Academic Zeal and enemy controlled actions

[Barmution]

Quote

Recruitment Effort: After this model kills an enemy model, it may discard this Upgrade to Summon a Transmortis Minion with Cost less than or equal to the enemy's Cost into base contact with the enemy model. Attach an Enrollment Upgrade to the Summoned model. The enemy model does not Drop Any markers when killed.

If a model with this upgrade is obey'ed or otherwise forced into taking an action under an opposing model's control (Brin's Misdirected Rage trigger, for instance), and that action kills an opposing model (ie. one in the obeyer's crew), could the obeyer use the effect on the upgrade? Since the effect occurs within the context of the action and not after resolving the action I'm leaning towards yes. Obey (and most other control effects) specifies that you cannot take an action that summons other models but this is an incidental effect of the upgrade, not the action.

Follow up question: Can you discard the upgrade to summon nothing if the killed model is of too low cost?

[Takibaki]

I think Maniacal_cackle is right and you are both on the right way.

PDF-Rulebook Page 26 states "Certain Actions and Abilities allow a player to control a model in an enemy´s Crew. When this happens, the controlling player makes all decisions for the model, including flipping cards, Cheating Fate, declaring Actions and so on."

Since you (user of the obey-effect) would be the controlling player, you would get to choose whether to discard the upgrade and therefore summon a model, or to leave the upgrade on the controlled model.

But in my opinion the choice must be made, because the Ability triggers/resolves after killing an enemy model.

 

Summoning in PDF-Rulebook Page 32 states "The Summoned model is considered a part of the Crew of the model that Summoned it and is treated as a normal model in the Crew for the rest of the game."

Another paragraph on Page 26 states: "Control changes who makes the decisions; it does not change the Crew to which the model belongs."

Therefore, if you summon a model using the mentioned process, the model is summoned into the crew of the model, that had the upgrade (i. e. your opponents model).

 

Just wanted to place the rulestext here, since i found Maniacal_cackles explanation very good and looked it up myself afterwards!

 

Best regards, Takibaki

[Adran]

4 hours ago, Barmution said:

Your last question is my follow up question from the original post (mine was poorly phrased), so I'm pretty curious myself

I don't think you can choose to discard the upgrade if there isn't a possible summons, although this gets into complicated tournament issues such as if you don't own the model is it a legal summons? This is differentt to you declaring a summons, and it failing due to no legal placement of the model (which I think would be allowed)

Declaring an attack with no valid target is allowed, and the rules go through and cover when this action fails. 

Whilst the rules don't seem to prevent obey and similar being used to create this summons, I think this is an unintended loophole, and I would imagine that the intent of obey (etc)  is that you can't summon from them (avoiding all these complications) and  I wouldn't be at all surprised for an FAQ to clarify that at all points under an obey (etc) you couldn't attach upgrades or summon. That said, currently rules don't prevent it. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

It isn't a may effect, so you definitely have to summon something if you discard it (which I believe you can do).

It presumably summons it under your opponents control though.

[Barmution]

28 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

It isn't a may effect, so you definitely have to summon something if you discard it (which I believe you can do).

It presumably summons it under your opponents control though.

I agree on both counts but wanted an outsiders' opinion on it. IMHO point 1 not entirely clear cut since I'm not sure that the effect text adheres to the cost/effect syntax of actions on cards and in that case his would be a case comparable to taking an attack action without a valid target, ie. you declare your use of the action but since there's no valid target (in this case Transmortis minion of low enough cost) the rest of the effect fails to resolve.

[Maniacal_cackle]

@Takibaki super thorough, thanks!

[Barmution]

Another variant: You obey a model with Academic Zeal to kill one of your own models (of at least 5 ss value), elect discard the upgrade to summon a Transmortis Minion but there's no room for the summoned model to place so the summon fails but the upgrade is discarded. Would that be a legal sequence of effects?

[Maniacal_cackle]

13 hours ago, Barmution said:

Another variant: You obey a model with Academic Zeal to kill one of your own models (of at least 5 ss value), elect discard the upgrade to summon a Transmortis Minion but there's no room for the summoned model to place so the summon fails but the upgrade is discarded. Would that be a legal sequence of effects?

I think it is ambiguous, but I would lean towards yes.

For that matter, if you killed something with cost 4 or less you could discard the card and then fail to summon anything?

[Barmution]

9 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I think it is ambiguous, but I would lean towards yes.

For that matter, if you killed something with cost 4 or less you could discard the card and then fail to summon anything?

Your last question is my follow up question from the original post (mine was poorly phrased), so I'm pretty curious myself