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Consulting the Orb #3
Posted On 04/28/2008 11:38:20 by t_man
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Woohoo! Three episodes already! We’re cruising here, people!
The questions are coming in pretty steadily now, which is fantastic. This installment of Consulting the Orb consists of the most requests yet, which range from text template troubles to nasty negation effects. There’s even a decent amount of strategy talk, too!
Let’s start off with a goodie asking about one of last episode’s responses…
“Hey, last week’s Challenge Question left me wondering: if your opponent flips
Standoff from his or her resource row, couldn't you just play plot twists before Standoff resolved? Flipping it should put an effect on the chain, and anything you chain immediately after that should avoid its effect, since it hasn't resolved yet, correct?”
Whoops, I probably should have mentioned something along those lines last time…it’s a good thing this got brought up, actually!
A player can’t “chain” or “respond” to Standoff getting flipped -- the reason being that flipping a resource doesn’t use the chain, so it is impossible to respond to it. As such, any powers that exist on a card getting flipped over, like the ongoing portion of a plot twist or a location, are immediately online and active.
So…when Standoff gets flipped, the text after the “Ongoing” keyword is instantly active, which means it’s too late to try and play all of your plot twists and not get burned…which is why the situation was a little more complex!
Don’t read too far into this, though -- for all intents and purposes, just the text after an “Ongoing” keyword or on a location are “online” as soon as they are flipped. You can still respond to any payment or triggered effects that exist in an ongoing or on a location (as they are put on the chain), but you can’t do anything about the card being flipped.
Going off on a bit of a tangent, here…but I think the following example will help some players understand this a bit better.
My favourite instance of this kind of interaction is Worldship versus evasion.” Imagine that I’m playing Morlocks, and at the start of the combat phase, my opponent flips Worldship (Total Anarchy works the same way, if you need an Ongoing example). Worldship’s powers (i.e. text) are now instantly online, which means that I can’t evade all of my Morlocks “in response” to Worldship being flipped.
What I can do, though, is take action in response to Worldship’s triggered effect. I can declare an attack with Hump, Servant of Masque, then evade all of my Morlocks critters mid-attack. Each time I evade a character with cost 3 or less, Worldship adds its effect to the chain: “return that character to its owner’s hand.” Now, with all of those effects on the chain, I can play as many pumps as I can muster, such as Bum’s Rush, Shrapnel Blast, Retribution, and Morlock Justice. All of those pumps will resolve first (before Worldship), so Hump’s stats will skyrocket just before all of my stunned critters get sent back to my hand.
Like with the Standoff case, your opponent always needs to have priority in order to take action (which includes flipping a resource), so if you know that your opponent has something that is going to hurt you, then it might be a good idea to do as much as you can before you pass priority to them and give them a chance to play it!
“Let's say that I control the Dr. Doom, Fearsome Monarch. Flying Kick isn't in my opponent's KO’d pile or face-up in his resource row, however, he has one face-down in his resource row. While Doom's conditions are true (I control another non-stunned Doom character), can my opponent play a Flying Kick, either from his hand or resource row?”
He sure can. The face-down Flying Kick is only considered a “resource” until it is flipped up, at which point it would be both a “resource” and a “plot twist,” and Doom’s power would prevent any more Flying Kicks from being played.
There’s also a little bit of a trick here to consider, too: if you have multiple copies of Flying Kicks available to you, then when and where you play them from is important for Doom’s power. As soon as a Flying Kick is flipped from your row, Doom’s power sees it in the resource row, which means that you couldn’t immediately play another Kick. However, you would be able to play several Kicks from your hand in succession, because they are placed on and resolve on the chain before they hit the KO’d pile.
“I was wondering, does ‘resource pool’ mean that you no longer need to have five resources to recruit a 5-drop? For example, with the new Sinister Syndicate from Marvel Team-up, you have to KO resources or you will burn yourself to death. But, if you are KOing resources then you will never get to your 5-drop. Does a player need to keep resources to recruit characters or not?”
Here's how the term "resource pool" works -- each player's build phase consists of three parts, in this order: resource (where you choose to place a resource in your row or not), recruit (where you recruit characters and/or equipment), and formation (where you move your guys around).
