When do you declare "X" targets?

I'm, pretty sure this has come up, but I couldn't find the thread.  A villain card targets X targets with Y condition and will damage them.  When do you designate the targets - all of them at once, or one by one as play develops?

To give a specific example:  Legacy has 8 HP, Bunker and Wraith have 2,  two other heroes have been incapacitated.  Villain card will do 2 damage to the three highest hero targets.  Do I declare that Legacy, Bunker and Wraith will all be attacked?  Or, do I hit Legacy first, then check a second time for the highest target, who would be Legacy, then check for a third time for the highest, who would still be Legacy?  I just played this as method 1, but that incaped two more heroes and cost me the game.

You will determine who will be dealt the damage, then you will proceed to deal all the selected targets the damage.

That's what I thought, and how I played it.   Thx

And yet, the FAQ says that you don't have to declare your targets all at once, citing the example where Haka with a Taiaha could smack a cultist, kill it, which would result in a zombie coming out, and then use the second Taiaha strike to hit the zombie.

Taiaha is not the same as selecting X targets with Y condition.

I'm not entirely convinced. Suppose all hero targets are at 1 HP, Unity has some bots in play, and the villain is going to hit the three highest hero targets. You select Bee Bot, Raptor Bot, and Bunker. The villain hits Bee Bot first and Unity uses the damage from Bee Bot to kill Bunker. It seems like the villain would get to choose another target to replace Bunker.

https://greaterthangames.com/comment/99396#comment-99396

This discussion just happened a couple of weeks ago, keep up with the times.

I thought you couldn't pick the same target twice (or more) with a single 'instruction' to deal damage.

Multiple instructions are a different matter.

Time is an imaginary construct. I will not keep up with them.

If the damage is "up to X targets", then you choose the targets one at a time.  If it specifies an exact number, then you choose them all at once at the start.

That's actually a really great way of describing it. You still can't target the same target twice, though you are allowed to deal damage to the same target twice through redirection, but in one circumstance you have the information upfront and follow through with that initial information, and the second way you can decide to stop.

EDIT: that was really unclear but I don't want to revise it. Just let AlexxKay's explanation stand

So everything is simultaneous then? Works for me.

The common misconception is that since nothing resolves simultaneously that nothing is simultaneous, which isn't the case.

Not quite. The "up to" actually isnt't the difference here. It's that one has a very specific condition of who it'll hit, typically being a number of target with the highest or lowest HP. Most Cards in play is another that is used. Ambitious Racketeer is an example of a target that hits a specified number (-1 to be exact) but he doesn't pick those targets, they just have to be hero targets. So when you select a target for him to deal damage, he'll immediately deal that damage.

[quote="MigrantP"]

It's the "n targets with the highest" type wording that does it.

[/quote]

So if it says deal the # targets with the highest HP, or deal the # targets with the lowest HP, or # targets with the most junk in their trunk, you must select the targets first, then resolve the effect.

That seems inconsistent to me.  Ambitious Racketeer does have a specifier for his targets: he hits "Hero Targets".  It seems inconsistent to me that he could re-target between instances of damage.

Rare that it would matter, but Captain Cosmic with a Dynamic Siphon can bring out a (Construct) Target if the Siphon takes damage.  So there is a use case.

The difference is Ambitious Racketeer only has teh requirement that he hits hero targets and he hits (H) of them.

Once you start putting a number and qualifier, you need to find those targets first, and then deal damage to them.

Since you can deal the damage in any order (because it is simultaneous) if you had instructions to hit the three Hero targets with the highest HP you can choose to hit the third highest, then the highest then the second highest.

That's why you snapshot on that wording.  Because if you don't it gets all kinds of wierd because the order of health changes while you are attacking, so you could retarget each turn and end up not hitting targets that were the three highest HP when you started the attack, or worse with outside interference.

It just gets needlessly complex for an effect that should be very straightforward.

Current thoughtwave on selecting targets:

If a card affects [select number] targets, or up to [select number] targets, dealing a quantity of damage not dependant on any quality (HP count for example) then targets are chosen one at a time and damage resolved one at a time; which is to say, targets are chosen one at a time as part of effect resolution

Example: Haka's Taiaha hits Target A; if hitting/destroying Target A causes Target B to come into play, Target B is a valid target for the second instance of damage

Example 2: Korrupton deals every target 1 damage. If somehow during resolution damage dealt / destruction of a target caused a new target to come into play, that new target would be affected by Korrupton just the same.

If a card affects any number of targets, applying differing effects based on target qualities (like HP count) then the first instance of damage will target and resolve, then the second instance of damage will target and resolve; effect resolution is interrupted to check for targets (and validity thereof) before any instance of damage

Example: Grand Warlord Voss deals H-1 damage to the Hero with the highest HP and H-2 damage to the lowest. Let's say there are 4 Heroes in play, one is at 13 HP, two are tied at 14 and one is at 15. The Hero at 15 will be brought down to 13, then he could be targeted again because he is now tied for lowest.

If a card, however, applies the same effect to a number of targets based on target qualities (like HP count)... Then we start having a problem. In this case you choose targets before resolving the effect and then deal damage to them, without rechecking for targets.

