Death Contract and Eternal Darkness

[Lakshman]

A local player has approached me recently with the following issue. We have Lynch with the Rising Sun and Hungering Darkness with Death Contract. Huggy gets reduced to 0 wounds by an enemy action. Both Death Contract and Eternal Darkness (from The Rising Sun upgrade) get triggered now (DC: When this model is killed or sacrificed bye enemy model's action or ability; ED: When a friendly Hungering Darkness model in play is killed). General timing states that other models resolve their abilities after acting model and defending model. Does that mean that Huggy gets to make the attacker discard 2 cards or be killed, then it is buried, and it can repeat it when it is unburied and reduced to 0 wounds again?

[WWHSD]

This was addressed in the 11/1/17 FAQ:

151. If Hungering Darkness has the Death Contract Upgrade and Lynch has the Rising Sun Upgrade, does
Death Contract come into effect before the Hungering Darkness is no longer killed from the Eternal
Darkness Ability?
No. As the Hungering Darkness is not killed, the Death Contract clause does not come into effect.

[solkan]

4 hours ago, Lakshman said:

A local player has approached me recently with the following issue. We have Lynch with the Rising Sun and Hungering Darkness with Death Contract. Huggy gets reduced to 0 wounds by an enemy action. Both Death Contract and Eternal Darkness (from The Rising Sun upgrade) get triggered now (DC: When this model is killed or sacrificed bye enemy model's action or ability; ED: When a friendly Hungering Darkness model in play is killed). General timing states that other models resolve their abilities after acting model and defending model. Does that mean that Huggy gets to make the attacker discard 2 cards or be killed, then it is buried, and it can repeat it when it is unburied and reduced to 0 wounds again?

That appears to the proper sequence if you just go by General Timing.

On the other hand, that sort of retroactive "Resolve some effects caused by C, then resolve an effect that prevents X" has been overruled in the past as unintended.  For instance Seamus's hat trick.

In other words, the effect preventing the model getting killed prevents the other effects triggered by the model being killed.  (Because this isn't Warmachine/Hordes.)

[Angelshard]

There is a debate about it in the TT forum from a schemes and stones podcast where they talked about this trick.

My impression was that it's legal, but highly fishy. Its obviously unintended, so I personally wouldn't do it and count it as an abuse, but raw it's legal.

[Durza]

It works, I don't have my books on me but it should be under timing, you resolve effects from the attacking and defending models, then from other models, and seeing as the immortality is on an upgrade from lynch it gets resolved after hidden contact. I'd  say its an oversight though, considering how janky the interaction is.