Fanatic's "End of Days" vs Kismet's "Lady Luck"

This question essentially boils down to whether End of Days gets to attempt to destroy a particular villain card multiple times.

If it does not, this implies that Kismet's entire array of cards in play could survive End of Days if non-Lucky cards were drawn from the villain deck and destroyed as substitutes; e.g. End of Days attempts to destroy Lady Luck itself - a non-Lucky card is drawn and destroyed instead of Lady Luck and then End of Days moves on to attempt to destroy the next card in Kismet's played card array (or card in whatever order End of Days is following).  And Lady Luck may continue interfering with the destruction process.

If it does, than presumably cards are drawn and destroyed keeping Lady Luck in play until a Lucky card is drawn and put in play (and resolved).  At that point Lady Luck itself is removed.  End of Days can then continue unabated in destroying all the non-relics.  In essense End of Days gets to keep trying to destroy the non-relics until it succeeds. 

Good question.

One one hand we have:

Consequently, when End of Days is destroyed, it immediately begins destroying all cards in play in the order of the players' choosing.  This effect continues until there are no more cards in play.

Which is from the official ruling on Forced Deployment and End of Days.

The wording makes it sound like End of Days would keep going until those cards were gone.

The caveat is that the ruling was not about Kismet, and was made in 2011.

If we ignore that ruling then the question is does the wording destroy all cards in play other than itself, relics, and character cards mean that every other card has to be destroyed before it moves on, or just that every card gets one destruction trigger.

As of now I'd say we have to go with the official ruling, and the wording (whether intentional or not) definitely answers the question.  Keep going until every card but End of Days, Relics, and Character cards are destroyed before moving to the next step of destroying End of Days.

I would be very compfortable saying that EoD would not stop until there are no more cards in play. It is only when there are no more cards in play (other than itself and relics) that EoD even destroys itself keep in mind.

How does this match up with cards that damage "all targets", which only get one chance to hit each target?

Apples and oranges. 

Its more like if Kismet is at 0 HP with Lady Luck in play. Even if LL prevents one destruction, she's still at 0HP and destruction would kick in again. 

One thing to point out to the OP for cases like this - if Lady Luck repeatedly keeps trying to save a card which keeps getting destroyed (assuming that is indeed what happens here), you will eventually have revealed every card in Kismet's deck.  If no Lucky cards remain in the deck, once you've run out of cards in the deck, the card will be both "not a lucky card" and "not not a lucky card", so neither half of Lady Luck's effect will apply, and the card will finally go to the trash.

Thusly, if End of Days does indeed guarantee the destruction of Lady Luck and other villain cards, it also stands a fair chance of burning through Kismet's entire deck.  If the players desire this outcome (such as wanting to use Suggestion to put two harmless cards on "top" of the empty deck...since one goes on the bottom, which is also the top when the deck is empty), they should destroy Lady Luck last of all, virtually guaranteeing that every Lucky card is burned out of the deck.  If they don't want to provoke Kismet to reshuffle next turn (assuming no Suggestion etc.), they should have Lady Luck "targeted" for destruction first, and continue "targeting" it again until it's destroyed, before moving on to other cards.  (Again, assuming this is legal; it might also be logical to say that the "wave" passes through every card in card-play order, before looping back to try again with anything that survived the first pass).

Great question!  Lots of fun to think about, and to picture Fanatic flying above Kismet, emanating circling beams of searing light down around Kismet and repeatedly trying to "scrub her clean" of all her villainous tricks.

Note that there's a potentially troublesome implication with The Talisman, unless it's a Relic (which is probably is, so ignore this).  Since it can't be destroyed, would End of Days keep trying to destroy it forever, causing it to keep flipping and changing sides an infinite number of times?  More generally, how exactly does EoD interact with indestructible cards (eg Spite's Drugs and Safe House)?  Presumably it must have a way of ignoring them without tying the game up in an infinite loop, but what exactly is that mechanism?  Inquiring minds (and, I would imagine, probably also inquiring Footes) (voice way in the back: "Inquiringfeet!") would like to know.

The Talisman I do believe is classified as a villain character card since it has a front and back side, so it wouldn't be destroyed by End of Days.

The Talisman is tagged as a "Enchanted Heirloom" and is not classified as a Relic.

Villian side:

Enchanted Heirloom (tag)

When flipped to this side, restore this card to 7 HP and put it in the villain play area.

This card is indestuctible.

When reduced to 0 or fewer HP, flip this card.

Increase damage dealt by Kismet by X, where X = the number of jinx cards in play.

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I translate this in terms of End of Days as the card remaining unharmed.  End of Days *destroys* cards and the Talisman is immune to this effect, thus short circuiting the destruction cycle - EoD proceeds to another target.  So it would remain where it was (villain or hero side) with however many HP it currently has.

