Forced target switching on furious casting

[Finalscene]

So in a game I just played, a librarian furious cast onto Burt jebson, who chose to use his ability "Slippery" to switch the target onto a nearby bayou gremlin. When the bayou gremlin died, we decided to play it that it went back to Burt for the final two attacks.  Furious casting says that it uses 3 attacks against 1 target but Slippery says that he may choose a friendly gremlin who is also a legal target to become the target instead. Did we play this correctly? Wording leads me to think that the other two attacks fail because the new target is no longer there, my opponent's argument was that slippery would need to trigger for each individual attack.

[EnternalVoid]

Sometimes it is best to quote the actual rules.

Furious Casting: This model may discard a card.  If it does, this model may make 3 Ca Attack Actions with an AP cost of 1 against a single target.

Slippery: When this model is targeted by an Attack Action, it may select a friendly model within 2" which is also a legal target to become the target instead. *Cut out rest*

 

Way I see it, your opponent was right.  Burt was always the target, just he can slippery each attack to a friendly model within 2" as long as they were a legal target *in Range and LOS is all that matters most of the time* but he would be doing it for each attack, not using slippery once against the (2) tactical action Furious Casting.  Slippery does not trigger till they are targeted by an attack action and Furious Casting is a Tactical action, just it generates attack actions.  So you would be using Slippery against each Ancient Word attack action.

 

[Dogmantra]

Well in the case of a charge, Burt can't shunt attacks away because Charge is a tactical that targets him, and the attacks must be against the target of the Charge (so any other targets are not legal targets).

Furious Casting is worded a bit differently, instead of specifying that it targets a model it just says you make 3 attacks "against a single target". It's an odd situation, because you could interpret that as "target a model with Furious Casting then make 3 attacks against it" but that requires a bit of a twisting of English in my opinion (even though it seems to be how it's played most commonly in my experience). I honestly feel like you could make a fairly good argument for each of the three outcomes:

• Burt cannot shunt any of the Furious attacks because he is the only legal target (since all the attacks have to be against the same target)
• Burt can shunt the first attack away and then all subsequent attacks have to be against the new target (because there is no restriction on what makes a legal target, but to fulfill furious casting all of the attacks have to be against a single target)
• Burt has to shunt individual attacks away, and he is always the first target.

[Dogmantra]

9 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

Is that the usual way to handle charges against Burt? I've just assumed he could shove the attack off to any target you could legally attack considering range and LoS even if it's on the charge.

I had been doing it the way you describe but it was pointed out to me at a tournament and I found the argument super convincing, so I will spread it far and wide.

It basically hinges on an interpretation of "legal target" to mean "target that the other player could usually choose in this situation", which I think is an extremely fair and reasonable interpretation (in fact I can't really think of a different one!). When you charge a model, your attacks are restricted to targeting the model you charged, which imo restricts what is and isn't a legal target.

[CapnBloodbeard]

My reading is that Furious Casting is an action that takes 3 x Attack Actions.  Normally when takings these sorts of actions, if you have to randomise for shooting into engagement, you'd randomise each time, wouldn't you?

 

Thus it follows that each attack is the attack action, not furious casting as a whole. 

Thus, they get deflected individually.  I don't think the Furious Casting requirement of being against a single target causes any problems for redirecting to a legal target

[Myyrä]

On 7/23/2017 at 1:47 AM, Dogmantra said:

Well in the case of a charge, Burt can't shunt attacks away because Charge is a tactical that targets him, and the attacks must be against the target of the Charge (so any other targets are not legal targets).

Furious Casting is worded a bit differently, instead of specifying that it targets a model it just says you make 3 attacks "against a single target". It's an odd situation, because you could interpret that as "target a model with Furious Casting then make 3 attacks against it" but that requires a bit of a twisting of English in my opinion (even though it seems to be how it's played most commonly in my experience). I honestly feel like you could make a fairly good argument for each of the three outcomes:

• Burt cannot shunt any of the Furious attacks because he is the only legal target (since all the attacks have to be against the same target)
• Burt can shunt the first attack away and then all subsequent attacks have to be against the new target (because there is no restriction on what makes a legal target, but to fulfill furious casting all of the attacks have to be against a single target)
• Burt has to shunt individual attacks away, and he is always the first target.

Furious Casting isn't really worded that differently. Doesn't seem like the two could possibly work differently. Below are the relevant parts quoted.

"This model then takes two Range Attack Actions against the target model. Each of these Actions must have an AP cost of 1."

"this model may make 3 Ca Attack Actions with an AP cost of 1 against a single target."

The meaning of the two is practically identical.
against the target model = against a single target
One just refers to a target model that has been mentioned before.

model then takes two ... Attack Actions = may make 3 ... Attack Actions
There is no difference between making and taking actions as far as I know, and the word may seems like an useless filler.

