Angelica, Doves and Not a Bomb

[LeperColony]

If you center Angelica's shockwave on a dove, and so therefore do not drop a shockwave marker, are you allowed to place a scheme marker in base with the dove with the Not a Bomb trigger?  Or do you forfeit the scheme marker because no shockwave marker was dropped?

[Jesy Blue]

I would say yes; you treat the Dove as a dropped Shockwave marker.

Reading it any other way would also forbid the Cataclysm trigger when targeting Doves, and that would all seem way too hampering to just make giving Distracted easier.

[Adran]

I would say no on a first reading. The shockwave is centred on the dove, but that doesn't make it a shockwave marker. Plus there are no rules about what happens when you remove the dove. If you want the trigger for the scheme marker there is no advantage to using a dove. The trigger removes the marker before it causes any duels. 

I would say that the cataclysim trigger works fine, you use 1 dove instead of a shockwave, and then place an additional shockwave marker. 

[LeperColony]

8 minutes ago, Adran said:

I would say that the cataclysim trigger works fine, you use 1 dove instead of a shockwave, and then place an additional shockwave marker. 

This isn't meant to signify that I disagree with your Not a Bomb reading, but I would point out that Cataclysm does say drop "another" shockwave marker.  If you never drop a first, you can't then drop "another."

[Adran]

24 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

This isn't meant to signify that I disagree with your Not a Bomb reading, but I would point out that Cataclysm does say drop "another" shockwave marker.  If you never drop a first, you can't then drop "another."

You could choose to replace the additional marker with a dove instead of the first marker. 

[LeperColony]

25 minutes ago, Adran said:

You could choose to replace the additional marker with a dove instead of the first marker. 

Functionally, since the shockwaves are identical and both have to be placed before resolving the action, the effect is the same whether the first or second is the dove.  But just from a mechanical standpoint, this interpretation relies on a precise order of operations I'm not at all sure was intended.

[Adran]

You were the one questioning the use of another if there wasn't a first, I just showed how it can work even if it was that precise in wording. 

[LeperColony]

1 minute ago, Adran said:

You were the one questioning the use of another if there wasn't a first, I just showed how it can work even if it was that precise in wording. 

No, you don't understand.  It's not that I'm saying you're wrong.  You're not wrong. 

I'm saying I'm not convinced the rules are written that precisely.  Or, rather, that intentionally.  

Personally, I don't know how this works.  That's why I asked.  But I don't think the ability and trigger were written with such precision that we can necessarily say that because Not a Bomb mentions "drop a shockwave marker" it excludes doves, and I don't think the use of Cataclysm relies on your opponent knowing the dove-centered marker has to be the second one.

Put another way, would you forbid your opponent a second shockwave maker if they placed the first using the dove?

[Adran]

56 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

 

Put another way, would you forbid your opponent a second shockwave maker if they placed the first using the dove?

No I wouldn't, because as you say it doesn't matter. 

I don't know how to resolve not a bomb if you centered it on a dove, and I'm not sure why you would want to center it on a dove when you could do so on a marker you have placed where the dove is. 

In normal circumstances not a bomb prevents the shock wave pulse from happening. 

[Mycellanious]

54 minutes ago, Adran said:

 

In normal circumstances not a bomb prevents the shock wave pulse from happening. 

Why?

[Adran]

2 minutes ago, Mycellanious said:

Why?

It happens when you place the marker and removes the marker, so you don't get to do the pulse ( which also removes the marker so it must happen before then). 

[LeperColony]

Two other models in the game have this trigger, but only Angelica has the ability to center her shockwave on a model instead for a special effect.  We know triggers are written for consistency between models, which seems like another point in favor of the idea that the wording of Not a Bomb wasn't specifically meant to prevent a scheme marker in Angelica's case.  

However, it doesn't establish that you get the scheme marker either, as neither of the other two models with this action would.

[Adran]

I'm still happy with the requirement to "choose 1 dropped shockwave marker" to require a dropped shockwave marker. I'm happy that after dropping shockwave markers is a time point that you still pass if you choose to use a dove instead.

Looking at the timing for this, things are a little more complicated than I thought, as you have to drop your initial shockwave marker before you flip the duel. (which makers the whole timing thing look very complicated, and I can now see a reason why you might select a dove and then want to drop a scheme marker).

Also, I had wrongly assumed that the dove needed to be in line of sight of the acting model, but it does appear that this is not stated anywhere.

