"As Played" Window Ruling Contradictions?

nc-italy wrote:

Ok, then let's go on ignoring evidence and let's keep on the game with an huge amount of convoluted rulings

The proposed changes are no less convoluted. They're simply an arbitrary re-ordering of how things work into a different fashion. You then get a whole new set of questions about the interactions, and people complaining that they're equally convoluted.

Having cards interrupt each other is fundamentally messy, however you do it. That you have decided your version is a mess that you happen to like in no way means that everyone shares that view.

nc-italy wrote:

I can see you see no evidence, i've motivated enough which points are in for me:
2 rulebook sentences leading to potential misunderstandings(one sentence about immediate replacement, the other delaying the replacement just in front of a special cancel case when card is played/announced)

The exception is explained before the general rule, and it's just that, an exception. Many rules have minor exceptions to facilitate something. This is no different.

If players can't cope with simple concepts like "It works like this... with this small exception", V:TES is really going to be beyond them. There are literally thousands of cards that interact. Two sentences that are right next to each other is really trivial.

nc-italy wrote:

, the other with somewhat contradicting rulings (one allows the playing of some reaction cards between the cancelation of a card and the canceler, the other forbidding the use of instant effect such as the barrens in the same window - to me either all should be allowed or none should in the given window; special cases should be avoided whenever possible as they lead to unnecessary convolutions)

The rulebook explains how wakes work with cancellation, and that they (and the card cancellers) are the only exception to the rule. This is not a ruling - it's right there in the rulebook.

With that rule in the rulebook, the "You can't tap The Barrens" ruling is actually unnecessary - it's right there:

Rulebook wrote:

These effects (and effects that grant the ability to play them, like Forced Awakening) are the only effects allowed during the "as played" time period of another card.

There's nothing contradictory between being able to play a Wake and Rewind Time and not being able to use the Barrens - the rule is right there, in very small words. Card cancellers and Wakes are the only effects allowed.

The Barrens is not either of those, so it's not allowed. By the text in the rulebook, which is in no way contradicted by an explicit, earlier ruling.


Honestly, you are using the word "contradict" without knowing what it means. The rulebook text (not a ruling) and the Barrens ruling are completely in line with each other. They in no way contradict. Nothing about them is contradictory.

How do you quantify the difficulty to understand the rules? I know people who don't know the proper sequencing rule in a combat. Should we simplify combat, and how?

Oh that's actually really simple.

When a certain card or effect finds a significant (and relevant) hole in the ruleset, you make a ruling for that specific card instead of rewriting the rules entirely and complicating them in the process.

What you don't do is make up new and more rules to try and fix all the mess and then end up making rulings for other cards because you couldn't really fix the mess. The whole Pocket out of Time dungpile is a good example of rules lawyering gone wrong. If pocket out of time was ruled as environmental damage (which would, ya know, make sense) we wouldn't have needed to rewrite 3 (4? 5?) other cards and change the combat rules in the process.

If the rules said you need the cancel-card IN YOUR HAND when the to be cancelled card is played, we wouldn't have needed this silly inbetween window (and a bazillion misplays as a result).

Another good example is the utter mess that surrounds the Combat Ends and do something harmful line of cards in relation with Dodges, opposing combat ends and new-combat starting cards. Everything may be crystal clear to you, Pascal, James and probably LSJ but that pretty much sums it up.

If people come up with obscure, never to be seen weird card interactions, you don't need extra combat phases or "after played but before announced but after replaced" windows. You make up a ruling, document it somewhere and nobody will ever read it because it was a made-up example. Who cares what happens when a clan-impersonated Great Beast plays Reality Mirror on a DI'd Pocket out of Time when the range has been set to long in the third round and the opposing minion has less than 7 blood.

Here is my summary (added to the OP for the TL;DR crowd):

The two rulings do not contradict each other. The ruling from 2004 makes it explicit that only cards-in-hand can be used to cancel a card as it is played. It does not say which cards-in-hand can or can not be played, just that they have to be in hand. Therefore it does not contradict the 2001 ruling, which only identifies the exception to the rule, namely that wakes can be played to enable a "cancel as played" card.

• 2001: You can play a wake to cancel a card as played...
• 2004: but the cards must be in your hand.