Now, interesting enough, I think playing End of Days while Lady Luck was in play *could* affect the Talisman as a secondary effect.

1. End of Days attempts to destroy Lady Luck (or actually, any of Kismet's cards that are in play)

Lady Luck (On-going, Lucky)

Whenever a villain could would be destroyed, reveal the top card of the villain deck.  If it is not a Lucky card, discard it and prevent the card destruction.  If it is a Lucky card, put it into play.

2. The top villain card is drawn - it is "Fortune's Smile" - a One-shot Lucky card.  It is activated and put in play per the Lady Luck card.

Fortune's Smile (One-shot, Lucky)

Kismet regains (H) HP and deals each hero target 1 Psychic damage.

Play the top card of the Villain Deck.

3. Fortune's Smile triggers the next card in the Villain Deck - which can be "Unlucky Break" and it will attack the Talisman if it is currently in front of a Hero, potentially "Killing" it and causing it to flip.

The sub-processes complete with Lucky Break, Fortune's Smile, and Lady Luck going to the trash.  End of Days can now proceed with scheduled destruction.  Though any attempt to destroy Lady Luck with a on-going destruction card can trigger this same sequence.

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I can see this going either way. 

a. End of Days is "persistent" in destroying non-relics that can be destroyed and will continue going after Lady Luck until it "gets through".  Which does leave the players with the option of saving it for last and trying to burn through Kismet's deck - with all the Lucky one-shots getting triggered!  Or go for it first in order to attempt to minimize the damage, and potentially failing to have it work out well.

b. End of Days only gets one chance to take out a card and if it fails it moves on to the next.  Leading to the situation of End of Days generating the big glare of bright light as it takes effect and wipes the slate.  And the glare fades to slow Kismet and her array still there and intact (with a pile of non-Lucky cards added to the trash) going "Nyah Nyah" at Fanatic.

In this case, I actually see the Talisman flipping over, but remaining in play.

But the Talisman is a character card, so it's not a valid target for End of Days.

This is correct.

This is correct. Officialy the Talisman is a Character Card because it is double sided and indestructable. EoD ignores it.

DEX save to see if whoever had hold of it still has hold of it. >:)

Character cards are not indestructible as I understand it; the only one that can actually go to a trash pile is The Chairman, but they can all be "destroyed" by any effect that doesn't explicitly forbid doing so.  Thusly, if the arch-villain is down to 2 HP, they can be Sucker Punched to death (or Tire Ironed from a few HP more than that, depending on how much Fixer can Strike for).  Please correct me if I'm mistaken on that.

Character cards can't be destroyed - they basically have the thing of "When this card would be destroyed, flip it instead". So if something says to destroy it (eg Sucker Punch), you remove the hp but it doesn't actually get destroyed, and flips instead. About the only exception I can think of to this is the Unforgiving Wasteland card, which specifies that anything killed by an environment card is removed from the game instead - this does include character cards and has been confirmed to be so. On the plus side it means destruction effects don't occur (eg for the Matriarch's Fowl being killed), because they're being removed from the game instead of being destroyed :).

Noooooooo. That's wrong Ameena, bad Ameena, no cookie for you.

If you can destroy a character card e.g. through Sucker Punch, then you do destroy it. You only flip Baron Blade or the Ennead because they specfically state that is what happens when they would be destroyed. If you were to use it on say, Apostate (either side) then he is destroyed without his Relic condition kicking in.

EDIT: And to add, Sucker Punch on the Talisman would have no effect

Its super fun to do it, too.  I eked out a win for my team as Mr. fixer by doing that.

Ahh cool…I think I may have read that somewhere on here before, actually, and forgotten about it. It's never come up in any of our games. Okay, so an insta-kill ability (like Sucker Punch) does insta-kill a character card, provided they have no "when this card would be destroyed, do this" text, or are indestructible. Got it :).

If they have an incap side, chances are they have that "when this card would be destroyed" caveat, either explicitly or, like with Hero Character Cards, that bit of text is implicit

Ooh, a wrinkle!  So that's at least two characters, plus a significant number of incapped heroes, who can take out Apostate if he has exactly the right number of HP (1 or 2), bypassing his defenses.  I like that, it feels like using a true name or a magic number to overcome the supernatural forces which sustain him.  Granted it's a little weird that Tachyon in particular has this, but it's definitely right that Fanatic doesn't; a grudge match between nemeses should require that much extra effort, in order to make it maximally epic.

Huh, it's actually a fair number of heroes. Finally a use for Wrathful Gaze!

Yes, that's definitely better flavor than Sucker Punch.  "You think YOU'RE a dread divinity, do you?  SHRAAAAK!"  (I've found Wrathful Gaze useful in at least one game; it's seldom the best use of your card play on an earlier turn, but once it's out and if it doesn't get destroyed, the ability to nuke heavy-DR minions can be very handy.)

