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Question about DOR-053 Tim Drake with DLS- Bart Allen
Topic Started: Aug 5 2012, 06:15 AM (281 Views)
JonDoe297
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Question
If I control DOR-053 Tim Drake ¤ Robin, Young Detective, DSM-137 Wally West ¤ Kid Flash, The Fastest Teen ALive and DLS-128 Bart Allen ¤ Kid Flash, Heir to the Mantle (with a cosmic counter) and my opponent control DJL-006 Dinah Laurel Lance ¤ Black Canary, "Pretty Bird".

I decided to Team attack with Bart Allen and Wally West against Black Canary. My opponent decides to stun Wally West since Bart Allen cannot be stun while attacking. Can I activate Robin's effect to change the target to stun Bart Allen instead? Or I cannnot do that because Bart Allen cannot be stun.
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captainspud
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Yes, you can use Tim Drake to redirect a combat resolution stun onto someone who can't be stunned, and they'll simply "absorb" it without being stunned.

The reason why this doesn't break the replacement modifier is... too complicated for me to explain at 3am.
Edited by captainspud, Aug 5 2012, 06:57 AM.
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JonDoe297
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thanks for the responses
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captainspud
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I've had some sleep since my last response, so I figured I should come back and explain my reasoning. The answer isn't actually that complicated in the end, but there's a MAJOR hiccup to getting to a functional ruling on this card if you actually try to work it out on your own. I shall explain why in a moment.

1) The primary reason this combo works is that UDE judges have ruled that it does (specifically, the ruled combo has always been 2-drop Tim and 4-drop Red Star, but it applies to any "can't be stunned while attacking" character). So, the rest is just figuring out why. :P

2) So, let's take a look at why this ruling is a bit hard to make (and no, it's not the normal reason rulings like this are hard). To begin, let's look at Tim's text:

Quote:
 
If a team attacker you control would become stunned, you may stun another team attacker you control instead.


This power creates what is called a "replacement modifier". Here are the rules on that:

Quote:
 
203.7 Replacement Costs

203.7a Some replacement modifiers are optional and produce replacement costs. These will be written as “If <event would occur>, instead, <a player> may <pay cost>.”


This seems straightforward enough-- Tim waits for a normal game process to occur-- the opponent choosing which team attacker to stun-- and substitutes his own power in its place at resolution time, stunning someone else. However, there's another element of 203.7 that seems to cause a problem when dealing with an unstunnable Red Star:

Quote:
 
203.7b These costs are optional to pay. If you choose not to pay or can’t pay them, the replacement does not occur, and subsequent “if you do” clauses won’t be satisfied.

Go read Tim's text and see if you can spot the problem.

...

...got it?

A replacement modifier doesn't work if you "can't pay it". So by Tim's wording above, you actually CANNOT MAKE THE REPLACEMENT with an unstunnable character, because stunning the character is listed as the replacement cost, and you simply can't do that ("can't be stunned" isn't optional, you can't even do it if you want to); and without stunning anyone, you aren't triggering Tim's power.

So, it would seem that this combo doesn't work, and that UDE's ruling is actually quite faulty.

And here's the fun part: that's 100% what happened. :D

Which is why they errataed Tim Drake. :)

They issued a ruling based on the printed game text, which is what everyone then used to play the card for literally YEARS. Then at some point, I guess someone went back and tried to work it out for themselves, and it appears they realized that, "Oh, crap-- that doesn't work how we said it does. Errr..."

So, Tim's text now has different wording; it's listed in the OCR, but not in the VSDB search engine, so anyone trying to sort this out without an updated card reference isn't going to be able to do it. Here's how he reads now:

Quote:
 
If a team attacker you control would become stunned, instead, you may choose another team attacker you control. If you do, stun the chosen character.


See the difference? Before, you actually had to stun a team attacker you control in order to fire the replacement modifier. In the new wording, the "cost" is simply choosing a character-- something you can do as long as you have at least one other team attacker. The text that stuns that character is now part of the resolution of the effect, so it now falls under the "do as much as you can" area of card resolution-- you try to stun whomever you chose, but it doesn't actually matter if you succeed. The game, somewhat unintuitively, treats the "benefit" as the cost, and the "unfortunate part" as the effect-- the opposite of how most cost/effect relationships work. You HAVE TO fire the part you want-- no choice in the matter, it MUST BE FIRED TO WORK-- and then maybe, if conditions align correctly, maaaaaaaaaybe we'll let you have the horrible stuff.

If you're a good boy, and eat all your candy first.

;)

So, in the end, was it necessary for me to write all of this? Absolutely not-- I could've resolved this in two sentences. But it made me laugh when I was doing the analysis myself, so I thought I'd share the joke with the class. :)
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bungo_underhill
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Awesome story Spud!

TL:DR

UDE loved Teen Titans and always ruled in there favour - check out similar errata on Beast Boy vs. other characters later printed with his ability...

(Animal Man, Shinobi Shaw)



Note that Tim's boost effect did get completely screwed over by Sinestro and other similar "revenge stun" effects...
Edited by bungo_underhill, Aug 7 2012, 02:43 PM.
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