Dragon's tooth not losing durability from kill ability (not a bug)

[pjoe0211]

i really feel like they should find a way to make a weapon lose durability when it attacks to enter combat

[5tumbl]

Well ... "Attack" and "enter combat" is not the same thing...

(Emore crossbow is "enter combat", and black garb the attacking ally dies before the hero can attack back)

And btw, this new interpretation of Dragon's Tooth is not consistent with e.g. Snow Sapphire... There the effect takesplace " on attack" but happens after the hit (but honestly do not change that, it would make this armor a pain to get rid of)

[pjoe0211]

Well ... "Attack" and "enter combat" is not the same thing...

(Emore crossbow is "enter combat", and black garb the attacking ally dies before the hero can attack back)

And btw, this new interpretation of Dragon's Tooth is not consistent with e.g. Snow Sapphire... There the effect takesplace " on attack" but happens after the hit (but honestly do not change that, it would make this armor a pain to get rid of)

+1

after thinking about this a little more, i dont see why the code doesnt just make gragon tooth do like 99 damage when attacking allies with cost 5 or more, what was the issue exactly?

[Airact]

+1

after thinking about this a little more, i dont see why the code doesnt just make gragon tooth do like 99 damage when attacking allies with cost 5 or more, what was the issue exactly?

I would say future design is the issue (indestructable things)

[Gondorian]

Well ... "Attack" and "enter combat" is not the same thing...

(Emore crossbow is "enter combat", and black garb the attacking ally dies before the hero can attack back)

And btw, this new interpretation of Dragon's Tooth is not consistent with e.g. Snow Sapphire... There the effect takesplace " on attack" but happens after the hit (but honestly do not change that, it would make this armor a pain to get rid of)

To clarify:

No one can enter combat until an attack happens, so the timing is actually:

1. X attacks Y (which triggers combat phase to start)
2. X and Y enter combat as part of step 1 of combat phase

Snow Sapphire does actually trigger at point 1, but being Frozen does not prevent you from finishing your attack once you have started it, so combat proceeds. Violet Thunderstorm also triggers at point 1, and if the damage from that is enough to kill the attacker then the combat will be aborted.

[Gondorian]

i really feel like they should find a way to make a weapon lose durability when it attacks to enter combat

The ability of Dragon's Tooth could be written on any card. It just happens to be written on a weapon. It is in no way tied to delivering of combat damage or using the durability of DT.

As I clarified above, the timing of it is on at the point of attack, which will trigger the start of the combat phase, so DT can't lose durability yet since that only happens when the attack value of it is used to attempt to deliver combat damage in a later part of the combat phase.

[5tumbl]

Thanks for the clarification.

But, I have to say, this:

(...) but being Frozen does not prevent you from finishing your attack once you have started it, so combat proceeds.

... just makes no sense at all.
And in any case, one could argue the same for DT, how does the opponent being dead prevent the wielder from finishing his attack ?

But ok, I understand that it can be scripted this way. It's just highly counter-intuitive.

With all my respect, I think you design guys should sometimes pay more attention to what's the most intuitive way to understand a card.
Because there are some cases like this where someone who doesn't know exactly the details of the game mechanics (i.e. me, and I suppose I'm not the only player in this situation) has just no way of guessing correctly what would happen. And that makes things frustrating.

Show ten gamers who don't know your game the cards for Dragon's Tooth and Snow Sapphire, and ask them what will happen... I'm pretty sure none will guess it correctly. Another example is Death Mage Taddeus vs Champion of Irum. I complained about it here some time ago, and got explained that it's a passive ability and so on. Even if I can understand that, I'm still convinced that something's wrong with this, as DMT is not supposed to be there yet at the very moment I summon it. Like a conceptual bug, even if not a programming bug.

Anyway, thanks, and good day !

[Gondorian]

Thanks for the clarification.

But, I have to say, this:



... just makes no sense at all.
And in any case, one could argue the same for DT, how does the opponent being dead prevent the wielder from finishing his attack ?

But ok, I understand that it can be scripted this way. It's just highly counter-intuitive.

With all my respect, I think you design guys should sometimes pay more attention to what's the most intuitive way to understand a card.
Because there are some cases like this where someone who doesn't know exactly the details of the game mechanics (i.e. me, and I suppose I'm not the only player in this situation) has just no way of guessing correctly what would happen. And that makes things frustrating.

