No, because the arrow is just delineating which things are costs and which things are effects. See Skeletal Lord, where exhaust is a cost. Compare to Boot Camp, where the exhaust is an effect (the cost is simply casting the spell). Because boot camp does not have a cost of “exhaust” you can use it on something that is already exhausted.
I don’t think we can generalize about Drill Sergeant’s ability templating very much. The best we can do is to say that sometimes, costs that mean “Remove a rune from this card” are templated as “remove a rune”. This is the case for a bunch of other cards, like Grave Stormborne, who cannot remove an enemy Grave’s Sword Rune to pay for his max band ability.
There is no arrow “->” on boot camp. There is an “->” on Grave. The “->” on skeletal lord specifies other cards.
Each one of those fulfills “Unless specified otherwise ‘->’ means no other card can pay for your ability”
I think we can. I’ve looked at all the cards in the print & play pdf. It looks like every “->” either specifies another card type to shoulder the cost, or intends for that card to pay the cost in exhaust, money, or runes.
Alright. That’s true about the way costs are written in general, and the stuff to the left of an arrow is the only stuff in a card’s text box that is a cost. So I agree, even though I don’t think about it that way.
Say I have Skeletal Lord and mid level Garth Torken. If I sacrifice 5 skeletons,
- Do I get to draw 5 cards and play any card from my hand?
- Do I draw the cards before or after I play the card from my hand?
This is related to the above thread. Are costs performed by the card, or are they a requirement fulfilled, which makes it possible for two costs to be fulfilled at the same time?
You could exhaust all 5 skeletons for the Skeletal Lord ability and then sacrifice all 5 to draw 5 cards. But they are costs that must be fulfilled to receive the benefit. The benefits could not happens simultaneously, the abilities are handled one at a time.
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Oops, I misread the skeletal lord card, thought it said sacrifice. But yeah, if it were sacrifice, then sacrificing 5 wouldn’t trigger both abilities (unlike say, flagstone garrison’s and drill sergeant’s ability because those aren’t costs, but events)?
You have it correct. Events are usually referred to as triggers, in this forum anyway.
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Corpse catapult could trigger off the skeleton sacrifice cost of Garth ability, because that one is a triggered ability.
Question about the timing of teching and the 10 workers requirement. Normally we think of teching as done at the end of your turn, but in fact you don’t have to commit to it till the beginning of the next. I’m wondering how this interacts with it becoming optional when you have 10 workers. I.e., if you have 10 workers, and on your opponent’s turn they trash one of them so you have 9, does that mean you have to tech that turn or not? I would assume you would, since you don’t actually tech till the beginning of the next turn, but I’m wondering if there’s a ruling on this, since we often think of teching as occurring at the end of the previous turn, and if you think of it that way then you wouldn’t have to. Thank you!
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This is not a ruling by @sharpobject, but this exact topic was covered earlier in the thread. Quoted some of my earlier reasoning for you here.
This question kind of didn’t make sense to me, so I will try to get common ground on some stuff that comes before this question.
Abilities that say “X -> Y” are strictly among the set of actions you can take during your main phase. During your main phase when there are no triggered abilities waiting to happen, you can choose one of these actions (probably I will forget one though):
- Hire a worker
- Play a card from your hand
- Build a tech building or addon
- Sacrifice your addon
- Play a hero from your command zone
- Pay to level up a hero
- Attack with a unit or hero
- Use an ability of the form “X -> Y” on one of your cards
- Assign patrollers and end your main phase
So when you choose to use Skeletal Lord’s ability, you are choosing not to do any of the other options on that list for the moment. You can do other stuff later, once Skeletal Lord’s ability and any immediately-resulting other stuff is done happening.
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I think you have to add 2 cards in this situation.
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OK, thank you!
I think Sammy’s question arises from the idea that you could possibly cause the same X action to lead to multiple Y events if there were multiple cards with the same X. But this is false, because a simple example, like Gargoyle and Crypt Crawler, both have the same X, 1g, but obviously different Y. You would not expect paying 1g to activate both.
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Emphasis here on “one ability on one card” I guess >_>
Sorry, this was a mis-reading of Skeletal Lord’s ability. I thought it said “sacrifice 5 skeletons and play a card”, not “exhaust 5 skeletons and play a card”. Thus I thought there was overlap between Garth Torken’s ability to sacrifice a skeleton an draw a card, and Skeletal Lord’s ability to sacrifice 5 skeletons.
The question in this situation was
- “would both Skeletal Lord’s abilities be activated”
- “If so, In which order would they be activated”
e.g. Do I activate Garth’s ability 5 times, draw 5 cards, and then because 5 skeletons were sacrificed, activate Skeletal Lord’s (mis-read) ability.
There are two options based on the distinction between these scenarios when it comes to “[Cost] -> [Ability]”
- [Cost] is something performed by a card (exclusive) => “No, you don’t get to draw 5 cards if you pay for skeletal lord’s ability by sacrificing skeletons”
- [Cost] is something fulfilled by the player, and fulfillment triggers the ability (potentially multiple) => “Yes, if you pay for skeletal lord’s ability, you have fulfilled the requirement of Garth’s middle ability, and get to draw a card 5 times”
From what @zhavier was saying, the current standard is option 1.
This question is kind of like “Do I play Poisonblade Rogue, then play Skeleton Javelineer, then since I paid 3 gold I also get Jandra, The Negator for 0 additional gold?”
You choose the “X → Y” ability, then you do the X to pay for it, and that X is not redeemable for other “X ->Y” abilities.
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Cards in your hand don’t activate abilities on “trigger”, cards on the board do. Costs could be considered “triggers”, so it’s a distinction which could be made.