Non-Crooked Cops: The Chairman in Megalopolis

I'm having trouble figuring out how Police Backup interacts with Enforcers, especially when they've been rendered incapable of dealing damage.  The Enforcers deal a hero damage "unless that hero's player discards a card".  So, is this ability "making" a player discard a card, just by offering them the option?  And if they are unable to deal their damage, does the player automatically have to discard because he's unable to take the other option (thereby definitely destroying Police Backup, who might have been able to survive if the player chose to take the damage)?

Enforcers does not make a player discard just by offering the option to discard.

If Enforcers cannot deal damage, you can let them deal that no damage to you, you would not have to discard.

The option to discard lets you avoid them trying to damage you, that is all.

I cannot think of an option where you have to take damage or suffer a different fate, other than hero cards that destroy themselves.

I just wanted to make a slight suggestion to help other people find this thread. While clever titles are, well, clever, I had no idea this was the question you were going to ask based on the title of the thread. With a single question about specific card interactions, it would have been much more helpful to have that in the title. But this is of course only my opinion, and it is only about making the answer easier to find.

The title is fairly topical - it names the decks rather than the exact cards, but I think it's good enough.  And I'd rather have a little poetry to the titles than have them be as clinical as an index - being that they're NOT indexed.  (I still think there ought to be such an index, but this forum is not configured ideally to serve the purpose, and me giving my topics more boring names won't single-handedly fix that.)

Subtitles are amazing for interesting titles.
 

For instance:  "Non-Crooked Cops and The Chairman:  Enforcers vs. Police Backup" or something to that effect.

Well, I don't. For someone who already says they have trouble finding things with the search feature, I find it mind boggling that you won't make it easier. To quote you from the other thread:

> So, which is it, do you take the first step or not?

It varies day to day whether I feel up to bothering.  In general, my opinion is that whoever has the most resources at their command has the greatest responsibility to make all necessary changes, which generally rules me out.  On a good day, I'm up to going the extra mile, but those days are rare.

I'm trying to figure out if trolling has just been taken to a transcendant level (by having the guise of relevant questions) or if these are sincere questions unintentionally wrapped in ignorance and snark.

I have to admit that I interpreted the interaction differently to phantaskippy. I always thought that you could take the option to discard, and then Police Backup would blow up in order to prevent you from discarding.

Police backup does not stop the discard.  I interpretted it wrong at first too.  It just is destroyed when a villain card makes you discard.

Really? I thought the wording was "When a villain would make you discard a card, destroy this card", or something, implying that the destruction of the police happens instead of the discard (at least, for one player - presumably if everyone has to discard, the police only get to prevent discard for one person). Mind you, we normally forget about that part of the card anyway and the Police end up staying out until they get nuked by the villain or the game ends or something…although I don't think it's that often that we've had them out and had to discard (but when we have, I've missed it) ;).

It does say would, but it does not say to destroy Police backup instead, just to destroy police backup, it does not stop the discard effect.

Ah well, fair enough. Most of the time when we play in Megalopolis we get spammed by the horrible cards instead (Hostage/Papparazzi/Traffic), witht he occasional showing of Rooftop Combat or Cramped Quarters Combat. I think the Police Back-Up may be the least common card ever to show up and when it does it seems to get taken out by the villain within a couple of turns or the game ends, lol.

I'm pretty sure there's an implied instead in there. I think that's consistent with other rulings I've seen in this game, like how Jack Handle prevents Mr. Fixer from damaging himself.

I'd say it works like Omnitron's components, it has a destruction trigger, that is all.

Omnitron's components don't use the word would. The word would is put in there to indicate that it would have happened, but it doesn't, something else happened instead.

Would simply allows for a case where you don't have cards in hand, so no card is actually discarded.  No card is discarded, but you would have discarded so it is still destroyed.

I'm also firmly of the camp that "would" without "instead" doesn't imply prevention of the "would"

Then why does Jack Handle prevent you from dealing damage to yourself?

Because official ruling says so.

What he said

There are quite a few cards which have "would" with only an implied "instead". I think that the police backup is clearly one of them, and you destroy them instead of discarding.

What cards are you thinking of?  Generally, >G tells us to read the card text as literally as possible; we should probably not imply any "insteads" unless they've specifically told us to with the card in question (Jack Handle being one of these).

