Declining blocks impulse, Conditioning and Eagle's Sight

- Player A bleeds
- Player B, their prey, declines to block
- Player A plays a Conditioning
- Player C wants to block with Eagle's Sight

Q: Should player A take Conditioning back in hand?
On the grounds that declining to block is just passing, and that A does not get the impulse back before C gets the opportunity to block and play Eagle's Sight.
In essence, if you want to play Conditioning after blocks are declined, it's necessarily after all blocks are declined: C does not get an opportunity to "trick" A into playing their Conditioning before they decide whether to block or not.

I think this makes sense, but it looks like an updated ruling would be nice.
Relevant recent post with rulings links, discussion summary and rulebook excerpts.

OMG ... Does this mean, the sequence "regular block declined" => "bleed modifier played" => "Eagle's Sight block announced" is illegal play under ANY circumstances? And has EVER been so?
So many, many games that would have taken a different course ...

Hakuron wrote:

OMG ... Does this mean, the sequence "regular block declined" => "bleed modifier played" => "Eagle's Sight block announced" is illegal play under ANY circumstances? And has EVER been so?
So many, many games that would have taken a different course ...

Most likely yes but not necessarily...really depends on if any effects are played (or not) at which point the acting could choose to play additional modifiers or pass and wait for the table to have declined to block which opens up for the acting again to play modifiers and is normally when one wants to play those,

Consider the following two examples, with five Methuselahs, A-E

Example 1:
A announces a bleed. Impulse back to A.
A declines to play any additional cards. Impulse to B.
B attempts to block. Impulse to A.
A plays stealth. Impulse to B.
B passes. (Note that their minion is still attempting to block because there is no decline to block only fails to block.). Impulse to C.
C locks WMRH to give B's minion intercept. Impulse to A.
A plays stealth. Impulse to B.
B passes. Impulse to C.
C passes. Impulse to D.
D wants to play Eagle's Sight, but cannot because there is still an active albeit failing blocker and E could make that block succeed (theoretically). D passes. Impulse to E.
E passes. Impulse to A.

If A plays Conditioning at this point, they have done so prior to getting any block attempts from C-E. You must resolve one Methuselah's attempts to completely before moving to the next Methuselah. And because other Methuselah's can play effects on the current blocking minion, all of the currently-attempting-to-block-Methuselah's minions must fail to block and all other Methuselah's must pass.

I cannot fathom a way in which that impulse doesn't pass to A for a Conditioning to be played before C-E get a chance to declare block attempts.

Example 2:
A declares a bleed. Impulse to A.
A passes. Impulse to B.
B passes. Impulse to C.

If C wants to play Eagle's Sight now and only now is the time for that. B passing all block attempts immediately puts C in a position to declare block attempts now or forever lose the ability to block.

Summary:
Given everything we know about lip's question, it seems to match example 2. If that is the case, then the illegally played Eagle's Sight must be returned to hand.

From a judging standpoint, this falls into two categories: did another Methuselah's minions attempt to block or not. If so, there is a window where the impulse moves back to the acting Methuselah before more block attempts can be made.

Hakuron wrote:

OMG ... Does this mean, the sequence "regular block declined" => "bleed modifier played" => "Eagle's Sight block announced" is illegal play under ANY circumstances? And has EVER been so?
So many, many games that would have taken a different course ...

I think Ankha only described a situation, when C wanted to play ES after GtU, but A rushed with playing Conditioning, without asking for blocks of players other than B. Otherwise, I see no reason why ES couldn't be played after Conditioning, if C has not declared he is not blocking, i.e.:

- Player A bleeds
- Player B, their prey, declines to block
{ A should have asked other players for blocks, too, but he didn't and C has not declared he's not blocking }
- Player A plays a Conditioning
- Player C plays ES.

After all, Conditioning doesn't say "only usable after all blocks have been declined", it can be played even as the action is announced.