That's one reason Sucker Punch might be a better card.  Can stay in hand as a one-shot ready to be deployed and not require a play to get it out for potential use.  However, it's trade-off since depending on what is encountered in-hand or on-board might make one or the other place more useful as a soak-off discard.  And there are also the ever annoying "can not play cards" situations.

On an entirely irrelevant tangent, every time someone mentions Tachyon's card Sucker Punch, I think of the movie by that name from a year or two ago.  Which was not precisely "good", but I really really liked it.  So the card always makes me smile for a number of different reasons, even though its game utility is limited.

A and B are basically the same thing. It attempts to take out any and all of its targets once, even ones that appear during its resolution. Even if Lady Luck survives, EoD will still attempt to destroy any cards brought out by it until all possible targets have had an attempt. 

Let me re-phrase it then.  Is it possible for the Lady Luck card to survive the playing of End of Days?  And if so, why?

All the additional complications essentially chain from that.

By the official ruling on End of Days it cannot.  No matter how many times it saves itself from destruction End of Days will keep trying to destroy it until it is gone.

End of days will continue to destroy until all that are left are Character cards, Relics and itself.  Then it will destroy itself.  It will continue attempting to destroy any non-Character, non-relic card that is not itself until it is successful.

Presumably it has the capacity to ignore Indestructible cards in the process, else it would never be able to complete if one was on the field.

Yes it would have to ignore the Safehouse and cards underneath it for example, but if fixed point were out it would destroy fixed point then everything else.

The one ruling I know of regarding End of Days is how it interacts with Forced Deployment.  And that is a different case since the sub-processing on Forced Deployment is bringing out extra cards which End of Days is subsequently also allowed to destroy as part of the End of Days instructions.

In this case (Lady Luck) the check upon destruction of a villain is whether the next villain deck card is a Lucky card or not. 

If it is a Lucky card the Lucky card comes into play and the targeted villain card is destroyed.  The new card coming into play is obviously eligible for destruction by End of Days per the ruling regarding  End of Days and Forced Deployment.  It is essentially the same case.

However, if it is not a Lucky card the drawn non-Lucky card is discarded and the villain card that was targeted for destruction remains in play.  This is the edge case I am curious what the proper resolution is.  End of Days attempted to destroy a card - and the Lady Luck effect prevented it (by draw of a non-Lucky card.)  A new target has not come into play - but a current target has survived the attempt to destroy it.  Does End of Days get to attempt to destroy it again, or not?

The wording we are talking about is from that ruling, the wording is:

Consequently, when End of Days is destroyed, it immediately begins destroying all cards in play in the order of the players' choosing.  This effect continues until there are no more cards in play.

I assume that should read "When End of Days is triggered" or somesuch, as destroying it immediately would not work out especially well.

End of Days destroys itself last. Meaning there are no more viable targets for it.

Fixed Point sets a better precedent, since I believe you're not able to try to destroy an indestructible card then destroy Fixed Point without then going back and destroying the card you've already tried.

I would like to bring up the fact that this exact question was raised without an official answer by dypaca during playtesting for Shattered Timelines, a total of 5 posts in an 85 post topic about Kismet in general.  It generally consisted of dypaca asking the question, me stating that each card only gets a single destruction attempt, lynkfox stating the previous ruling about destroying all cards, me defending my position by stating how they are different situations, and finally lynkfox seeing that what I said makes sense, and that he doesn't disagree.  It was completely forgotten after that point.

Just out of curiosity, what is it that makes you say that EoD should only give each card one destruction attempt? I think the break line in the EoD text gives a good clue. It says "Then, Destroy this card", as in "Then, after all cards in play have been destroyed (except for relics ect.), destroy this card".

If there are still cards in play other than relics and character cards, then I would argue that EoD never moves on to the "Then," part of the text (as the first part of the card effect is not complete). 

The misinterpretation I mention would be that of the official ruling between End of Days and Forced Deployment.  At the time the ruling was made, there was no such thing as destruction prevention (which is a different concept than indestructible), and thus everything would end up destroyed anyway, except for indestructible cards, thus there was no need to make such a distinction.  Now that a few cards to introduce the concept of destruction prevention, the question is if the rather general ruling still applies as is, or if it needs to be 'reworded' to fit new concepts.

The only thing I was trying to point out is that it was brought up before and discussed (however brief it may have been) by different people and had not been answered.

Fair enough. I could see the rational behind having EoD only apply the destruction tag once per card, if thats the way it gets ruled. 

But for me, I see the intent of EoD to be pretty much innescapable. If Fanatic brings about the End of Days, for better or worse there won't be anything saving cards except for those being indestructable. 