Had a bit of an awkward thing come up yesterday which I wasn't sure how to resolve - Police Back-Up says that whenever a villain card would make a hero discard, destroy Police Back-Up. We were fighting Gloomy and he had his Tome out, which says that at the start of his turn each player may discard to reduce the damage dealt by Gloomy immediately afterwards. This isn't making a player discard, since it's an optional thing, so I wasn't sure whether someone trying to discard would destroy Police Back-Up. Plus I'm stil not sure whether Police Back-Up gets destroyed instead of a player discarding, or as well as. And I wasn't sure whether, if Police Back-Up went instead of a hero card, that would count toward reducing Gloomy's damage when he attempted to hit everyone afterwards. We ended up just ignoring the Police for that aspect and discarding as normal. Fortunately Rooftop Combat came out the following round so we didn't have to worry about it any more, but it was still a bit confusing, lol.

If you discarded for it Police backup would be destroyed, because the discard was the effect (optional or not) of the villain card.

We can petition Arenson to put the question of whether the discard is prevented by police backup in the questions list, but I'm pretty certain it does not prevent it.

Maybe someone with enough time should go through every card that has a 'would' trigger which does not have an explicit 'instead' or 'also' or a clearly implied 'also' and post them up, so that it can be determined for certain which ones are 'also' and which are 'instead.'

Speaking of "would" triggers, the rumor is that Christopher has a clarification to the Fortitude/Super Human Durability ruling. Thats what the Essen folks have told me. Maybe we will get a better sense of what "would" actually means when Christopher decides to drop in and finally put that issue to rest.

Am I the only one who thinks that "would" is not a mechanic, but just the clearest way to write something?

The intent is unlcear at best. And as with all "ambiguous" situations, the rulebook leaves it up to player choice (though that rule probably was not writen with this application in mind).

The clarification to Fort/SHD should really point us in the right direction with how to best interpret "would" found in trigger clauses.

(@Christopher, we are ready for that whenever you are! )

I had figured that 'would' triggers occur before the action and have the ability for the action to be canceled, whereas triggers without 'would' occur immediately before or immediately after the action (likely the latter) without ability to change the action.

I have always understood the SHD/Fort ruling to mean that "would" is not a mechanic (i.e. the word "would" doesn't desigante a specific acting time).

"would" seems to be used in one of 2 situations, to make the intent clearer:

1) When an action is being replaced. Meaning, don't do X, do Y instead. (This inherenlty means the action didn;t happen, not that "would" puts it first.)

2) When a static effect has a trigger. All DR is static, but conditional DR would have "would" (e.g. SHD, Shielding Winds, etc.).

While I will eagerly wait for Christopher's ruling, I honestly don't think it was understood wrong, just that he is changing his mind (like rule #15). 

Nope.

And that point is still unclear. It depends on if the word "would" actually changes whether triggered effects are considered "simultaneous" or not. Because if "would" in fact does not have an impact on the status of whether effects are simultaneous (such as the status of being dealt damage and would be dealt damage), then your view of "would" has to change.

The sooner Christopher shares this clarification the better off we all will be. I have to think its coming soon. I am getting antsy.

There are 30 cards in the game (to this point, I'm not a playtester but I have everything that is out).

Of those 30:

12 are redirection, they do not say instead, but the instructions clearly state what to do with the damage.

8 deal with increasing/decreasing or preventing damage, and again the instructions are clear as to what to do with the damage.

4 have instead written on the card

1 are Ambuscade's traps, they share the same wording and it is clear since they tell what to do with the trap, they don't need an instead.

3 have no instead, and the triggered effect doesn't deal directly with the cause but have clearly worded instructions (Kismet's Inconcievable Obstruction and Lady Luck, La Capitan's split across time side) that do deal with the initial trigger.

The two remaining are Police Backup and Jack Handle.

The four with Instead on the card are Null-Point, No Executions, Unforgiving Wasteland and Spite's Drug Wracked Monstrosity side.  They all deal with a triggered effect that doesn't effect the initial trigger, except that they do say instead, letting us know that the initial trigger doesn't happen.

Jack Handle to me is a mistake of wording stemming from it being in essence a redirection of damage.  All redirections use the word would, but they all use the word redirect.  Jack Handle doesn't, which is confusing and makes it need an instead which it also didn't get.

While this doesn't give any smoking gun style evidence, it gives us several examples that >G has written of cards that have trigger effects that don't effect the initial trigger, but have wording added to make sure it does, sometimes instead, sometimes just with giving clear instructions.