, it doesn't wait until after destruction to act.

2.  "If - then" language is not optional in this game, if the trigger occurs (a target would be destroyed by damage from an environment target) then you perform the effect (Remove the target from the game)

3.  "Instead" cancels what would normally happen in favor of the effect attached to it.

4.  "Whenever" means it occurs each and every time the conditions for triggering the effect occurs.

I don't see how anyone reading that effect would come up with it being optional, and this is the very first instance that a "Whenever, Instead" is an optional effect.

I understand that destruction, Incapacitation and removal share timing, which should make it player choice, but the "Instead" seems to be there to take away that option.

When A would occur do B instead.  Is the basic formula of the card.  

That is no where near: If A would occur, you may do A or B.  That is what we are being given here, and it doesn't fit the wording of the card.

It is indeed a "Generally accepted interpretation" of the community that the wording of cards is intentional and designed to produce the effect they describe.  Often our experiences with other games and their wordings misinform how we read cards, but every other time we have this formula on a card the effect replaces other options.  Here it doesn't.  It seems to fly in the face of internal consistency.

Phantaskippy, I thought the earlier point is that there are now TWO 'would be destroyed' triggers (Unforgiving Wasteland destroying something _and_ any time a character would be destroyed).

It's not that either effect is optional, it's that as players you get to decide the order they occur and if you INSTEAD incapacitate a character, they are no longer going to be destroyed, so the Unforgiving Wasteland trigger has nothing on which to trigger.

Correct. We could have presented it as a "select the order in which these cards take effect" decision, but I think that would have been confusing to more players. The question presented is more direct and clear about what's going to happen based on your decision.

So we are going a complete 180 degrees from Christopher's previous ruling on this?

Here.

And the discussion which includes further clarification (second hand) on this thread?

Hero Character is reduced to 0 or fewer HP by damage from an Environment target, and would be destroyed, except for the effect that causes them to removed from the game instead.  That makes sense, this new ruling makes no sens with the ruling above.

It also doesn't make sense with the following ruling from the Fireside chats:

If there are multiple cards interested in a card’s destruction, they all happen (in player decided order) even if the card gets put under another card. For example, if Haka destroys Pterodactyl Thief with Savage Mana in play, Pterodactyl Thief can go under Savage Mana and then the thief’s cards return to the owners’ hands.

But if the card is flipped then we ignore this?  I would think even if you flipped the Hero card how is that different than a target going under another card and losing all text including the status of being a target, yet still being considered a destroyed target for effects that react to such things?

Can we get an official ruling on what the incapacitation of heroes text should be read as, because I linked to the only official ruling I can find, and it directly disagrees with this new ruling.

We'd need a change to the wording of the ruling from Christopher, and then some kind of ruling either overwriting the "multiple cards" ruling quoted above or a rule that once flipped Hero Character cards become indestructble.

The important word in the rulebook is "instead." Once you decide one of the effects to go first, then the card is no longer being destroyed, and the other card no longer applies.

The word instead has never been part of any ruling on what happens when a hero Character card is incapacitated.  Not in the rulebook, not in the above ruling.

If that is being added then it does change things, but it hasn't been there before.

That has been the intention, and the word "instead" is in the video game's rulebook. Otherwise, heroes could go under Savage Mana, etc. I'll make sure it's covered in a fireside chat update later.

okay, thank you.

To be fair, if I'm looking at the part of the rulebook you're talking about—the Incapacitated Heroes page—even where the video game rulebook uses the word "instead," it isn't being presented as "instead of being destroyed, a hero is incapacitated."  It's "When a hero is reduced to 0 HP, the battle isn't over!  Instead, the hero is incapacitated and their card flips," which seems more like general flavorful writing than a technical rule about "A instead of B" like is being applied here.  To illustrate, "destruction" doesn't actually show up on that page.

If the intent is that incapacitation works as "instead of being destroyed," okey-doke.  I'm surprised the heroes are safe from Unforgiving Wasteland, as this hadn't occurred to me, but I have no reason to argue about it—the rule is the rule, good enough for me.  But unless you're talking about a different page, it does not seem like the rulebook actually gives this "instead" operation as a rule.  It can, of course, probably by expanding the line a bit to something like "Instead of being destroyed, the hero is incapacitated and their card flips."

Full disclosure: There is also the "Mini Cards and Full Cards" page, which says that HP reaching 0 means a card "is destroyed or incapacitated," which meshes with the idea that incapacitation is an alternative to destruction rather than a consequence.  So I'm not saying the "instead" rule we're talking about would contradict other rules or has no support, just that so far it seems to be implicit, rather than explicit in the way I think might have been intended.  If the intent is for this to be an expressed rule, I'm just suggesting a wording tweak to help get there.

If I'm not mistaken, doesn't the Ennead's rule card say something to that effect about their character cards?

Edit: Whoops, it was Shrine of the Ennead:

Whenever a Villain Target would be destroyed, flip it over instead.