The wording that "there is no way the players can order it so that any cards survive with forced deployment" is key to me.

I will say this is worth an official ruling question.

However, the only official ruling we have clearly states that End of Days does not stop destroying until there are no valid targets for it to attempt to destroy.

You can disagree with applying that wording if you want, but that is the ruling we have, and it is not stated conditionally.

I think we have to go with it until we get a different ruling.

It was given in response to a specific question but that sentence was solely about the effect of End of Days.  The game has changed and the verdict may change, but as of now we need to go with what we have, rather than overturn official rulings based on what we think the ruling might be now.

And yet that very ruling still doesn't grant more than one destruction attempt per target. It actually is more preoccupied by the fact that new targets that pop up while end of days is in effect do not escape its wrath. I've always assumed that end of days only gets one attempt and actually is never affected by fixed point since both trigger at the start of the environment turn. Since logically fixed was in play before a end of days for both of em to be in play at the same time it will self destruct before end of days attempts to destroy anything. I've always played end of days as one destruction attempt per card or target but it never changed anything since only kismet could allegedly put herself in the eye of the tornado with lady luck.

Which is why we need a ruling on it.

I know I'm not Christopher, and my posts aren't official or anything, but I just talked to him and he says EoD keeps going, possibly resulting in multiple plays from Lady Luck.  I don't know if he plans to come and give it his official blessing or not, but for those of you that just want to know, that's the ruling.

So End of Days will not destroy itself until there are no cards in play other than itself, Character cards and Relics. Glad to have that cleared up.

Correct! End of Days devours all!

* Looks around shiftily *

Except Relics.

And possibly things that Unity likes if she has a Bee Bot.

And actual Heroes and Villains, sidekicks are OK to be devoured.

Sweet, official ruling!

Also I'd like to be the first to jump on the vague connection to Raptor Bot in the above sentence.

It is clear that in this timeline the Final Wasteland is brought about by rampaging Mechanical Raptors.

You ain't kidding. I had my phone on the table when someone played EoD, now I canlt find it. In retrospect, I should have wrote "Relic" on it.

I use a rotary phone, it has intrinsic Relic status.

Except Indestructible cards? Right? 

I don't wanna get devoured…

I would assume this to be the case. Indestructible cards would be the exception to the general rule.

And Indestructible cards, which technically make End of Days incapable of ever finishing under its printed wording (it would continually try to destroy them and would tie the game up in an infinite loop, since it's not explicitly allowed to ignore them).

Alas, that is not how "rules" work.  Exceptions only exist if they're specified; common-sense assumptions like "obviously it ignores indestructible" are directly contrary to the entire purpose of any variety of "rules" existing, since otherwise you could figure everything out for yourself with no need of the rules.  Granted, Sentinels sort of vaguely encourages the use of a "Rule Zero" which trumps all other rules, but in an RPG context, "Rule Zero" only works because the Game Master is allowed the final word on any and all arbitrations.  In a non-RP game, nobody has that authority, except Christopher in this case - so he has to explicitly say it ignores indestructible cards, or otherwise that's only a common-sense assumption, which is directly contradictory to the "letter of the law".

If you want end of days to work like a computer program, or a logic thread then treat End of Days as a cycle, it attempts to destroy every card, one at a time, then if there are any possible targets left, it tries again, and again, until it fails to destroy any cards at all.  Then it stops.

Except that computer programs written to try to complete logically impossible instructions don't stop; they keep going on forever until the machine running them malfunctions or the cycle is otherwise broken.  There's no real question as to how we should "treat" End of Days in practice; I'm just pointing out that in theory, it has no capacity whatsoever to ignore an indestructible card, or to proceed to its self-destruction and the rest of the game as long as an indestructible card exists.  Since many other cards say "non-indestructible" where necessary, I think this one ought to as well.  (That "indestructible" isn't quite the right word anyway, since the cards also can't be returned to hand or otherwise moved out of play in non-destruction ways, is a separate issue.)

Yes I'm being extremely pedantic, but then, if I were a computer programmer (and I'd like very much to be one, given the necessary knowledge and opportunities), that would be my job.  Technicalities matter, particularly in the vein of anything that attempts to follow "rules" or "laws" of any variety; if you want to approximate, such things are worse than useless, as they become active impediments to the free exercise of creative judgment.

With the ruling you still get to decide if this edge case occurs whether you'd like to run down Kismet's villain deck or not.  Or more accurately, try to minimize or maximize the chance of running it down but choosing whether to attempt to destroy "Lady Luck" itself first, or last.  Though it might not be to the heroes' advantage to get hit by all the effects of her one-shot Luck cards while doing so.

It can be in the other order if something causes Fixed Point to be played out of turn.