"As Played" Window Ruling Contradictions?

nc-italy wrote:

@James: contradictory is just allowing a thing instant and disallowing
other thing instant arbitrarily in the window just to fill an hole in the rules about card cancelers

"Contradictory" doesn't mean that, no matter how times you pretend it does.

The two rules are not contradictory. They do not contradict one another.

Note that there is no "instant" in V:TES. This is not Magic. There are no things going off at instant speed and interrupt speed. Attempting to change V:TES into mid-90s Magic is unlikely to be helpful!

Izaak wrote:

Let it go guys...

The rules lawyers themselves understand the rules and THUS in their narrow-minded vision they are fine. The fact that 90% of the players don't know them or don't follow them properly is not the fault of rules being changed to be less intuitive and/or more complex. It is entirely the fault of the thousands of players that don't even know there is a "between played and replacement" window.

Since the rulebook explains its existence in very small words, yes, it's the fault of people not reading the rulebook if they don't know about it.

Further, since we have people like nc-italy inventing the concept of "instant" speed effects to justify their increasingly non-game-related interpretation of the rules. This doesn't exist in any V:TES rulebook.

So yes, people not reading the rulebook and pulling crap out of their backside which doesn't exist in the rulebook they haven't read - yes, it's their fault they don't understand the rules.

The rules say, in very small words, that there is a gap between play and replacement. It is right there in the definition of how you play a card. It is right before the definition of how you replace a card.

And if we change the rules? They still won't know. Because they don't read the rulebook. Rules are made based on the assumption that people actually follow them, rather than having people make up their own based on their tingling spidey-senses. The rule isn't complicated - play, cancel, replace, in that order.

People's ignorance of the rule because they haven't read it isn't an argument for changing it. If the rule had 17 sub-paragraphs and 375 sub-sub-paragraphs, sure, argue that people who've read it don't understand it and it's too complex. But play, cancel, replace is totally straightforward - assuming people bother to actually read the rulebook. Since they obviously don't - because you tell us they don't know of this slight gap, which is described right there - it doesn't matter. They're not reading it. They won't read the change. They won't know that someone added the word "SMURF" in capital letters in the middle of it. Because they're not reading it.

Izaak wrote:

Fixing the hole means that when someone else comes up with a similar issue, you can apply the same principle.

If the hole is created by a single card, then it's the card that needs to be fixed. Especially if plugging the hole means changing a multitude of other cards and/or rules (again, see Outside the Hourglass).

The fact that a hole may be identified in a particular card does not mean that it's the only way it can come up. The same hole may be possible in other, as-yet-unidentified ways. A new card may tickle the same hole, possibly unintentionally.

Providing ad-hoc rulings without establishing a system-derived basis is therefore problematic.

Izaak wrote:

It is much better to know, for example, that the reason you can play Eternals of Sirius and stay in the game when your pool equals its cost is because the cost and effect are handled simultaneously. It would be much more annoying to be told that Eternals of Sirius has a ruling specific to it, and on which you can't rely for other cards that push you into the same situation.

Except...

That this actually can come up very frequently given how many cards that cost pool give you pool and doesn't change any interaction between cards. So, sure, this warrants a ruling because it's generic and relevant.

The fact that it took so long for this to come up - the printing of Eternals of Sirius is a long way into the game - suggests that it should have been handled by a card-based ruling.

Anyone then wanting to know how a pool-costing Villein works can, of course, get stuffed, because that wasn't thought of at the time.

Additionally, your own personal intuition as to what happens frequently and what doesn't? Not really a good basis for rulings. That metagame over there is completely different to yours.

@james: don't be a grammar nazi. instant is a synonym for immediate. And term "immediate" is in the rulebook.

Megabaja wrote:

@james: don't be a grammar nazi. instant is a synonym for immediate. And term "immediate" is in the rulebook.

It's not a grammar flame.

Immediately is used to describe when the replace occurs. It's not used to describe the speed of tapping The Barrens - the rulebook doesn't describe that as instant, immediate, or anything else. Therefore, it's not logical to start defining it as 'instant', and so therefore it has to go at the same time as the replace, even though rulebook text says that nothing goes before the replace, except wakes+cancels. The restriction isn't based on notional speed (which isn't defined) - it's just a ban on cards being played before the replace, except wakes+cancels.

That's not a grammar flame - it's just reading what it says.

Further, since the argument goes that the replacement is 'immediate' therefore the cancellation should happen after - which is a tenable reconstruction of the system, just not one supported by the rules as written currently - it's extremely difficult to logically support the argument "This is immediate, therefore this one thing (cancellation) goes after it because it must, the rules say replacement is immediate (and we'll just smudge over the fact they explicitly define a small exception), but this other thing (tap The Barrens) must be allowed to go before it, even though the rules are very explicit that it can't."


Again, you can't just pick sentences out of the rulebook at random - or, as here, pick out random individual words, wave a magic wand, and pretend those words applied to something other than was written. It's simply not possible to have a discussion in which you choose to do that.

nc-italy wrote:

I'm not pretending, i've pointed where the contradiction is and motivated
long enough why it is so: one instantaneous effect is allowed other it is not

Your problem is that you are crowbaring Magic into V:TES again.

It is not an instantaneous effect that is being allowed. Wakes and cancels are allowed, specifically. It has nothing to do with them being "instantaneous", or "instant", or "interrupt", or "immediate" effects. These don't exist in V:TES. It's just a specific rule. Play, cancel (plus wake), replace.

This has nothing to do with concepts which are not part of V:TES. It equally has nothing to do with which Five Rings clan you are, whether your Pokemon is asleep, or whether you seeded the star-line with Q cards and control Dr Crusher.


The alleged inconsistency is that you are trying to make V:TES fit into a paradigm which it is not part of. You might as well start arguing that masters and events work differently, even though they're both clearly global enchantments.