At the start of a player's recruit step (basically right after s/he places a resource) the game counts up your resources, and adds one resource point to your resource pool for each resource it sees in your row. After that, you're free to do whatever you want to your resources -- if you had five resources to begin with, then you have five resource points to spend on recruiting characters and equipment. After you’re done with your recruit step, any leftover resource points you had are gone, and therefore don’t carry over to the next turn.
So, for instance...say it's the fifth turn of a Sinister Syndicate player's recruit step. He or she starts with 5 resources and "pools" five points. That player could then recruit Spider-Slayer V.X., Arachnid Hunter as a reservist from the row (and not replace him), play his boost by KOing a resource, then play Legacy of Evil, then draw into and recruit Spider-Man Robot, Timespinner and play his boost by KOing a resource, too. By my count, you'd have two resources left at this point, so if you were to go the next turn and end up choosing to put a resource down, then you'd only have three points to spend for recruiting stuff. Since your opponent probably still has six resources left, you have to be cautious when blowing up your resource row!
“What happens if my opponent plays Savage Beatdown or power-ups before an attack is declared legal, or if I try to target a character who ‘cannot be the target of opposing effects?’ Do we get our card/effect back, or are they lost? And don’t give me any ‘nice guy’ answer…what’s the outcome according to the rules?”
Coincidentally, the “rules” answer and the “nice guy” answer are in alignment -- any kind of effect that is played incorrectly during a game is reverted, and the game returns to the state it was in before the mistaken action was taken. So if you try to play Savage Beatdown or power-up a character pre-attack, then you get your card back. Likewise, if you try to Finishing Move a stunned character that used B.P.R.D. Signal Device’s payment power earlier in the turn (or something similar to that), you’d ready whoever you exhausted to Finishing Move and put Finishing Move back in your hand or flip it back face-down in your row.
“Lets say an opponent team attacks with a few Teen Titans and plays Teen Titans Go! What is the correct path of action, if any, that I should take with a Force Field Projection in order to keep his guys exhausted or keep them from doing breakthrough due to Teen Titans Go!?”
Well, lesse…I think you’re screwed either way, but it never hurts to understand why!
If your opponent puts Teen Titans Go!’s effect on the chain, and you respond with Force Field Projection…then Projection will resolve first and remove all attackers and your defender, but since Teen Titans Go! (in all of its overpowered glory) doesn’t require the Titans to actually be team attacking (just that they have this turn, which happened as soon as the attack was declared legal), they’ll still ready even after Force Field Projection “concludes” the attack.
If you let Teen Titans Go! resolve and then play Projection, then you’ll simply be removing attackers that are ready…which certainly stops the attack, but will likely result in those characters just coming at you again!
Although, the characters readied by Teen Titans Go! won’t be causing breakthrough that turn, so that’s at least something…
“Even if power-ups are negated by something like Unmasked, can I still discard the card to try and power-up?”
You have to be a little careful with terminology here. The word “negate” has a very specific meaning in Vs. System -- to “negate” an effect means to either remove it from the chain or prevent it from resolving somehow.
In regards to your question here…if you were to power-up a character, you would discard a same-named character card and put an effect that says “target attacker or defender you control becomes powered-up this turn” onto the chain. If your opponent were to respond by playing Unmasked, then your power-up effect would be prevented from resolving and wind up being negated.
Now, once Unmasked’s effect has resolved, you would not be able to even try to power-up your character, because in order to play an effect in the first place, you need to have a legal target for it. Since Unmasked says that all characters cannot become powered-up this turn, you’ll have a hard time finding a legal target for a power-up!
“My question is: how exactly do ‘Discard a card at random’ powers work? Like with The Joker, Crazy for You…I think that it means to discard a card at any given time to get his effect to work. My friends say that it means to choose a random card from my hand. Now if it does mean what my friends say then I feel that the cards should read ‘discard a random card from your hand’ instead of ‘discard a card at random.’ Do I discard a card at random from my hand or do I discard at a random time?”
Your friends are right. In past sets (pre-MTU), powers such as The Joker’s here would have read “discard a card at random from your hand,” but since discarding is only possible from your hand, the extra wording was seen as unnecessary and got cut. In order to put The Joker’s effect on the chain, you simply discard a random card from you hand, via any mutually accepted means -- shuffle your hand a pick one, lay your hand face-down on the table and let your opponent pick one, etc.
