Simultaneity

So, we know that nothing actually happens simultaneously in the game.  In some cases, you handle effects in the order the cards came into play, and in other cases, the players get to decide the order events take place.  But do we have a simple statement or rule to follow that says when to apply either of those two things?  If there are five minions on the table, we work through them in the order they came out, but why don't the players get to choose the order to work through the minions?  I'm sure there must be a reason, but I can't point to it.

The thing that made me wonder this was a card interaction that happened the other night - Anubis deals damage when a card is destroyed.  Bee Bot can destroy an environment card when it's destroyed.  When the Bee Bot is destroyed, does Anubis get to deal his damage, or does Bee Bot get to destroy Anubis before he can do that?  If we were following the first-card-to-the-table-goes-first rule, Anubis got to do his damage, but if the players get to choose, then Anubis gets taken out before he can do that.  I wasn't sure which rule to apply.

Under which circumstances do those two rules get applied?

I'd say if it's one card hitting many things at once, players choose the order. If it's multiple cards doing things at the same time, it's the order of play.

It's similar to how Smoke Bombs and Lead From The Front interact. They both trigger their redirect at the same time, but the one that was played first gets to do its thing first.

My understanding of the general principle is that when multiple different cards try to apply their effects simultaneously, such as reacting to the same event, you go in the order those cards came into play. You get to choose the order in cases where this leaves ambiguity, such as multiple packets of damage from a single card effect.

Based on that, I want to say that you would follow first-played order. If Anubis came into play first, he gets his damage off but if Bee Bot came into play first he dies before he gets the chance.

The complicating factor in my mind is that new reactions seem to resolve fully before effects that are currently resolving proceed. So if there was a one-shot that read "Destroy one of your equipment cards to destroy an environment card," Anubis would interrupt that to deal his damage before you can kill him with that effect.

Yah, imo, they are both reactions to Bee Bot dying, so i'd say card order.

Don't focus too much on the Anubis example I provided.  I'm more interested in a general rule that can be applied it all cases.  Under what circumstances do you resolve in card order and in what cases do you resolve in player-determined order?  An official reply would be even bestest.

I stand by my previous statement. Effects from 1 card happen in players' choice order. Effects from multiple cards happen in play order.

By that logic, then the players should be able to decide what order to activate minions regardless of the order they came out, since each one has just one effect each, no?  That's not now I play.

By what logic? It doesn't seem to me to be what Greonhal is saying at all.

Maybe I misunderstood.  "Effects from 1 card happen in players' choice order" sounded to me like, if you had a string of minions and each one had a single end-of-turn effect on it ("effect from 1 card"), that the players would choose the order.

What we are saying is that because each minion has only one effect, they happen in card order, and not player choice.  Even the ones that have large simultanious effects still happen in card order, it's just that once that card is up, then the one effect on that card happens by players choice.

Basically, once villain end of turn event triggers, then all the villain cards which respond to the end of villain turn occur in card play order (because multiple cards are responding to a single event).  If the currently active card has a single effect, then carry that effect out unconditionally.  If the current card has multiple effects (such as all hero targets, or maybe even the X targets with the highest/lowest HP/cards on table/etc (where X > 1, obviously)), then, for that one card, the players choose the order.  Once that one card is resolved, then move on to the next card in play order.

Again, when the simultanious action involves multiple cards, it always occurs in play order, and when the simultanious action involves only one card, there is no play order to fall back on (given one card, which one was played first?), then it's player's choice.

But they're different cards, not 1 card.

OK, I'm still trying to simplify it into a rule that's easy to follow, and I get stuck here:

1) If a single thing has multiple simultaneous effects, they resolve in order-played.  For example, a single villain end-of-turn phase can have multiple cards which go off in response, so we walk through them in the order they were played.

2) But if a single card deals damage to multiple targets, why isn't that resolved in play order the same way?  What's different about this single event affecting multiple things compared to (1) above?

Let's see if this explanation helps:

1)  When two or more different card effects would be triggered simultaneously, resolve the effects in card order. 

2)  When a single card effect is triggered against two or more targets simultaneously, resolve the effects in any order.

For example, over three turns, Voss plays an Ion-Lancer (energy damage to lowest), then a Frosthound (cold damage to all), then a Firesworn (fire damage to highest).

During Voss's End Phase, the Ion-Lancer damage happens first.  Then the Frosthound cold damage, which is resolved in whatever order the players choose.  Then finally the Firesworn damage last.

