Flaming Arrow on ally with Reinforced Armor[possible bug]

[ahmet476]

My opponent attached Reinforced Armor to a Jasmine. I played Flaming Arrow on it. She took only 1 damage from arrow's instant 2 damage. I compared texts of each card. It seemed to me Flaming Arrow's effect overrides Reinforced Armor. However, GuestofHonor said the mentioned armor ability should be something like Legion United's ability as Reinforced Armor is not an armor but a human ability - attachment. You can compare the two cards texts too.

At this point, I searched for Banebow's ability+Reinforced Armor as I remembered there was a bug reported about this. I saw BB's ability damage is reduced by Reinforced Armor and it is recorded as a bug. To my surprise BB's ability and Flaming Arrow has the same text. Thus, I think this should be a bug. Reinforced Armor shouldn't reduce Flaming Arrow's damage too.

[Icebear]

hmm, flaming arrow says: cannot be reduced by ALLY or ARMOR abilities.

but reinforced armor is an attachement, not an armor (despite the cards name the card type clearly states attachement) - as you already mentioned

so i would say no bug, as the flaming arrow text should be about card types, not card names.

but dunno the banbow issue in order to compare.

i personally would feel that bb should be reduced by reinforced armor

[ahmet476]

The only difference between Banebow's text and Flaming Arrow's text is "prevented" vs "reduced". Both say "can't be [past participle verb] by ally or armor abilities". If BB abd RA is considered as a bug, this should be too. Otherwise, they need to change one of those cards' text which is not possible. Or they need to get around it by a ruling. I'm not sure that can be done with current texts of said cards though.

[Seth]

If they both say "ally or armor abilities" then Reinforced Armor should clearly work on them. It's a bug for either one to bypass an attachment ability, because it is neither an armor nor an ally. It's really quite straightforward.

[ahmet476]

I didn't understand what you said in that post.

You mean they shouldn't bypass RA? Why?

They currently don't bypass RA and I think that's a bug.

[Seth]

Well, I imagine that the *intended* effect of both abilities was actually:

"Deal 2 damage to target ally. This damage may not be prevented."

Unfortunately what they *actually* wrote was:

"Deal 2 damage to target ally. Abilities from allies and abilities from armors cannot prevent this damage."

So in essence, when we have Legion United (an armor) that says to prevent the damage, these abilities punch right through. When we have Sandworm (an ally) that says to prevent the damage, it is also ignored. However, if I made this card:

Legion Divided
3cc
Neutral Ability - Support
Until the start of your next turn, allies you control take 2 less damage from abilities.

That card would prevent the damage, because Banebow and Flaming Arrow specifically name the 2 card types they ignore, and Ability isn't one of them. Reinforced Armor is an Ability card, not an Armor or Ally, and thus neither Banebow nor Flaming Arrow should be getting through it.

Again, I'm sure this isn't what the DT *intended* but it IS what they *actually wrote* so for the sake of rules sanity for the physical game, it needs to work as written.

[ahmet476]

I understand you now You're saying since changes to card text is not possible at this moment, they should stay as is and these are not to be considered as bug but I saw BB+RA reported as a bug.

[Gondorian]

Whoever reported Banebow + Reinforced Armor as a bug was wrong. RA should block it. That's how we designed it. (I'm pretty sure the "can't be reduced by armor or ally abilities" was my idea too!)

[Seth]

As a curious sidenote, what was the reasoning for that? It's always struck me as odd that the penetration wasn't just universal.

[Helio]

Whoever reported Banebow + Reinforced Armor as a bug was wrong. RA should block it. That's how we designed it. (I'm pretty sure the "can't be reduced by armor or ally abilities" was my idea too!)

Sure, this was planned all along... just like the Simpson's