Shadow Court Satyr, RTR

Basic question is: Why?

Old and irrelevant text:

If the card has a cost, he pays with its cost in life to use its ability. If the card requires a Discipline, he may only use the basic ability of that card as a vampire with a capacity of 1.


Existing rules:

Shadow Court Satyr:

Shadow Court Satyr cannot use a mutli-discipline effect (an effect that requires two Disciplines), although it can use any single discipline effect of a split discipline card. [LSJ 20021216] [LSJ 20021210]
Can only use the combat card when he is in combat. [LSJ 20060502]
Shadow Court Satyr cannot use a mutli-discipline effect (an effect that requires two Disciplines), although it can use any single discipline effect of a split discipline card. [RTR ] [ ]

We have solid correspondence between old (and irrelevant) card text and the rulings.


New (and relevant card text):

If the card requires a vampire to play (e.g. costs blood or requires a Discipline), he may use it as a vampire with the basic level of the Discipline (if any).

Observe how the reference to the key word 'Discipline' has changed to a clarification. The second time the word the term Discipline occurs it's to limit its use to the basic ability, with a further clarification that such a limitation is only implemented if there are any disciplines associated with the card at all. The main change of the card text has gone from how to handle costs and disciplines to how to handle cards normally only playable by vampires.

The rulings suffer from poor correspondence with the new card text. There is (for rather obvious reasons) nothing inherent with vampires normally disallowing them to play dual discipline cards. The limitation given in the new cardtext has changed to allow this ally to make us of a combat card that requires a vampire to play, followed by a clarification of how to define such a card, and then again followed by a limition to only use the basic level of such a discipline, as referenced in the first clarification.

At best the card text is ambigious as to wether dual disciplines are allowed or not. At worst it's explicitly in conflict with the current ruling.

Discipline is singular not plural in the text. It is only ambiguous, if you ignore that fact.

The word 'Discipline' is used inside brackets, to clarify and exemplify the meaning of 'card requires a vampire to play'. The second use of the word 'Discipline' refers back to the singular form used in the clarification.

This is a result of using proper English grammar in the sentence and has nothing to do with the fact that 'Discipline' in singular form is only used as a clarification to the meaning of 'requires a vampire to play'.

Given that 'English language' has been given as a rules enforcing argument on numerous occasions it follows that RAW and not RAI should be followed.

A fully valid alternative is of course to change official card text in order to make RAW correspond to RAI.


Edit: To clarify my argumnt above. The second instance of the word 'Discipline' refers back to a clarification. As the primary key to the card text is 'requires a vampire', the interpretation becomes dependent on a positivitic or negativistic interpretation of the aggregated card text. You end up with an ambiguity with three perfectly valid interpretations of the card text:

1) It's only a clarification. Handle dual discipline cards as single discipline cards (both disciplines involved may only be used at inferior)

2) You may only use one discipline (dual discipline cards are illegal to play)

3) The restriction to inferior level only applies to single discipline cards, because there is an explicit referral to that example in the clarification. Apart from that specified limitation, any other card-effect that 'requires a vampire' is legal to play (dual discipline cards may be played at any combination, including superior/superior).


Version 3 is obviously not RAI, but RAW always takes presedence over RAI, and in this case that would be a BAD thing.

yappo wrote:

The word 'Discipline' is used inside brackets, to clarify and exemplify the meaning of 'card requires a vampire to play'.

And to restrict it to levels of cards requiring one discipline.

See the various rulings you've cited for confirmation of this.

See clarification above.

yappo wrote:

See clarification above.

Your argument is still that you magically know what the word was meant to mean, despite multiple rulings telling you, quite explicitly, that the card doesn't work the way you want it to.

Since the argument boils down to "I'M PSYCHIC SHUT UP", you'll make little headway.