Does that make sense?

But, how can you possibly resolve card order when only a single card is causing damage?  Targets are never resolved in card order, only sources (note, cards defined as targets can be (and often are) sources).  Thus, when multiple targets are effected by a single source, then it's resolved by player descision. When multiple sources are responding to an event, they are resolved by play order.

I like the simplicity of Avalon's two rules.

One additional question comes to mind though:  in the case where a player has an effect like "at the start of your turn, a player may skip the rest of their turn to XYZ", Christopher has stated that if the hero has other start-of-turn effects, they can choose the order of them so that those other start-of-turn effects happen before the skip-your-turn effect does.  This would seem to violate Avalon's first rule.  You have two or more effects triggering at the same time (the start-of-turn phase), but we've been told that we can choose the order in this instance.  How do we resolve the dissonance?

What I would like to do is ask Christopher to reconsider his ruling, because it does seem to be inconsistent with the general "card effect" rule.

Otherwise we essentially need to create a third rule that says something like, "a player may choose to pay an optional cost at any time during the appropriate phase."  So the player can discard cards, destroy permanents, skip the rest of his turn, take damage, etc. whenever he chooses in order to fulfill the conditions of a card.  Personally I'd rather not include the third rule, but I think it's necessary of Christopher has ruled as you say.

Unless someone can enlighten me otherwise by providing evidence (say, a link), I don't think I've ever seen Christopher say that you get to choose which order you resolve your start of turn effects before choosing to use the start of turn effect that allows you to skip your turn.  In fact, from what I remember, he actually stated that you follow those in play order as well, and if the start of turn effect that allows you to skip your turn was played before another card that has an effect that occurs during the start of your turn, and you choose to skip your turn, then that latter card never gets a chance, as you've skipped your turn before it has an effect. Most typically, cards that allow you to skip your turn at the beginning of your turn are the last cards played, so all other cards would have reacted first, but that is not always the case.

I dug around to see if I could find where I got that info from, and it looks I got it from here: http://sentinelsofthemultiverse.com/forum/topic/skipping-turn-and-recharge-mode-question but that I got it wrong.  What's mentioned in that thread lines up perfectly with what we're saying here: the-start-of-turn effects happen in card-played order, so you might be able to get some start-of-turn effects off before you have to skip the rest of your turn.  I misunderstood that to mean that you could arrange things so that would happen.

So there's no inconsitency, and it looks like Avalon's statements still hold:

1)  When two or more different card effects would be triggered simultaneously, resolve the effects in card order. 

2)  When a single card effect is triggered against two or more targets simultaneously, resolve the effects in any order.

If anyone can get Christopher to put an official stamp on that, that'd be awesome.

I've suggested this before but I can't find the thread. I'm not one for keeping track of the order of cards played -across the entire table-.

My suggestion is, 1)  When two or more different card effects would be triggered simultaneously, resolve the effects in round order, then in played order.

In other words, the order is Villain cards from left to right, Hero #1 cards from left to right, Hero #2 cards from left to right, etc, etc, etc, Environment cards from left to right.

This removes the need to remember order of cards played. But it does make the environment a bit more powerful.

Wait, there are situations where you need to know the order played between cards from different decks? I haven't run into those so far.

Bleh,I move my played cards around so as to keep track of them - usually I may have Ongoings, then Equipment cards. Or maybe ones that do similar things, such as buff damage, which I do in the case of Ra - I have the Staff and erm, that Ongoing that givse him +1 damage together at the "start" (ie left-hand side) of the line, then other stuff afterwards. I do similar with my hand, grouping card types together (Equipment, Ongoing, Limited, One-Shot, etc). Also, does anyone playing ever actually have their hand in their hand? We've never bothered - there's no reason to hide your cards from other players and there's no way I'd be able to read most of them in the case of those heroes who tend to end up with a very large hand to choose from, eg Tachyon and Nightmist.

well, the order mostly matters for cards that have overlapping automatic triggers (like most villain and environment cards with their start/end of turn triggers). There's no need at all to keep track of the order of cards without automatic triggers (i.e. most hero cards).

I've only found the need to do this with Unity and Argent Adept

Yes, I like holding my cards in hand … in hand. Not trying to be cutesy. I totally understand playing with the cards on the table and visible to all. Generally, though, I enjoy both the visceral feel of holding the cards and the cooperation that comes from relying on the other players to represent what's in their hand. Also, I think holding the cards-in-hand rather than putting them face up on the table reduces a bit the likelihood of confusing which cards are in-hand versus in-play.