[TheUnseemlyOne]

This is going to depend on the wording of Slippery.  If he can use slippery to only shift an attack, Burt will still be targeted by the two remaining attacks.  If Slippery works whenever Burt is targeted by an enemy, you could use it on the Furious Casting itself.

[Ludvig]

I'd sqy you targeted Burt with the furious casting, he is then allowed to shove off attacks one by one as long as he has living friends.

@Dogmantra Is that the usual way to handle charges against Burt? I've just assumed he could shove the attack off to any target you could legally attack considering range and LoS even if it's on the charge.

[Ludvig]

Yeah, that is a very good point. Strange that I hadn't heard it earlier, maybe everyone else is already playing him like this.

[MrDeathTrout]

 

On 7/22/2017 at 3:47 PM, Dogmantra said:

Well in the case of a charge, Burt can't shunt attacks away because Charge is a tactical that targets him, and the attacks must be against the target of the Charge (so any other targets are not legal targets).

 

On 7/22/2017 at 10:00 PM, Dogmantra said:

I had been doing it the way you describe but it was pointed out to me at a tournament and I found the argument super convincing, so I will spread it far and wide.

It basically hinges on an interpretation of "legal target" to mean "target that the other player could usually choose in this situation", which I think is an extremely fair and reasonable interpretation (in fact I can't really think of a different one!). When you charge a model, your attacks are restricted to targeting the model you charged, which imo restricts what is and isn't a legal target.

 

I would have thought you would have considered a "legal target" of the attack as anyone the attack could legally hit on its own merits.  "In a vacuum" as it were, you'd ingore the fact that it came from a Charge, or a Furious Cast, etc.

I don't have a strong opinion this way.  I'm more interested that is is applied consistently.  Have you seen this interpretation wide spread, or just in you local area?  I don't remember it ever popping up in our area.

 

 

 

[Dogmantra]

1 hour ago, MrDeathTrout said:

I don't have a strong opinion this way.  I'm more interested that is is applied consistently.  Have you seen this interpretation wide spread, or just in you local area?  I don't remember it ever popping up in our area.

I'm the only really big Gremlin player in my local area and I'm the only person mean enough to field Burt often, but it came from a tournament player, and afaik they were a pretty regular tournament goer and they travelled to get to this event so I imagine it's decently widespread.

[MrDeathTrout]

On 7/22/2017 at 3:47 PM, Dogmantra said:

I honestly feel like you could make a fairly good argument for each of the three outcomes:

• Burt cannot shunt any of the Furious attacks because he is the only legal target (since all the attacks have to be against the same target)
• Burt can shunt the first attack away and then all subsequent attacks have to be against the new target (because there is no restriction on what makes a legal target, but to fulfill furious casting all of the attacks have to be against a single target)
• Burt has to shunt individual attacks away, and he is always the first target.

The wording on Furious Casting doesn't strongly support choosing a target (the way a charge does) or the single target being whoever the first model targeted is.

I support the former.  You declare a target for all three attacks the way you do with a Charge for a few reasons:

1) This seems to be the intent of the action, and if there isn't strong language in one direction or the other I lean towards what I think was intended.

2) I think this is the way most people think it should work, so working in this manner will cause less confusion and less surprises.

3) This interpretation needs to be considered in situations outside the scope of this question, and the "first model targeted" option could cause some odd situations.  For example a Librarian targets Model A who is engaged with Model B.  The first attack is randomized and targets Model B who is out of range and LoS (which is legal with the Randomization rules).  Now the Librarian has to target the out of Range and LoS model with their second two attacks, and cannot be taken.  I don't think that is intended by the designers.

 

Seems like this thread has morphed into.  Two questions:

1) What is considered a Legal Target?  

2) When/how is the "single target" for Furious Casting (and like abilities) determined.

 

[santaclaws01]

6 hours ago, MrDeathTrout said:

 

1) What is considered a Legal Target?  

2) When/how is the "single target" for Furious Casting (and like abilities) determined.

 

1) We know what is considered a legal target. Does it meet all the targeting restrictions? In the case of just a normal attack being used during furious casting is it in range, in LoS, and against the same target. If your answer was yes to all 3 then it is a legal target. If one of those is at least one of those no then it is not a legal target.

2) This is really what matters here. If it's determined as part of the Furious Casting action then Burt can not slippery it, because Burt would be the only legal target. If it is determined by who the first model being targeted by the first attack is then Burt can slippery the first attack off, and then the next 2 attacks have to be against that model. The only times the attack can't be against the same target are for abilities that shunt off the attack regardless of if the new target is legal or not and for randomization, because randomizing doesn't care if the new target is legal or not.

[Ludvig]

Charge makes you name a target at the targeting of the tactical. Furious casting doesn't have you name a target of that tactical action so it seems to me that the target is determined by what the first attack targets making slippery able to pass all three attacks to someone else.