Damage prevention windows: what can you Soak ?

Browsing through the rulings again, and I'm not clear on this:

Scenario 1
- Vampire A is in combat with vampire B
- Vampire A plays Blood of Acid at inferior
- Both A & B Hand Strike for 1 damage
- Can B prevent the 2 damage (strike and BoA) with a single Soak ?

Scenario 2
- Vampire A is in combat with Tunnel Runner
- Vampire A plays Theft of Vitae at inferior , Tunnel Runner Hand Strike for 1
- Can A prevent the 2 damage (strike and Tunnel Runner's ability) with a single Soak ?

For reference, [ANK 20180618] , [ANK 20170427] and [LSJ 20030804] , but they do not seem conclusive to me on that point.

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lip wrote:

Browsing through the rulings again, and I'm not clear on this:

Scenario 1
- Vampire A is in combat with vampire B
- Vampire A plays Blood of Acid at inferior
- Both A & B Hand Strike for 1 damage
- Can B prevent the 2 damage (strike and BoA) with a single Soak ?

Ankha's 2017 post, where he quotes the Barry-with-a-War-Ghoul ruling from LSJ is helpful on this point, when combined with two other extra pieces of info:

1) "Instantaneous" damage prevention is played and resolves on the damage that exists at the time. By "instantaneous", I mean cards that just do things like "Prevent 2 damage", rather than something like Apparition which lingers. Additionally, "Prevent 2 damage" means the same as "Prevent up to 2 damage" [RTR 20041202] , so you lose the excess.

2) Blood of Acid cares about the damage that has been successfully inflicted. That means it needs to know whether the damage has been prevented or not. Therefore, you need to have passed on preventing any more damage before it can do its thing.

Therefore, I'm fairly certain that:

LSJ wrote:

> B.1. Prevent damage (War Ghoul prevents 1, or not).
> B.2. Barry takes 4 damage (successfully inflicted). War Ghoul now
> receives 4 more damage from BoA, which she could now try to
> prevent. Whatever is unprevented is successful.
> B.3. Burn blood/life for successful damage.
> Barry burns 4 blood to heal (or goes to torpor, of course).
> War Ghoul burns 5 life (assuming she prevented only 1 point).

... means that any "instantaneous" damage prevention that was played in B1 won't carry over to B2.

lip wrote:

Scenario 2
- Vampire A is in combat with Tunnel Runner
- Vampire A plays Theft of Vitae at inferior , Tunnel Runner Hand Strike for 1
- Can A prevent the 2 damage (strike and Tunnel Runner's ability) with a single Soak ?

In an off the cuff situation where I didn't know any better, I'd be ruling something along the lines of Ankha's suggestion in the 2018 post - I don't think anything more solid has been said since that.

Stolen blood from Theft of Vitae etc. is handled during strike resolution, and is handled immediately (before damage is handled for damage-dealing effects), so Tunnel Runner's ability should kick in at that point. I'd then bundle it in with the other damage dealing effects that are being handled at the same time e.g. me being hit by damage from a hand strike, a Wolf Companion, and Carrion Crows. This seems in line with the current way in which two Outside the Hourglasses would be handled (where the second is played before damage handling for the first has finished), by having the damage resolution merged. [ANK 20170930] Doing otherwise seems to require up-ending a number of (extremely painful) rulings.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

lip wrote:

Scenario 2
- Vampire A is in combat with Tunnel Runner
- Vampire A plays Theft of Vitae at inferior , Tunnel Runner Hand Strike for 1
- Can A prevent the 2 damage (strike and Tunnel Runner's ability) with a single Soak ?

In an off the cuff situation where I didn't know any better, I'd be ruling something along the lines of Ankha's suggestion in the 2018 post - I don't think anything more solid has been said since that.

Stolen blood from Theft of Vitae etc. is handled during strike resolution, and is handled immediately (before damage is handled for damage-dealing effects), so Tunnel Runner's ability should kick in at that point. I'd then bundle it in with the other damage dealing effects that are being handled at the same time e.g. me being hit by damage from a hand strike, a Wolf Companion, and Carrion Crows. This seems in line with the current way in which two Outside the Hourglasses would be handled (where the second is played before damage handling for the first has finished), by having the damage resolution merged. [ANK 20170930] Doing otherwise seems to require up-ending a number of (extremely painful) rulings.

