Imbued Vitality

The discussion in another thread plus my lunchtime game made me ponder the following. If Imbued Vitality is in play, at what point do the cards become targets? The inspiration for this is primarly from Bomber Blade, and wondering if Imbued Vitality was in play and Bomber Blade plays Backlash Field, would his "Destry a villain target and put it under thiss card, then play a villain card" function and blow up the ongoing, or would the ongoing not become a target til after the Bomber Blade trigger occured.

I mean, its a long shot, but I was curious. >.>

It'll be a target immediately. Also it should be noted that any of his Ongoings in play would also be moved under his character. Even though the cards did not enter play, a target has.

Imbued Vitality is static and affects cards not in play.  Every ongoing in his deck is a target, even before entering play.

Oh weird. So it "becoming" a target counts as it entering play?

Becoming a target counts as a target entering play, yes.

Citation? As far as I can tell, the card's already in play, and became a target without having to enter play again. Matters for villain cards that flip between the states, since there's effects that trigger off targets entering play.

It doesn't say when a "card" enters play, but when a "target" enters play. That target just entered play. Expat would hit everything once Imbued Vitatlity comes out, and when Miss Info flips, etc.

The reverse is also true, If you put something like a Bounty on a card that became a target through IV, the card would get destroyed when IV leaves, since the target left play.

Some day I hope they reprint the rulebook with the 30 pages of rules it needed instead of the 4 or so it got (I'm not counting flavor as pages of rules). :)

But could you imagine new players wanting to play the game when they see the size of said rulebook? ;) Better to give them the basic rules we all get now, then they can discover the forum and join it and meet us all and ask about it and help expand our influence across the world until nothing can stand in our way, muahahahahaha! >:)

Yeah, there's definitely a valid argument for shorter rulebooks, with details and edge cases dealt with online (or in an appendix).  I recently started playing the Pathfinder Card game with the second set, Skull & Shackles.  I do recommend the game, but the rulebook was a really hard slog.  Every rule which was, conceptually, one simple sentence, was then followed by a paragraph of how to deal with edge cases.

I think the best of both worlds would be to have an "Intro to the game" section of just a few pages (enough to get players through a simple starter scenario), and *then* a 10-20 page rulebook that exhaustively covers all the edge-case stuff.

Or a short rulebook and an online compendium of rules clarifications?

I think it's fine that SotM does not have such a rulebook. It's not a competitive game, there's nothing "on the line" in any sense. For the vast majority of players, it's ok and keeps things from being overwhelming.

Wow, if the person programming all the edge cases thinks it’s fine, there is nothing left to be said.

In that context, I'm not the vast majority of players =). In the video game we have to be careful to make things work the way Christopher intended. Since there are a number of players (especially among the core fans) who are interested in that, we're communicating them out.

When I'm playing on the tabletop, we don't stop the game to look up edge cases, we just figure something out and go along with it. Since it's co-op, nobody gets disadvantaged by that.

I just find many of the rules calls extremely counter-intuitive, which makes me long for a rule book that's less vague. I mean, seriously, for me the line between enters play could not be clearer on a card that already is on play (whether it became a target or not), I would *never* have ruled that a card already in play had any condition where it was considered to have just entered play. Rather, I would have found a different way to word the interacting ability rather than overload a defined game term with a special, new meaning.

But eh. That's just my feelings.

The card was already in play, nobody is contradicting that. The target, however, entered play when it became a target.

Yeah, I'm sorry, tell me all the times you want the rationale, to me something enters play when it's card hits the play area, and leaves play when the card leaves the play area (whether destroyed or otherwise). Overloading that game term to mean anything else is, to me, poor rules design and inherently confusing. Transforming a card should not count as entering or leaving unless it enters or exits the play area, respectively. If we need a new game term for becoming (and no longer being) a target, sure.

There is a difference between a target entering play and a card entering play.  When a card becomes a target, the target (being the card is now targetable) enters play then.  Likewise, when a card that was targetable becomes untargetable, that target leaves play.  Similar effects occur in Magic: The Gathering and other card games.

Willing to bet other card games with similar effects use better language. If not, hey, there's a reason I gave up Magic beyond just the need to buy insane amounts of card, and that reason was the endless errata and clarifications.

It's not so odd with a card flip. It's odd when it happens with transforming a card that hasn't flipped. Nothing entered the board, something just became vulnerable. And if similar effects triggered off of Caspit's, I'm afraid I'd have to guffaw over the idea that all those new pieces of equipment had only just entered play.

This triggers my inherent dislike for ugly mechanics. I like the mechanics to reflect what's going on, and no target appeared, reality just got warped. No need to repeat the sentence too. I get the ruling and the thinking. I just find it counter-intuitive and inelegant.

Actually, no. In Magic when a permanent changes state it does not "enter play" as  the new state. One of the oldest and clearest examples is Mishra's Workshop: when you activate its ability to become a creature, it does not enter play as a creature, thus not triggering a number of effect depending on a creature/permanent to enter play

Actually Magic needs very very little errata. Clarifictions? Maybe, but I always found that a thorough reading of the Comprehensive Rules gives a remarkable insight into the game.

Clarifications in Magic make me react less "WTF I never would have thought that" and more "Oh, that's right, how silly of me to not get that by myself". M:tG's comprehensive rules manages to keep coherent a game with roughly a thousand new cards printed every year, as such it's like a work of art in the form of a rulebook to me.

Huh.  My apologies then.

Edit:  Perhaps this could be discussed as a possible rules change then, as now that I consider it, it does seem more reasonable that they don't enter play just because they became targets, since they were already in play.

Think about it thematically: When Miss Information flips, she becomes a target. Her card was already in play, but it was only when her secret identity is revealed that Expatriette has something to shoot at. If the target did not enter play Hairtrigger Reflexes could not react to her unveiling and Expat would just sit there helplessly while the erstwhile secretary laughed in her face. The same applies to Imbued Vitality. Ongoings are normally just static effects that require massive RPG-style intervention for Expat to handle. When that Reactive Playing she’s been dancing around suddenly comes to life, however, you bet your ass that she can recognize a puny 6hp target when she sees it, and come out with guns blazing.

Was there a target in play before? (No.) Is there a target now? (Yes.) Did a target therefore enter play? (Yes, indeed.)

...meanwhile, in Magic, everything is a target already if you have the right spell in hand.

I can understand a subjective, personal complaint about aesthetic and intuition involving game mechanics such as a target “entering play” when a non-target already in play becomes a target. That is no problem. But I wouldn’t call a consistent, clearly worded rule with an odd corner clarification to be bad design.

I would call it bad conveyance.

Not trying to be difficult, but this is a ruling that seems to be consistent and reasonable if you examine the rules glossary and go with a literal interpretation. It isn’t broken, arbitrary, or prominent in the game.

There are many nuances in the rules that are far less intuitive or clear than this one, and as a rule it’s pretty simple once you get a grip on the terminology.

But a dislike of its aesthetic quality and conveyance? No disagreement here. It could be more obvious and I imagine it will confuse a few playgroups.