Yeah arranging Adept's ongoings into like-typed piles saves so much headaches. Of course, none of his cards have effects that fire off in a specific order, so it really doesn't apply to him.

Sorry for not chiming in on this sooner! Being in Germany and all. 

Avalon has it 100% correct. Cards act in order of play. Effects on a card happen in printed order. Simultaneous actions within those distinctions are decided by players.

Hope this helps. Let me know if this is additionally unclear.

I guess the only thing missing now is something to aid in keeping track the order of cards played.

Well.. one thing I can think of is to have pen + paper or marker + marker board or something, and (as organized by event type) write down the cards that respond to each event.  Since cards would have to be written in order anyway, and by grouping by event type, it would probably make the game flow easier.

I may try something like this the next game I get to play.

One method of keeping track of cards that go in a particular order is to have sets of colored tokens numbered, say, 1 to 9.  So you have a red 1 to 9, a green 1 to 9, etc.

Whenever a second card comes out that triggers during the same phase or conditions as an existing card, choose a color of token and put out the "1" and "2" tokens of that color.  Then you can put out "3," "4," etc. as necessary.

For example, during the villain turn, Voss puts out is first minion that does end-of-turn damage.  Later, during the environment turn, an environment card comes out that does something during the villain turn's start and end phases.  You decide that red is a good color for the end of the Villain turn, so you take the red "1" token and put it on Voss's first minion, then take the red "2" token and put it on the environment card.  If Voss drops another minion during his turn, it gets a red "3," and so on.

If another card comes out that does something at the start of the villain turn, then you can choose "green" for that phase - put a green "1" on the environment card, then a green "2" on the new card.

That also requires me to have tokens of various colors which are numbered.  I think in my case, something to write with and something to write on would be more readily available.  Not that the token colors would be bad.

I think I'll just continue playing as I have been, without making things all complicated - it's only a game after all ;).

On the point of not getting hand-cards confused with in-play cards, I always have the same layout of two rows in front of me. In the row nearest me, on the far left, I have my discard pile. To the right of that, my draw pile. To the right of that, the rest of the row consists of my hand. The second row is parallel to the first. Level with my draw deck is my Hero card, then to the right of that my Ongoings and Equipment in some kind of logical order running left-to-right from there. One-Shots get played in a space usually to the right of the end of the in-play row (if there's room, though there usually is - it's generally my hand that has a zillion cards in it, except for last week when I had about a quarter of the Adept's deck in-play :D) so I can have them separate from my other cards, so as not to get confused as I work through everything that needs doing on the one-shot.

Makes good sense!

Have you tried playing multiple heroes? A game of three or four heroes by yourself? I'm guessing you're going to need a decent sized table and a chair with wheels.

Lol...well, in the first two-player game we played, I did try playing as two of the heroes - Tachyon (my first time playing her) and Wraith (whom I'd played numerous times before). So yeah...not the best combo in terms of using a small amount of table space ;). The tables at both of our houses are fairly large, actually, but about three quarters of mine and about two thirds of his (slightly smaller table) is covered in other people's crap so we have to make do with basically one end/corner :P.

Hum,

  I undestand what you say about the order of resolution for the cards. But doesnt that make Fanatic card that destroy everything at the start of the Environnement Turn totally useless to counter an Environnement card already in place that also trigger at the start of the turn ?

Yes! The environment card will still go off! And then get wiped, just like everything else. But it'll fire first!

Wait. I'm a little confused. Let me know if I udnerstand this correctly.

Tempest's pwoer that deals 1 damage to all non-hero targets. 

It does NOT affect everything at once, but card by card, based on the order they were placed?

That is half correct.  It does not effect everthing at once, that is true.  However, this is an action specified on a single card which affects multiple cards, and thus you choose the order of the cards that are effected.  The only time card order matters is when multiple cards react to a single event.

No, not in the order it was placed.  There's another thread on this somewhere, but the basics are:

1) When multiple different cards or effects try to occur "at the same time", they are resolved in card order.

2) When a single effect tries to do multiple things at once (i.e. damage all targets, destroy all ongoings, etc) they occur in an order determined by the players.

(Edit: ninja-ed!)

@TheJayMann and @broccoli  or @broccoli & TheJayMann

THanks! I played it like this due to confusion. Guess i was right!