Although…I don’t think I’ve ever come up against an Insanity player who doesn’t end up just throwing his whole hand to Joker’s effect!
 “I have Deathstroke the Terminator, Wolf in Bat's Clothing, and he attacks my opponent's 6-drop and they both get stunned. Now, can Deathstroke use his Vengeance effect to KO the 6-drop, or does the timing prevent this?”
Yup, Deathstroke will be able to kill the 6-drop that he mutual stunned with. The very last part of attack conclusion is when powers which have triggered have their effects go on the chain (which is where Deathstroke’s comes in), so that gives our lovable assassin plenty of time to finish off the guy he stunned.
“What cards can get past the dreaded ‘you cannot attack support row characters’ or ‘while protecting’ powers like Blob, Fred Dukes, Mogo, The Living Planet, or Coast City? Does Sewer System work?”
If your opponent has something like Blob protecting his support row characters from being attacked, then something like Sewer System’s effect won’t work, for the all-important reason that “can’t” always overwrites “can.” Sewer System says that your character can attack protected characters, but Blob says that protected characters can’t be attacked, so it’s a no-go.
Hmm…both Blob and Mogo could be handled through a power-stripping weapon such as Only Human or Mr. Sinister, Visionary Geneticist. Also, since they both have to visible and in the front row, any effect that moves them hidden or to the support row could work, too -- Banished to the Anti-Matter Universe, Kang, Lord or Limbo, or Cloak, Shadowmaster for moving hidden; Blow Hard, Windbag, or Xorn, Champion of Mutantkind for pushing to the support row.
Coast City-ish effects or powers can be handled much in the same way -- aside from moving the protector out of the way, you could always stun them (remember, a support row character with a stunned character in front of them is no longer protected). Stuff like Monkey Business could be used to drag the protected character up front, too!
I’m sure there’s more answers, though…if anybody else has any ideas, feel free to help out by posting a comment!
 “Hey, I’ve got some Secret Society-related questions for you. When I successfully pull off a Coup d’Etat and negate a character from being recruited, does that character go back to my opponent’s hand or to the KO’d pile?”
That’d be to the KO’d pile. Recruiting a character is just like playing a plot twist from your hand -- you put the character card on the chain along with the recruit effect, and if it gets negated, it does nothing and then lands in your KO’d pile. So not only is your opponent losing a character they wanted to recruit, but they’re losing the character card, as well!
“Sweet. How about this: can Pathetic Attempt negate Coup d’Etat? I’m going with ‘no,’ but could you give me some clarification?”
I can try! You’re right, and here’s why...
Coup d’Etat negates a recruit effect, while Pathetic Attempt looks to negate an effect which is targeting either the opposing player on one of his or her cards in play. Since the to-be-recruited character being targeted by Coup d’Etat is not in play yet (it’s just sitting on the chain waiting to be recruited), Pathetic Attempt can’t negate Coup d’Etat.
 “Excellent! Go Secret Society! Okay, one more: my arch-nemesis Wonder Woman, Ambassador of Peace is on my opponent’s board, and I need to hit my drop for this turn. Can Wonder Woman use her power to change the target of Mobilize or Remote Facility?”
Well, Mobilize doesn’t target anything, so Wonder Woman can’t touch it. That would be really odd if it did! “Search your deck for target character card?” AHHHHH!!!
Remote Facility does target, though (as it uses the word “target” in its effect), so Wonder Woman can mess that up. She has to change the target to something legal, though, which means she has to switch it to another Secret Society character card in your KO’d pile. So, if by some miracle the only Secret Society character card in your KO’d pile was the one you want, then Wonder Woman’s effect wouldn’t be able to actually change the target.
Most of the Secret Society KO’d piles I’ve seen get filled up pretty quickly, though…
Well, that wraps up this week’s edition of Consulting the Orb. As always, thanks to everybody who wrote me in their questions!
If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions that you’d like to have answered for next episode, shoot me an e-mail to consultingtheorb@hotmail.com. All levels of questions are welcomed, whether they be simple or complex!
Thanks for reading, t_man
Related to:
Vs System
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