Gluttony and Willie Interaction

[retnab]

Hey all, I was wondering how these two abilities would interact with each other.  Willie's (0) Set Charge says "...if any enemy model ends a move or a push within 8 of this model, this model may discard a friendly Scheme Marker within 3" of the enemy model to deal 2 damage..." and Gluttony's (1) A Rhythm To Those Who Hunger gives a Condition to an enemy that says "whenever a Scheme Marker is placed within 6" and LoS of this model, push this model into base contact with the Marker, then discard it and this model takes 2 damage."

My question: Can you do the 2 damage from Rhythm and then blow up the scheme marker with Set Charge with the same scheme marker for another 3, or would you have to choose between the two effects?

[solkan]

If you're asking whether you can discard the same scheme marker to use both effects, the answer is "No."

You choose one of the two effects to resolve, resolve it, and then when you go to resolve the other effect that scheme marker no longer exists.   You would need two different scheme markers because of the discard.

[solkan]

Oh, heck.  I just realized that I was completely misreading what was going on.  When I read the question, I thought they were both effects waiting on a push to happen, not one effect waiting on a scheme marker to get placed, and another which was waiting on a push to happen.

Set Charge:

Quote

Until the end of the Turn, if an enemy model ends a move or push within 8 of this model, this model may discard a friendly Scheme Marker within 3" of the enemy model to deal 2 damage to all models within 3 of the Scheme Marker.

The condition applied by Rhythm:

Quote

Mad With Hunger: Whenever a Scheme Marker is placed within 6" and LoS of this model, push this model into base contact with the Marker, then discard it and this model suffers 2 damage. End this Condition after this model removes 2 Markers in this way.

 

So Willie (or someone friendly to him) puts down a scheme marker.  An enemy model with Mad With Hunger on it (because your Gluttony put it there) is within 6" and LOS of that scheme marker, so Mad With Hunger gets resolved.  That causes a push which ends within 8 of Willie.

That causes the question:  Can you interrupt the resolution of Mad With Hunger, or is it necessary to wait until the Condition is done?

It feels messy, but there are precedents from other effects where the "then discard [the scheme marker]" would just get skipped, so that you'd then just suffer the two damage and get to count the scheme marker for the two required to remove the condition.

But I'm only about 80% sure on that, because I can't find some of the supporting evidence that I thought existed--some effects saying "discard target ___ marker to push into base contact before removing it". 

Edit:  So, because the timing and sequence of the damage inflicted could matter for schemes, the order of events is:

- Push happens

- Willy's effect reacts to the push, discards the marker, and the damage caused by Willy's effect is inflicted.  Willy gets credit because it's the result of an action, if this kills the model.

- The damage caused by condition happens (if this kills the model, then nobody counts as killing the model)

 

Edited May 23, 2016 by solkan
Added note on credit

[retnab]

Darn, oh well.  Can you split that into two parts though?  As in,

1) A scheme marker is placed, Rhythm forces the model to push towards it

2) Before the second portion of Rhythm is used, Set Charges blows up the scheme marker

3) No scheme marker is left, so the second portion of Rhythm does not occur.

Or do you go through all of Rhythm and Set Charges would have no effect?

[Bengt]

4 hours ago, solkan said:

But I'm only about 80% sure on that, because I can't find some of the supporting evidence that I thought existed--some effects saying "discard target ___ marker to push into base contact before removing it". 

McTavish | Gator Snack says pretty much that. Is that what you were looking for?

[solkan]

On 2016/5/22 at 0:55 AM, Bengt said:

McTavish | Gator Snack says pretty much that. Is that what you were looking for?

Yeah, that's the sort of thing I was looking for--an ability written such that the discard was clearly part of the push, either as a prepaid cost or something else.

 

[retnab]

Fantastic, so Willie can interrupt Mad With Hunger with his own Set Charges?

[godswearhats]

If asked at a tournament, I would rule that you can't get both effects. The scheme marker won't be there after Mad With Hunger resolves. Even if you interrupt it, it seems logical to think that the "discard it AND this model suffers two damage" are tightly coupled. It doesn't, for example, say "Discard the scheme marker. The model suffers two damage."

However, I do think it's pretty funny that something is so hungry that it eats a stick of a dynamite ...

[solkan]

13 hours ago, godswearhats said:

If asked at a tournament, I would rule that you can't get both effects. The scheme marker won't be there after Mad With Hunger resolves. Even if you interrupt it, it seems logical to think that the "discard it AND this model suffers two damage" are tightly coupled. It doesn't, for example, say "Discard the scheme marker. The model suffers two damage."

However, I do think it's pretty funny that something is so hungry that it eats a stick of a dynamite ...

The counter argument to your objection is that the discarding of the marker isn't specified as a cost or cause of the damage, so they're simply an effects of the condition just like the push is.  After all, if the model with the condition prevented the damage you'd still expect the marker to removed, wouldn't you?

There's a similar timing scenario concerning Mad with Hunger and attacks generated by Pounce.

Model A places a scheme marker in range of Model B that has Mad with Hunger on it.  Model B performs the push and ends the push in range of multiple models with Pounce.  The resulting attacks kill Model B.  At that point, even though someone might complain "I expect the model to stop doing anything", there's nothing in the rules to prevent finishing the resolution of Mad With Hunger--remove the scheme marker and then suffer two damage.  The two damage gets discarded due to the damage mechanic rules, but nothing prevents the removal of the marker.

 

[retnab]

True, but maybe I should explain specifically why Willie interrupting Mad With Hunger would be so important - first, the model would be damaged by an Action, not a Condition, important for kill schemes, and second because Mad With Hunger has that line at the end that says: "End this Condition after this model removes 2 Markers in this way."  So if Willie's Set Charges can blow up the Scheme Marker before Mad With Hunger can, the Mad With Hunger damage would not trigger (no Scheme Marker to discard at that step as I'm reading it) and you could force an enemy to move further around than the normal 2 pushes would allow.

So considering that, which of these sounds the most correct?

A Scheme Marker is placed within 8" of Willie and 6" of the Mad With Hunger model.  The Mad With Hunger model is pushed towards the Scheme Marker.  Willie's Set Charges action triggers and discards the Scheme Marker for the pulse damage from that ability.  Now, (A) Mad With Hunger now cannot also discard the Scheme Marker so the damage and the 2x limit on the ability does not occur, or (B) Mad With Hunger has already been activated and while no Scheme Marker is left the model still takes the Condition damage and the 2x limit on the ability does occur.

[godswearhats]

I'll bow to more experienced players :-)

I think this would be cool if the rules are such that you can get both effects. I just know that that it's ambiguous enough that I would rule in favor of it doing less damage rather than more in a tournament setting (i.e. where I only had 60 seconds to make a decision). My initial reaction was that the marker would need to be consumed to do the damage, but I can see that the rules don't explicitly state that.