MArcomage

Game 110011, Round 56 (59 on the drop-box)

I played Shadow Unicorn with Lord of Time in hand. As it was, Lord of Time was the Mage selected for discard. Even though it was discarded as part of the play of Shadow Unicorn, shouldn't the Legend keyword have triggered first? At the instant that I played the Legend, I did have a Rare card in hand, but the only change to my facilities was the +Magic from the card itself.

Is this intended functionality? If this is how it is meant to occur, and the discard is properly occurring before the keyword check, would that then mean that if there was no other Rare and the discarded Mage drew a Rare in its place, the keyword would take effect? If that case also doesn't grant the effect, it seems like a no-win situation.

Since keywords that count number of cards in hand count the card played as well, it was my expectation that Legend would work in the same way and look at the cards in hand before the played effects were carried out.

From faq Q12:
1 Card effect
2 Keyword effect
3 Normal drawing - new card is added in place of the played one (can be disabled or effected by card effect or keyword effect)

Apparently, gathering keyword tokens is counted as a card effect (not entirely illogical Id say.)

Progressor is right, it really works the way he described. Are you suggesting to let the keyword effect happen before the card effect? Since I don't want to implement exceptions, this would apply for all cards as well.

I think that keyword effect before the card effect is less confusing and I believe will not "destroy" any card/effect already in place

it's a good idea

Barbarian pops up into my mind. If the order is altered, the wall reduction of the keyword will be before the wall reduction / attack of the Barbarian it-self.
(And this thread already is about an example of it.)

I'm not sure what to ask for here. I don't believe that the keyword should occur before card effect. Otherwise, using Legend again as an example, playing Azure unicorn with a Rare on hand would give a 1/3 chance of increasing Magic and dealing greater damage as a result. That wouldn't be fair to the opponent who may have increased his wall or Magic in preparation for the card's play had he reason to expect it hit for 34 rather than 15. Likewise with keywords that change wall heights, I feel those should take effect after the card effects, not before.

I'm bothered by this one specific situation for which I started the thread, however. Whereas Azure unicorn could give a chance of something extra, this scenario with Shadow unicorn resulted in something that the player should have had being taken away. Looking over other keywords, I'm unsure if there is any other situation where the card effect could randomly negate a keyword effect. I was losing the match anyway, but I still felt cheated in that I made sure the conditions were met but was denied the reward.

From the implementation point of view, we could divide keywords to two groups - one happening before card effect and one after. I dislike this idea however, because that would make the system more difficult to understand for the player.

In my oppinion, just leave the system as it is, as later on, some new thread will emerge that a player expected something else and something else happened, and there's gonna be discussion in changing things back etc, etc. DPsycho was truly unlucky, but that's the game. I would suggest though, that perhaps if a Legend card is rare then allow the keyword effect to occur (i.e. if there is ANY rare in hand). That way the Shadow Unicorn would give the extra 30 gems and the +1 random facility

EDIT: or include any card played or discarded when calculating for the Legend keyword effect (or make it thus for all keywords if you want)

I could say that I changed my mind...
some effects could not be made prior to card effect at least with some actual cards (unless those cards change)
for instance cards with Flare attack and them asking for the burning cards :-(

maybe like it is now is not that confused (even with the keyword being the first part of the card ...)

I don't think Legend should occur before card effect for the reason I described above where it could potentially increase Magic and alter Azure unicorn's attack value.

For this one isolated quirk, perhaps Shadow Unicorn's effect coding can have a check invisibly added in to see whether the discarded Mage was Rare, whether there are no other Rares on hand, and simulate the Legend effect if both conditions are true. This would mean that the next time the Legend keyword effect is changed, this card would have to be manually updated as well. Admittedly, that could get sloppy, but altering the entire system as it exists now to correct one odd situation doesn't sound like a better option to me.

This is assuming that the Legend keyword check itself can't be altered to look at the discarded card. If that's possible, it would be ideal.