Carrion Crows & First Strike Strikes (Not Anaesthetic Touch)

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Strikes are resolved simultaneously. Carrion Crows is not a strike. Therefore the rule "Strikes are resolved simultaneously" should not be applied to a non-strike.

Except, that's not the rule. That's not what the rules say.

You are for, no apparent reason, making up a different wording for the rule, and then pouting and stamping and huffing that the rules don't work the way you've just reworded them.

Strike resolution occurs simultaneously. Carrion Crows occurs during that - which, unlike most other steps in the game, is handled simultaneously.


Because you have changed the rules to "Strikes are resolved simultaneously" rather than reading what the rule actually says about strike resolution, it's no wonder you have to make up nonsense about transmogrifying Carrion Crows into a strike. But the fact that you have not read the rules is not a reason to change them. Please, please, please stop using the fact that you don't like the rules as justification to lie about what they say. Please stop.

James,
"Strike resolution occurs simultaneously" has the option for multiple readings. It is an ambiguous statement even in the remaining context of the rule.

1) Strikes are resolved simultaneously (i.e. no one strike take precedence over another)

2) The effects of strikes are applied to both minions at the same time, regardless of the order they occur.

3) The effects of strikes are applied to both minions such that no other thing can be interjected between applying the strikes to the two minions (i.e. Once the Strike Resolution Step begins, nothing stops Minion A and Minion B being affected by the strike of the other).

4) All effects scheduled to occur in the strike resolution phase are concurrent.


Those are without me being particularly creative about that phrase.

Combat, in VTES, is already ill-defined with the Rules and the CRR having different numbers of steps and the rulings creating a large number more (I'd suggest that all up there are 9 Steps to Combat as a minimum based on the applications of various rulings). Continuing to use a poorly defined phrase to handle environmental damage weakens the structure of the game. It makes the future design of cards problematic. It makes the learning curve of possibly the most complicated part of the game far more difficult than it needs to be, purely because people feel that the Rulebook should be treated as a kind of 'holy text'. The Rulebook is not the Book of Nod...

The rules should be crafted like a coding language with all of the parts of the game well defined and their interactions set out within the rules. If the current language of the game cannot support the card design without a 'patch'(via rulings at the moment and those can be difficult to find and potentially downright obscure)... then we should be changing either the coding language (Rulebook) or the card design.

Since the CRR is in effect a collection of amendments to the rules, why are they not incorporated fully into the rules? Why do we need two documents for this?

Since there are a reasonably large number of rulings that are general in their application (and numerous enough to need a General Rulings tab), why are these not incorporated into the rules already? Why do we need a third document for this?

Why are we not amending the rules to ensure that the basis for the game, the rules, are current, clear, concrete and able to be applied without there being the need to search 15+ years of online documents or to basically find a 'guru' in the rules?

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Result: There is no specific time in the rules where Carrion Crows must resolve.

...

1) Define explicitly in the rules the 'speed' of non-strike damage in the Damage Resolution Step (and removes all future need for rulings about how S:CE, S:Torpor, or S:FS & other minion goes to torpor). This is not in the rules at the moment.

Yes, there is.

When a minion or retainer takes damage (either from a strike or from other means), he must burn blood or lose life, as appropriate (see Damage Resolution, sec. 6.4.6).

You seem to be having a hard time grasping the meaning of the word "when".

dictionary.reference.com/browse/when?s=t

Meaning 4 is most relevant.

4. at the time or in the event that: when we were young; when the noise stops.

When damage happens, you deal with it, as appropriate, based on the rules. It's really that simple.

None of the "problems" you claim to find in the rules exist, except perhaps to you. To explicitly clarify for you: "Rulings" are interpretations of the rules. Those provide guidance without actually bloating the rules with entirely unnecessary explicit rulings for every special case that could ever possibly exist.

Jeff,
When, as your definition so clearly points out, is time conditional and does not presuppose any particular time point outside its condition: When X.

So, if X is not well defined, "when x" is also not well defined.

The problem is NOT "When should damage be applied to minions?". The problem is "When should non-strike damage be applied to minions within the damage resolution step?". Since non-strike damage is undefined in the rules, and only strikes are given 'timing points' this results in a systematic logic problem: that we have an effect without all of its properties defined.

This is what leads to rulings. Effects without their properties defined.

Is Psyche! an 'in combat' or an 'out of combat' card? That was a debate of the properties of Psyche! within the logic system. Previous rulings made Psyche! a combat card played outside of combat (breaking the property of combat cards) but has since been put in the 'final step of combat' (expanding the 3 step system in the rules and the 6 step system in the CRR to effectively include another step) and restoring its property as a combat-card-proper.

Mask of 1,000 Faces problems generally revolve around "What properties must a minion and the cardplay of the action so far meet to be considered to allow M1KF to be played?"

Interestingly neither of those really comes up with the definition of the rules too seriously (except for the playability of combat cards).


So, to well-define Carrion Crows, the rules should have:

1) A class of damage caused not by an action and not by a strike (i.e. What is generally called 'environmental damage'). The properties of that damage type spelled out (i.e. it does not come from the opposing minion, is damage for effects that check for total damage or blood burned to damage, etc)

2) A 'speed' should be given to this damage so that its resolution point in the strike resolution step is clear, unambiguous and any future environmental damage cards have their interactions well known to the DT, The Rules Team, the Playtesters in the development stages.

A byproduct of all of this, and a very very useful one, is that new players will not have to read as many disparate documents scattered across the internet to know how the card they bought from eBay (or maybe cross fingers One Bookshelf if they take another tilt at PoD) works just from reading the card and the rules.

This is unnecessary and so a waste of time.
There are so many darker rules in VTES.

I dont agree with changing the rulebook - but I agree with making the cards less complex. Put a "during NORMAL strike resolution" in all of them.

Or maybe put in "first strike definition" something like "environmental damage and effects Always occurs in normal strike resolution". Nothing is changed, just clarified.

And its over. But you dont have to change anything, this system works fine and EVERYONE knows how carrion crows works- one of the most common vtes cards - almost ALL animalism decks have them.

This is a worthless discussion.

hordes of newbies can't figure how Carrion Crows works

THAT'S the one card that's been stumping everyone for 20 years. not Rotschreck, not Trap, not Mask of a Thousand Faces.

what ARE carrion crows?

we just don't know.