Curse Of The Hanged Man Question

[nosferatubgc]

Good evening,

This question slightly relates to a previous question I asked about damaging buried models and there seems to be some ignoring of ability if part of effect cannot happen.  Curse of the Hanged Man:  At the start of this model's Activation, it may discard a card and suffer 2 irreducibly damage to discard this Upgrade.  My question is if the player has no hand by the time they activate this model can they still suffer the 2 irreducible damage to discard the Upgrade or since they have no hand they cannot get rid of the Upgrade?  Thank you for your time and patience.

[santaclaws01]

No, you can't choose to discard cards that you don't have. Similarly a model with 1 health or 2  health and doesn't have HtK can't suffer the 2 damage.

[Clement]

14 hours ago, santaclaws01 said:

No, you can't choose to discard cards that you don't have. Similarly a model with 1 health or 2  health and doesn't have HtK can't suffer the 2 damage.

Not disagreeing, but do you have a concrete rules reference?  The only one I can think of is in the "This or that" section on pdf page 33, and I worry that someone will pull the "Curse of the Hanged Man isn't a This or that choice, so those rules don't apply".  I mean it's *kind of* a This or that choice, since it's a "may", but I'm hoping for a more concrete reference point.

[solkan]

2 hours ago, Clement said:

Not disagreeing, but do you have a concrete rules reference?  The only one I can think of is in the "This or that" section on pdf page 33, and I worry that someone will pull the "Curse of the Hanged Man isn't a This or that choice, so those rules don't apply".  I mean it's *kind of* a This or that choice, since it's a "may", but I'm hoping for a more concrete reference point.

Here's what it boils down to.

The rule says

Quote

May [Do X] and [Do Y] to [Do Z]

If [Do X] is impossible, and you just ignore it, then you haven't satisfied any of specified requirements to [Do Z].  Ignoring the stuff in front of the "to" doesn't set anything in motion.  That's not a set of sequential effects.  The "may" is just setting the entire construct up as optional.

To switch to an even simpler rules construct, if you have a statement

Quote

[Do X] to [Do Z]

and [Do X] is impossible then nothing happens because that's not two effects specified in sequence.  That's specifying that [Do Z] happens if [Do X] happens.  Ignoring doesn't make it happen.