Hostile Takeover

Ankha wrote:

jamesatzephyr wrote:

You're confusing the difference between risky plays that leave you in a precarious position but still in the game, and plays that - as declared - will self-oust you. The latter have been ruled to be illegal by Pascal, the former haven't (unless you were violating the rules some other way, obviously).

Pascal never answered your clarification request.

I see a third option: you can attempt to self-oust if it improves your situation (play to win).

That third option is one that existed prior to Pascal's ruling.

This left us in a situation where there were several things that might be going on at a given point. I play .44 Magnum and I am on two pool.

1) I am doing this stupidly, because I foolishly didn't realise I was on two pool. I'd planned my turn out ahead of time, my predator had played an unexpected Anarch Revolt, and I paid a pool without realising it. So I will now oust myself, accidentally. Under the previous rulings, this was allowed if the judge reasonably believed that it was 'bad' play - that is, the player is just making a terrible mistake.

2) I am doing this intentionally, with the intention of ousting myself. This gives you:
2a) This is legal, if it is legal to oust myself. This requires me to be in a position where I can't reasonably improve my position (I have already got the Game Win, or have maximised my VPs, including the 'hold on for a timeout' half VP).
2b) This is illegal if it violates play-to-win. So, I am "forgetfully" ousting myself and it just happens to mean that my predator will win, and my grand-predator now won't make the final, and I really didn't want that deck in the final because it will be terrible for me.

3) I am intentionally doing this, because I think it's my best play. There is a lot of grey area here, but there are situations where I will "know" I can avoid paying the cost, and situations where I can "guess" I'm going to avoid paying the cost. But this will clearly get very, very blurry, because even if I think I can do something to avoid paying the cost (say, nuking my own minion mid-action somehow, or perhaps I want to start this action with Koko, but I will Mask it over to my Black Cat-with-Obfuscate to reduce the cost), someone else might DI it. Or I might think someone else will block me - in a hypothetical situation, it's obviously play-to-win for my prey to keep me in the game by blocking me, or else my predator stands a much better chance of stealing the GW from my prey, such as perhaps this means the best my prey can hope for is 2-2 in VPs (on a four player table) or 2-2-1 (on a five). But then my predator meddles in the block attempt somehow, such as DI-ing an intercept card.


But because telling the difference between position 1 (accidental bad play) and position 2b (fake bad play) was sometimes problematic, Pascal ruled:

Pascal wrote:

As I can see it, there are only two possibilities:
a- Playing a card would oust the player.
b- Playing a card would not oust the player.

and

Pascal wrote:

Now, a- is somewhat trickier.
There is only two situations where a player is allowed to self-oust. That's when that player has the won the game already, or when he can't get more VPs. In any other scenario, that play is invalid and should be fixed by the Judge (recommendation: rollback).

Since playing the .44 Magnum would oust the player and we're assuming that the player hasn't already won/maximized VPs, we're in "any other scenario", and should be rolled back.

So... I can choose enough to self-oust with a Malkavian Prank/Game of Makavl, since I am not ousted by the choice, but rather by the effect of the choice. I can't bid that much in an auction, since that ousts me unless another player takes a specific action.

I guess that makes sense, sort of. I don't like saying it isn't "playing to win", but that is game theory semantics. Game rules is game rules.

kpram wrote:

So... I can choose enough to self-oust with a Malkavian Prank/Game of Makavl, since I am not ousted by the choice, but rather by the effect of the choice. I can't bid that much in an auction, since that ousts me unless another player takes a specific action.

I'm not 100% sure - I've been mulling the Malkavian masters over in my mind for the last couple of days, wondering what it means for them. In an off-the-cuff ruling, I would probably rule that you can choose any amount for them.

With Malkavian Prank, if you were on one pool but couldn't choose an amount that ousted you, that would cause the universe to implode, since all numbers would oust you. Additionally, looking at the card text, Hostile Takeover is explicit that you're bidding pool, whereas Malkavian Prank is indirect - you pick a certain number of counters, which later has an effect. Similarly for Game of Malkav.

Due to a thread on the VEKN FB wall about self-ousting when paying for equipment, I ended up in this thread. Was this ruling ever resolved? I couldn't find anything more recent than this.

pooooooooke