Example: Actually phantaskippy's example with Ambitious Racketeer works fine.

Why does it work like this? Beats me. This is as played by the rules as it gets, as confirmed by how it works on the videogame. It is also, in my opinion, terribly inelegant, inconsistent and counterintuitive. I can totally understand why it works like that. I still don't like it.

You can't just state that all effects first choose targets and then resolve - well you could at your game table, but be aware that things break under this, most notably Fanatic's End of Days. Personally I'd like to somewhat normalize situation number 1 and 2 to work similarly to number 3 - when the number of targets is finite (be that number and/or targeting method and/or the effect quantity variable or fixed) you target first and resolve second; you keep only the "All targets" condition as an edge case in which you resolve the effect then recheck for new targes.

It's a big mess imho. This game would benefit immensely from some mechanical rigor.

It doesn't seem like a mess to me.

The first ones have to hit X targets.  That means they can't hit the same target twice, but they can hit more targets if they haven't reached X yet.  And they are not particular about which targets they're hitting.

The second ones Say hit a target for X.  Then hit a target for Y.  Those are separate attacks.  They can hit the same target twice.

The third one targets a set of targets (X targets) with a HP criteria (all highest, all lowest, etc.).  It HAS to snapshot at this point to figure out everyone that fits its criteria.  Trying to re-calculate the criteria every time a new target comes into play becomes MUCH more complex than taking the targets as they were and dealing out the damage to them.

This is, in my opinion, the cleaner way to do things.  Everything else gets messier when you start adding the other interactions possible in the game.

That's why I say it's a mess. The third one behaves differently because it has to or the game breaks. Or at least gets under a lot of stress. It would be more elegant to normalize the game so third case isn't a case at all and doesn't have to stand out as behaving differently and we have as much of everything behaving consistently as we can.

I don't understand why you view this as being a mess.  For me, it is easier to say "Oh, these guys have the highest health so we need to hit them" than to go "This one has the highest.  Recalculate.  This one has the highest.   Recalculate..."

The rule is different, sure. but the level of complexity is now at the rule level instead of the play level.  And it is easier to deal with there.

I'm with Nataraja on this.  In order to distinguish between, for example, Ambitious Racketeer and the end-of-turn damage done by a flipped Cosmic Omnitron, you need to get into some quite complex concepts of what kind of targeting is going on.  Conversely, just checking whether the text includes the phrase "up to" is simple and easy.

Are there any cards *besides* Ambitious Racketeer that share its qualities?  And are there any cases besides Captain Cosmic that can bring out new Hero targets as a result of dealing damage?  I suspect that this is another case where we're keeping the rules overly complex in order to support a tiny change in interpretation to a single card (or very small number of them, at any rate), and even then, only in rare circumstances.

Checking to see if the phrase says highest/lowest/most is not equally easy?

I actually did come up with a house rule way to handle "Deal the 3 targets with the highest HP" and similar cases in a manner similar to the way "Deal up to 3 targets" without creating non-intuitive results.

Problem:  If each target is chosen seperately, then when the damage dealt changes the HP order of the targets, it becomes possible to skip dealing damage to the highest HP target.

Example:  "Deal the 3 targets with the highest HP 2 damage" when the targets are at A(22), B(19), C(18), & D(17).  Barring schenanigans caused by reacting triggers, A,B,&C should take damage, D should not.  But if targets are chosen sequentially, then if C is chosen as the first target, then it will drop below D, moving D into the "top 3".  You could then choose D and then B, and A would not take damage.  Clearly, this is flawed.

Solution:  I can't think of a good way to word this in general, so I'll word it for the specfic example shown above.  The first shot can target any of the first 3.  Now there are only two shots left, so the 2nd shot can target any of the first 2, excluding any previously targeted targets, and the 3rd shot must target the highest not-yet-previously targeted target.

Example:  Scenario above:  C is chosen first.  Now the order is A,B,D,C.  The second shot can only target A or B.  Whichever is targeted, the other must be the last target.  If A was chosen first, the order is now A,B,C,D, but A's been chosen, so the next target must be one of the top two of B,C,D.  Either way, it still will achieve the expected result.

I haven't heavily tested this method with schenanigans, but I do think that it will behave intuitively in most cases (i.e.  You won't be able to leave the highest HP  target untouched unless it takes damage from some other source in the middle of the damage or a new target replaces it as highest HP, etc)

It's obviously not the offical way that the targets are chosen, but if you prefer it to the offical version, feel free to use it as a house rule.

Not for me subjectively, since I find it unintuitive. 

Not by objective complexity (measured in "number of characters (or even words) needed to state the rule.

What about "with the"?

That seems workable.

Updating the damage dealing doc to have the following comments:

"If the effect damages "the N targets WITH THE (some condition)", all the valid targets are chosen the first time we go through this step. The valid targets are *not* recalculated due to later side effects."

"Conversely, if the effect damages multiple targets, but does NOT use the phrase "WITH THE", then you DO re-evaluate which are the valid targets every time you go through this step. For example, Taiaha can kill a Cultist, and then target the Zombie that is created in response."