Another rule request - green cards

[Kevin]

I'd like to see the following rule become standard:

A unit may not be affected by more than one copy of each green command card at the same time.

Most green cards already have this in their wording (e.g. Attack Storm), while in every case that the wording is missing it ranges from mildly perplexing (What does it mean for Carthage to give a unit "double loyalty" anyway?) to insane (I recently heard a horror story of "Double Frenzy" turning wolf riders into some some sort of suicide car bomb at (10) 7/9 + impact hit!)

It feels like every green card which lacks this wording does so out of oversight.  Making it a rule would save a bunch of text space in future factions, and clean up some old ones.

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As a side note, this rule would still allow "reroll" cards  (e.g. "Cold Blooded") to be played multiple times, as a unit is technically not affected by multiple reroll cards at the same time.

[ajax98]

Probably a good idea.
Though I would really dislike it for Lizard's Regenerate, if I were that lucky to have both when I needed them (happened once for me and against me).

(Reminds me of an analysis project I started a while back on all the factions' Cmd Cards.)

[Kevin]

You could still play 2 regenerate cards under this proposed rule, as those cards have an instant effect and are immediately discarded when played.

[Chad_YMG]

Well...we explicitly do want it to be possible for a Dwarf to benefit from multiple runes (for courage, not combat).  I think I'd rather address this on a card-by-card basis, but that's just my initial response.

[Kevin]

Chad, I'm proposing that a unit not be simultaneously affected by 2 identical cards.

So dwarves could still play, say "Rune of the Warrior (red) and Rune of the Wary (blue).  The only thing which this proposal would do would be to disallow you from playing Rune of the Warrior twice (ince while attacking, and a second card when doing a rout check)

[Chad_YMG]

Right...and I'm saying (for better or worse) that when we designed the Rune cards we didn't want any restrictions on cumulative courage (the green effect).  I've definitely used an identical card on a unit, once during combat and once during courage.  (In one case I did both during Courage...since the state of battle was such that I would win unless that unit routed.

[Kevin]

Can we at least errata Frenzy to eliminate the double-Frenzy-suicide-car-bomb thing?

[Chad_YMG]

I hate to get into errata for really unusual situations.  Every time we errata a card we're creating a situation where someone who has bought the game and read the rules can find out the hard way (including in a tournament) that the rules have changed on them in a way they wouldn't easily know.

This seems to me like a better candidate for home-rule solutions.  Anyone else want to chime in?

[Niko White]

I hate to get into errata for really unusual situations.  Every time we errata a card we're creating a situation where someone who has bought the game and read the rules can find out the hard way (including in a tournament) that the rules have changed on them in a way they wouldn't easily know.

This seems to me like a better candidate for home-rule solutions.  Anyone else want to chime in?

You'll recall my outraged protestations when I was introduced to that particular quirk the hard way, which suggest that at the least I don't like the fact that they stack 

But I do agree it is annoying when things don't work as they are written.  "You're doing it wrong because we changed the card" is a hard thing to hear.  But I do think we are developing a few people, like Kevin, who are serious enough about tournament play that I worry more and more about going the other way as well.  Sure, very little is on the line for official tournaments, but that doesn't mean people aren't invested in them, or that they don't want them to be fair.  At the same time, making a special "tournament errata" or something like that seems kind of distasteful as well.

In this case I think I'm slightly in favor of errata, primarily for three reasons.  First, in your typical "kitchen table" game, this will almost never come up.  It took literally years of pretty reasonable play for me to have this interaction occur.  Second, because of the way command card play is usually limited, I think a lot of groups are going to assume you can't do it despite the lack of official guidance.  Third, tournament players are getting better and better at stockpiling a whole lot of cards before the lines meet, so for games where the Orc player is dedicated to a command card strategy, this is moving out of the realm of "freak accident" to "reliable strategy."  That seems undesirable to me.

In summary, I think the impact on casual players would be pretty minimal because of the combination of the rarity of the situation in casual games and the intuitive "wrongness" of the strategy meaning a lot of casual players will assume it isn't allowed.  And the impact on tournament players would be significant, because in those games you're more likely able to focus on a broken plan, and have the skills to pull it off.

[Chad_YMG]

That's a fair point.  Casual players can always agree to accept or ignore an errata list, and if you enter a tournament you're making an implicit agreement to follow (and know about) all rules, including errata.

Anyone else?

[Hannibal]

As a holdover from when I was first taught this game, I had thought you couldn't play two cards of the same type on a unit.  So my understanding was you coudn't play Cold Blooded or Regenerate on a unit.  It was only this last Kublacon that Niko pointed out that I was wrong and I have to say I find the idea a touch annoying.

That being said I dislike Kevin's proposal because I think that if you could play two Regenerates or two Cold Blooded on a unit then you should also be able to play two Ferocity on a unit.  I would feel cheated if one player's Green cards are better than another's and frankly it would upset me quite a bit.

My feeling is that if Green cards can stack, then they should all be allowed to stack.

[Chad_YMG]

The thing is, we don't disallow stacking because we want to limit influence on a unit but because we don't want command cards combining to make a single absurd effect -- particularly one involving combat.  If we were doing the Orcs from scratch Richard would demand to do the art I would probably just have one copy of Frenzy or at the least I'd limit you to using one per turn.  I feel very differently about letting a unit heal twice than I do about a unit getting +4/+2/+2 (if I'm remembering the stat boost correctly).

Then again, a ban on combining identical green cards during a given turn isn't unreasonable.  It would eliminate a lot of dubious things (like getting +2MC) and since we could write it into the next rules update it wouldn't be a one-off errata.

[Niko White]

The thing is, we don't disallow stacking because we want to limit influence on a unit but because we don't want command cards combining to make a single absurd effect -- particularly one involving combat.  If we were doing the Orcs from scratch Richard would demand to do the art I would probably just have one copy of Frenzy or at the least I'd limit you to using one per turn.  I feel very differently about letting a unit heal twice than I do about a unit getting +4/+2/+2 (if I'm remembering the stat boost correctly).

Then again, a ban on combining identical green cards during a given turn isn't unreasonable.  It would eliminate a lot of dubious things (like getting +2MC) and since we could write it into the next rules update it wouldn't be a one-off errata.

I agree with pretty much the entire content of this post, and think that would be a fine change; it is more or less in line with how other cards work as well.

[Hannibal]

Then again, a ban on combining identical green cards during a given turn isn't unreasonable.  It would eliminate a lot of dubious things (like getting +2MC) and since we could write it into the next rules update it wouldn't be a one-off errata.

I think a ban on identical cards is reasonable.  I'd even go one further:  I could get behind not allowing a unit to affected by more than 1 card per phase.  So you could give a unit a green card in the M&C phase and then another green card in the Courage Phase.  Or drop a rune on a unit in the combat phase and then another rune on the unit during the Courage phase (if it didn't say otherwise on the card).

[Niko White]

Well, of course, as written that'd stop you from playing both a red and a purple card on a guy during combat, which isn't the intent and doesn't seem like much of a help.  I feel like one of any given card name is probably sufficient.