Mata Hari and Hakim's Law: Leadership

Ankha wrote:

Mewcat wrote:

Furthermore, "as if" carries with it implicitly that that the thing acting as a vampire is not a vampire. This is a distinct connotational difference from saying it acts "as a vampire" which has no such complexity of meaning. Thing acts as a vampire. Thing acts like a vampire but is specifically restated to not be a vampire. Why are we making this clear?

You are overthinking it.

Let's say I want to open my front door "as if" I didn't have the key. Now, I may or may not have the keys in my pocket. How does it have an influence on the way I open my front door? None. For instance, I take a stone, and break my window to get in.

Mata Hari can play a card as if she were an Assamite. Maybe she's an Assamite if she played a Clan Impersonation earlier. Or not. It doesn't matter. The card sees her as an Assamite.

Mewcat wrote:

Mata plays cards that an assamite can play, but is still clearly NOT an assimite.

From which point of view? From the point of view of the card that she plays as an Assamite, she is cleary an Assamite: the card behaves exactly as if an Assamite were playing it.

Of course, this applies to the resolution of the card: for cards that resolve immediately, such as Bloodstorm of Chorazin, it is easy to understand.

For action cards such as Haqim's Law: Leadership, since actions have a delayed resolution, this applies until the card resolves, that is the duration of the action (but only from that card's point of view).

You are underthinking it. No 2 words or phrases in English have the exact same meaning. to think otherwise is to have a childs understanding of the language. When we pick one over the other (assuming we actually thought about it) there are reasons and effects.

DJHedgehog wrote:

That's just not true. She plays the card as if she met the requirements. If it stopped right there, rulings would be unnecessary.

Except then it wouldn't work for resolving all sorts of cards, and lots of people would shout and scream "But it says I can play them as Laibon Nosferatu, so I should bloody well get the benefit of that." That was - for example - one of the reasons that Raking Talons works as it does (now), because a bunch of people read her text as allowing that to work.

If you think that there is One True Interpretation that all players will agree on when looking at her card text, you are emphatically, empirically wrong. People have always had to ask questions about "as a...", because they and their friends sat down, looked at the card text, and had different interpretations of how it worked.

Because totally reasonable people sat down playing the game together can have reasonable differences of opinion of how the card works, rulings are necessary.

Mewcat wrote:

You are underthinking it. No 2 words or phrases in English have the exact same meaning. to think otherwise is to have a childs understanding of the language.

Helpfully, V:TES has official rulings that two things are the same or can be treated the same way. For example, "Prevent 2 damage" and "Prevent up to 2 damage" were ruled to mean the same thing. The ruling actually said so, specifically:

Mewcat wrote:

When we pick one over the other (assuming we actually thought about it) there are reasons and effects.

Indeed, when rulings are made that say two things work the same word, there are reasons and effects. The effect of that ruling would be to make the two things mean the same thing in V:TES.

DJHedgehog wrote:

That's just not true. She plays the card as if she met the requirements. If it stopped right there, rulings would be unnecessary.

Quite the opposite. Mata Hari is an exception. She can play cards that were not designed with her in mind. If you start parsing card texts to figure out what applies, then you open yourself to applying only some of the effects of a card that was designed to be atomic, and that can break the game in all kinds of ways. Just look at Vlad Tepes and No Secrets for an example. It is more robust to ensure that if a card can be played, then it works as designed.

DJHedgehog wrote:

Nothing about the card phrasing or text would say "for the purposes of the entire action she becomes an Assamite". She plays the card breaking the normal rules, but she never becomes something else or stops being what she is.

Well, playing an action card is a process of fully resolving the action card. And that is actually quite a long process, during which many different cards can be played. "Playing an action card" doesn't end when you put it down on the table from your hand. You only pay an action cards cost after it successfully resolves, after all.

I think this is the main issue you have with this. Mata Hari is 'playing Hakim's law' for the entire duration of the action. This means that for the entire duration of the action the card sees her as an assamite. When the card finally resolves, the card still sees her as an assamite. I don't have an issue with this, and I have issues with MANY VTES rules as many may know xD. This just comes down to definition of what does "playing a card" mean.

so just to get this right, playing a card is finished when the action is finished if it is an action card? does this mean i cant redraw action cards before the action is finished since i am still playing the card until after the action resolves?