I don't think Tunnel Runner's damage is aggregated. In a similar vein to Blood Shield's burn blood effect being handled immediately [LSJ 20090528] , Tunnel Runner does damage during the resolution of the Steal Blood strike. We haven't gotten to the damage dealing strikes and normal strikes effects (a la Carrion Crows) yet. We need to resolve that damage immediately before continuing with the rest of combat.

The theft effect causes another effect and the latter needs to be handled before moving on with the rest of combat. The damage creates a break from the normal flow of combat resolution.

Adding a timing window to Tunnel Runner to explicitly aggregate the damage seems like the best way to alleviate this corner case issue. This opens the window for first strike theft to take no damage if the TR is burned before normal strike resolution, but the clarity is worth it.
Proposed rewording: "A vampire stealing life from the Runner takes 1 damage during normal strike resolution for each point stolen."

kschaefer wrote:

I don't think Tunnel Runner's damage is aggregated. In a similar vein to Blood Shield's burn blood effect being handled immediately [LSJ 20090528] , Tunnel Runner does damage during the resolution of the Steal Blood strike. We haven't gotten to the damage dealing strikes and normal strikes effects (a la Carrion Crows) yet.

No, we have already gotten to the damage dealing strikes and Carrion Crows.

Strike resolution is simultaneous. In the simple situation of I hit you, you Theft me, they resolve simultaneously. However:

1) The resolution of Theft of Vitae is to move the counters.
2) The resolution of a hand strike (or any other damage dealing strike) is to apply that damage to the opposing minion. That damage is then handled afterwards, but the strike has resolved.

Thus when you are handling Tunnel Runner's theft-creates-damage special, the opponent's hand strike has already landed - or is at worst being done so simultaneously (because it's simultaneous with the theft). The damage hasn't been handled, but it's landed.

While this sometimes makes it look like Theft of Vitae (and other non-damage dealing effects) are 'faster' than regular strikes, they're not. One example: a vampire and an ally (not Tunnel Runner) are in combat. The vampire declares a steal blood strike which will take the ally's last life. The ally declares hands for one. Resolution is simultaneous, so the ally's hand strike hits the vampire - the ally doesn't blow up before the hand strike is landed. The vampire still has to deal with the one damage.

Similar issues can occur with Anathema - the steal blood means the vampire becomes empty (triggering Anathema) but they have still dealt their strike.



The rest of your post is based on the same misunderstanding that the strike damage hasn't been dealt. It has been. It's just that resolving strikes simultaneously and handling any resulting damage are two separate steps.

I'm not saying that strikes aren't simultaneous. I'm saying that damage from TR is an effect, which requires its own immediate damage resolution step. Nothing on the card suggests that the damage is stacked with other strike resolution effects.

kschaefer wrote:

I'm not saying that strikes aren't simultaneous.

Then I don't understand what on earth you mean by:

The damage has already been dealt. The minion has damage on them that they have to handle.

kschaefer wrote:

I'm saying that damage from TR is an effect, which requires its own immediate damage resolution step.

Why are you privileging one type of damage dealing effect over another? Why is Tunnel Runner's damage dealing effect more deserving of its own immediate damage resolution step than Carrion Crows? Carrion Crows dealt damage at the same time as Theft of Vitae resolved. Could you point to any card text at all that supports this?

kschaefer wrote:

Nothing on the card suggests that the damage is stacked with other strike resolution effects.

Nothing on card text supports your suggestion that Tunnel Runnel damage is handled before Carrion Crows damage either. However, rulings exist.

The double Outside the Hourglass precedent suggests that - where a new source of damage is dealt before a second is fully handled - merging is the most straightforward outcome.


Note that comparisons with Blood Shield are misguided. The outcome of a burn blood effect is to burn blood counters (much like Theft of Vitae moves counters). The outcome of a damage dealing effect is to apply damage, which then requires damage handling.