But I still have no idea about how to "remove the marker that the dove is/isn't" so to convince me the trigger can work I would like it all explained, and not trying to bypass the targeting requirements of the trigger.

[LeperColony]

12 hours ago, Adran said:

But I still have no idea about how to "remove the marker that the dove is/isn't" so to convince me the trigger can work I would like it all explained, and not trying to bypass the targeting requirements of the trigger.

I can't claim to know the answer either.  

But for me, it comes down to what the developers intended for these center-on-model-shockwaves.  Did they intend the model to essentially substitute for the shockwave marker?  In that case, I do think you should get the scheme marker.

Or, did they mean the fact that it's a model and not a marker to be particularly significant.  In that case, the model isn't meant to be a temporary shockwave marker, so we shouldn't read the model as a stand in for the shockwave marker in regards to other effects.

[Adran]

13 hours ago, LeperColony said:

I can't claim to know the answer either.  

But for me, it comes down to what the developers intended for these center-on-model-shockwaves.  Did they intend the model to essentially substitute for the shockwave marker?  In that case, I do think you should get the scheme marker.

Or, did they mean the fact that it's a model and not a marker to be particularly significant.  In that case, the model isn't meant to be a temporary shockwave marker, so we shouldn't read the model as a stand in for the shockwave marker in regards to other effects.

I don't know what the developers meant. I try and base my answers on what they have written in the rules (although my views are probably also changed by what the rules used to do giving me a default place to start from) because that is all most people have. For intent you can try applying the 2 views and see which one makes the most sense. Its not always going to be true, but if 1 way makes the issue seem stupidly good or bad, then its probably not that way.

In a standard shockwave the marker is used to generate the pulse. That is all, after it has done that it gets removed.

Angelica tells us that instead of dropping a shockwave marker, the pulse is centered on a dove in range. This changes the TN to resist, but there appear to be no other changes.

Not a bomb tells us to drop a scheme marker in base contact with a shockwave marker and then remove the shockwave marker.

Nothing tells us that the model counts as a shockwave marker.

Arson, an action that has shockwaves centered on scheme markers rather than dropping Shockwave markers tells us that we have to remove the scheme marker at the end of the attack as a separate step. It implies that we aren't treating the alternative target as a shockwave marker because we don't follow the shockwave rules to remove it. Freeze over also centers the action on a marker, this time an Ice pillar, and the action does not tell us to remove the marker at the end, so I leave the pillar on the table when I finish the action.

From what they have written the second interpretation is most consistent. If they do intend the first option then they probably need to change the rules, because this, at the moment, would result in them removing the model at the end of the shockwave action. To try and make the first option work only part of the time you would need some rules to tell us when it should count as a shockwave and when it shouldn't, which we don't have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Maniacal_cackle]

One thing that seems to clear it up quite a bit is that the pulsewave doesn't happen if you use the 'Not a Bomb' trigger as Adran says above (and also kind of given by the name of the trigger...)

The only reason to centre it on a dove is to buff the shockwave. So mechanically there's no real payoff for centring the shockwave on the dove and then not having it explode.

So I'd lean towards no, you can't have it on the dove and drop a scheme marker.

[LeperColony]

2 hours ago, Adran said:

Arson, an action that has shockwaves centered on scheme markers rather than dropping Shockwave markers tells us that we have to remove the scheme marker at the end of the attack as a separate step

Arson is not analogous.  Angelica substitutes for the marker as a cost/special requirement or effect.    

In Arson, the scheme marker removal is part of the attack's base effect, and in fact is often one of the points to the attack.  Removing enemy scheme markers.  

So I don't think you can read the abilities as similar and gleam intent from them.

[Adran]

11 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

Arson is not analogous.  Angelica substitutes for the marker as a cost/special requirement or effect.    

In Arson, the scheme marker removal is part of the attack's base effect, and in fact is often one of the points to the attack.  Removing enemy scheme markers.  

So I don't think you can read the abilities as similar and gleam intent from them.

I would have said the difference was Angelica is a may, whilst the Arson is a must, but they are both subsitiuting the marker in the special effects point.

They both can replace the shockwave marker with something else to do the pulse.

Since my point was that the Arson action specifies as part of the action that it removes the marker, it supports my view that the intent is not to just replace all instance of Shockwave marker with Target (or dove since that's never actually targeted), because if you did, the action removes the scheme marker/model by default at the time it removes the shockwave marker.

Should you ever see an arson model with the not a bomb trigger, my view is that the trigger could never work, because you never have a shockwave marker to put a scheme marker next to.