Revelation of Ecstasy when prey is tapped out?

Revelation of Ecstasy
+1 stealth action.
Serpentis Tap one of your prey's ready minions.
Serpentis As above, and place a corruption counter on that minion. If the number of your corruption counters on the minion equals or exceeds his or her capacity or cost, you may burn those counters to take control of him or her.

Can I play this when all my prey's minions are tapped?

Yes, you can tap a tapped minion.

Is this explained in the rulebook anywhere? That you can tap a tapped minion? If not, it should be, because, looking at it from a pure logic standpoint, tapping a tapped minion seems like it should be impossible.

Being able to (add) "tap" (to) a tapped minion is plausible when you are used/have learned to think that way.
Some tapping cards, like "Art's Traumatic Essence", read: "Tap any untapped minion."
If you have such a wording, "tap a tapped minion" is included in "tap a minion".


(But, yes, at first instance, tapping a tapped minion is a bit weird. I remember my troubles when "Deep Song" came out. I don't know if it made sense to add a phrase like "everything that is not forbidden by existing rules or cards texts is allowed" to the rulebook.)

Hakuron wrote:

Being able to (add) "tap" (to) a tapped minion is plausible when you are used/have learned to think that way.
Some tapping cards, like "Art's Traumatic Essence", read: "Tap any untapped minion."
If you have such a wording, "tap a tapped minion" is included in "tap a minion".


(But, yes, at first instance, tapping a tapped minion is a bit weird. I remember my troubles when "Deep Song" came out. I don't know if it made sense to add a phrase like "everything that is not forbidden by existing rules or cards texts is allowed" to the rulebook.)

Thanks for the post, this is great insight. It is my belief a problem arises when VTES puts the onus on the player to learn to think unconventionally. When VTES assumes the player knows that tapping an tapped minion is allowed, while at the same time not explaining this reversal in conventional logic in the rulebook, it creates an extremely high learning curve. For instance, to glean this unconventional thinking, the unlearned player either needs to see a more experienced player tap a tapped minion, or they have to glean this unconventional wisdom from myriad rulings/threads on this forum such as the current forum.Unless these things happen, the unlearned player will continue to approach the game "wrong."

I think adding a general statement to the rulebook along the lines of what you suggest above is a good start, but I wonder whether it is going to help much. I believe each piece of unconventional thinking in VTES needs to be addressed in specific terms in the rulebook, else the learning curve will remain high (perhaps prohibitively).

It might be easier for the op to distinguish between a requirement and an effect.

Tapping a minion is an effect that simply requires a minion. An already tapped minion satisfies this requirement and the effect is redundant, which doesnt prevent the card from being played.

As Hakuron pointed out, tapping and untapped minion is a more onerous requirement, one that a tapped minion does not meet, therefore the effect cannot be applied (in this case).