Show ten gamers who don't know your game the cards for Dragon's Tooth and Snow Sapphire, and ask them what will happen... I'm pretty sure none will guess it correctly. Another example is Death Mage Taddeus vs Champion of Irum. I complained about it here some time ago, and got explained that it's a passive ability and so on. Even if I can understand that, I'm still convinced that something's wrong with this, as DMT is not supposed to be there yet at the very moment I summon it. Like a conceptual bug, even if not a programming bug.

Anyway, thanks, and good day !

I appreciate the honesty and the respect. Thanks for that. I'll do my best to pay attention to your points and see if we can arrive somewhere better than your post above ...

1. Snow Sapphire - Frozen says you can't attack. If you have already attacked, which triggers Snow Sapphire, then Snow Sapphire can't undo the very attack that triggered it. It's like trying to travel into your past and kill your old self. Not possible. I've tried!

2. Dragon's Tooth - The combat phase ends at whatever step it was on if either of those involved are killed or removed from play some other way. To refer back to Snow Sapphire compared to Dragon's Tooth - being Frozen doesn't remove you from play, but being killed does.

3. DMT and CoI - When you summon an ally, the first thing that happens is that it enters play. There is no gap between it leaving your hand and being on the board. Once it is there, things can trigger, such as its own on-summon ability. Champion of Irum's health/attack is being continuously modified based on what's on the board. Net result is that he's +1/+1 by the time he should take damage from DMT.

I hope that helped in some way.

[5tumbl]

Thanks for the answer !

I understood that, and your explanations follow a logical route that I can perfectly follow, but I think you are missing my point.

What I'm trying to say is that this logical route is purely programmatic and, in those cases, quite disconnected from the role-play (if I can call it that) context of the game. Somehow you're telling me not to understand "frozen" as "covered or rigid with ice" but as "cannot attack or defend".

Of course, what's written on the card has to be strictly followed... but the card itself is not explicit about whether or not being frozen allows to continue an attack that was started before being frozen. Without knowing in detail the mechanics of the game, a player will refer to its intuitive understanding of the contextualisation. And if I'm a fantasy warrior that gets magically frozen (rigid with ice) just after raising my sword at the evil necromancer, I probably won't expect too much that I'll be able to carry on with my decapitation attempts. And if that damned evil necromancer summons a slimy demon, I would expect the slimy demon to appear after the summoning is complete...

I feel that connection between the rules and the intuitive understanding of the contextualisation of those rules is quite important (I don't think anyone would play that game if Dragon's Tooth was just "Card 132" which happens to be in category D, with c=6, x=3, y=0, z=1 and special effect #145, even if it would have the exact same gameplay value)... and I'm just trying to say that these cases are examples where the connection seems deliberately ignored, and I don't understand why, and I think it's somehow a failure of the game. But then, that's just me i guess...

(btw, I found a new bug which i'll post in a new thread... very curious about learning why it's not a bug. EDIT after search.. apparently Disciple of Aldmor vs Loest is a real bug, yay me)

[Romantic Gunner]

Thanks for the answer !

I understood that, and your explanations follow a logical route that I can perfectly follow, but I think you are missing my point.

What I'm trying to say is that this logical route is purely programmatic and, in those cases, quite disconnected from the role-play (if I can call it that) context of the game. Somehow you're telling me not to understand "frozen" as "covered or rigid with ice" but as "cannot attack or defend".

Of course, what's written on the card has to be strictly followed... but the card itself is not explicit about whether or not being frozen allows to continue an attack that was started before being frozen. Without knowing in detail the mechanics of the game, a player will refer to its intuitive understanding of the contextualisation. And if I'm a fantasy warrior that gets magically frozen (rigid with ice) just after raising my sword at the evil necromancer, I probably won't expect too much that I'll be able to carry on with my decapitation attempts. And if that damned evil necromancer summons a slimy demon, I would expect the slimy demon to appear after the summoning is complete...

I feel that connection between the rules and the intuitive understanding of the contextualisation of those rules is quite important (I don't think anyone would play that game if Dragon's Tooth was just "Card 132" which happens to be in category D, with c=6, x=3, y=0, z=1 and special effect #145, even if it would have the exact same gameplay value)... and I'm just trying to say that these cases are examples where the connection seems deliberately ignored, and I don't understand why, and I think it's somehow a failure of the game. But then, that's just me i guess...

(btw, I found a new bug which i'll post in a new thread... very curious about learning why it's not a bug. EDIT after search.. apparently Disciple of Aldmor vs Loest is a real bug, yay me)

I just want to shake your hand