Burrowed into the Spine

[James Dyson]

Hey all - another fun rules question.

Q.  An enemy gains a Parasite Token when facing Nexus, One of Many.  How much damage do they take from Burrowed into the Spine?

Is it:

A.  1 damage, as the first time they gain the parasite one of the BittS goes off and the other two don't because the first caused damage from the ability

B. X damage, where X is the number of Nexus, One of Many in play.  This is because BittS goes off when someone gains the parasite, so each of them sees 'no damage from this ability' and go into a queue

[muraki]

I would say A, because even if we're saying 'whenever a parasite hits it'll proc all 3 of the burrow effects' simultaneous effects still makes it so you determine which of the effects happens first, so whichever nexus doesnt go first will check the ability and say 'oh nope, already took damage'.

There is of course the other reading of 'if it went at 3 damage, the model would be hella broken, not that people particularly care about that read haha.

[santaclaws01]

1 hour ago, muraki said:

I would say A, because even if we're saying 'whenever a parasite hits it'll proc all 3 of the burrow effects' simultaneous effects still makes it so you determine which of the effects happens first, so whichever nexus doesnt go first will check the ability and say 'oh nope, already took damage'.

Problem with that is, the the effect isn't even generated until after you've checked if a model has been damaged by BItS, which means you haven't resolved any BItS yet so nothing has been damaged by BItS. You don't just look for any effect that can resolve, resolve it, and then start checking for another effect that can resolve. You check for any effects that resolve at any timing point, generate them, then determine the order in which the generated effects resolve.

Not to mention that BItS has the same problem We Are Legion has where it uses "this ability" which always means "This singular instance of this ability written down on this card" until enough people realize there was a mistake and the ability actually shouldn't work like that because it'd be broken.

 

And there's the question of, should this ability just be able to mulch through shielded?  Any interpretation of the ability that allows for multiple BItS off of the same parasite token is broken

[diki]

I think it's easy to argue it's B for Broken! 3 healing would also be pretty OP especially with We Are Legion! But hopefully people don't play it that way.

I think they should have made the whole effect a long range Aura! (I understand the aesthetic/fluff of hive mind whatever, but I think most things should generally require/reward good positional play)