Secret HQ
art (c) Mike Trap
Well, the boneheads on the ruling committee did it again. Just when you think they couldn't get it any worse than the Family Home ruling, they gotta screw up attacks. The Ruling is below if you are not familiar with it.
What gripes me most about this ruling is changing the game to deal with a hypothetical rules loophole that no one ever used! If the only effected the two problem areas, I would have been okay with it, but nooooo.... they gotta screw up how the game is played. Note that this could have been solved by issuing a rules update for Tactics (must be used prior to end of combat with the target of the attack) and errata to Kinoshita House (same errata) and everything would have been fine.
Here's some of the stuff this brain-dead ruling effects --
Bite of the Jellyfish: Worried about your victim spending that power? Unless it's a Confucian in response to the Bite, tell them tough-titty. Under the Daedalus Rules, you could dump your entire hand when Bitten, under YotD, you could still play any Events or States, but now you can't play squat. I guess the rules team felt that Bite was underpowered.
Bull Market: This is the one that pisses me off the most. The Bite/Bull Market deck has been around since Limited, with the ultra-cool (if somewhat janky) Juicer variant from Flashpoint. Now the main trick of this deck is illegal -- thanks, idiots.
There are a bunch of other little effects (like the below mentioned sacrifice of a character getting zapped by Avenging Thunder) that are going to keep cropping up that are going to be really annoying. Doing this stuff is what makes Shadowfist a cool and intricate game, and this ruling is just dumbing down the game and reducing strategy.
Good one, guys.
RULING: CB Radio, Kinoshita House, and the End of the Attack
Under the Z-Man rules, the end of combat with the target of the attack has been handled differently than combat with an interceptor. In combat with an interceptor, there is a scene right after combat damage has been inflicted where effects that may be triggered by the combat damage are generated. However, this scene is still considered to be during combat, and so most voluntary effects are not permitted until the scene, and the combat, are complete.
However, voluntary effects were allowed in this scene if the combat was with the target of the attack. (Unless the combat had achieved a win.) This was to allow tricks that were legal under Daedelus rules, such as playing Bite of the Jellyfish and Bull Market when somebody burned a Site for victory.
This also allowed a number of other tricks that may or may not have been possible under Daedelus rules, such as Vivisecting a Character that was hit with Avenging Thunder or a Plasma Trooper that was doomed to die when its Fighting bonus wore off. These were not considered to be a problem.
More recently, players have found more serious abuses of this timing loophole. It was possible to attack twice with a Character by pulling it out of the attack with either Kinoshita House or CB Radio after it had inflicted its combat damage.
For this reason, and to make the timing of the end of combat more consistent, it is no longer permitted to generate voluntary effects after attackers enter combat with their targets. This restricted period lasts until the attack ends and attackers have gone home.
This does not prevent the use of effects that are permitted by something that happened in the combat, such as City Park, Baptism of Fire, and Bite of the Jellyfish. It also does not prevent the use of effects that specifically respond to an effect that was played, such as using Confucian Stability to cancel a Bite of the Jellyfish.
A Character with Ambush that is the subject of a CB Radio may still take advantage of the window of permission to use Tactics (and thus unturn to attack again) between Ambush damage and normal damage, even if the Character being attacked has been smoked by the Ambush damage. (Since Ambush does not work against Sites, you cannot attack two Sites in a turn by use of this trick.)
Julian Lighton, Shadowfist Rulings
rules@shadowfist.com
