Essay:Picture This! — Resolving Abilities in KeyForge
Overview
One could argue that one of the most fundamental things that influence games of KeyForge are card abilities. They "do stuff!" after all, and doing stuff is fun! Thankfully, we have lots of resources to help guide us in how and when these abilities resolve. As many know, the timing chart in the Master Rulebook is a go-to reference, and US premier judge and my Bad Penny Press colleague blinkingline has made countless contributions to expanding on this with his framework of timing windows, and abilities pending resolution.
However, one thing I've felt a bit lacking in the Master Rulebook is a clear-term outline as to what causes an ability to be eligible to resolve. That typically doesn't need scrutiny too often, so this has mostly gone unnoticed or addressed on a case-by-case basis through FAQs. However, with more recent sets such as Prophetic Visions, I've observed this question come up a lot. Two great examples of questions (both at which point have been raised by the beloved Emperor Riku) are:
- If I play Orator Hissaro between two non-Saurian creatures, could I choose to resolve Hissaro's Play: ability first to make his neighbors belong to Saurian so I can avoid fulfilling my opponent's Tails, You Lose prophecy?
- If I reap with my Aerial Pedlar to take control of my opponent's C.Æ.N.D.L.E. Unit, will I be able to draw a card after Aerial Pedlar is given to my opponent?
My goals for this essay are to:
- Outline the "Snapshot Method" framework I like to use for figuring these things out, if it helps anybody!
- Make small recommendations to Ghost Galaxy on what can be done in clarify this for the future.
- Have some fun diving into the nitty gritty of KeyForge rules, for those who enjoy that sort of thing!
Hopefully this goes without saying, but this essay is just commentary and should not be taken as official rulings. While I do believe this is largely support by existing rulebook FAQs, you'll still want to defer to an event's judges and/or marshal for rulings for any given event.
Defining a Game Event
To start out, I think it's important to lay out a definition for a "game event", which is a term I'll return to quite a bit in this essay:
Game Event: Any in-game event that occurs which results in a game state change.
Sounds pretty simple, right? And by and large, it is! In it's purest form, it's something that happened. A creature reaping, a player forging a key, a creature capturing Æmber. Often times these are verb-based events that do something (although, other examples exist too). Game events happen all the time, whether they are:
- Voluntary / player-driven:
- At a point of game state rest, a player chooses to use a creature to fight
- At a point of game state rest, a player chooses to discard a card of the active house from their hand.
- Or involuntary / game-driven:
- Resolving an ability causing a creature to capture 1 Æmber.
- Forging a key as part a player's "forge a key" step.
- Reaching the "end of turn" ability window in the turn sequence.
With that understanding in mind, we can bridge how active abilities (ones that are on cards in play or otherwise can interact with the game state) can reference game events that occur. For example, abilities that resolve "after a creature reaps" are effectively waiting for that game event — a creature reaping — to happen. When it does, this is when it's eligible to resolve, and a resolution window is opened up immediately after for that and any other abilities that became eligible at that same time.
Many bold-faced abilities also do the same thing in referencing a game event through shortcutting. Here's a small sampling of that:
| Bold-Faced Header | Game Event Reference |
|---|---|
| Play: | After this card is played |
| After Fight: | After this creature fights (and the fight occurs) |
| After Reap: | After this creature is used to reap |
| Destroyed: | After this card is tagged for destruction |
A common thread you might be noticing is that abilities many times use the "after [game event]" formatting. This further demonstrates the relationship between game event, and ability window. I'd like to paraphrase a mantra from blinkingline that has stuck with me deeply in our conversations, which is, very simply:
GAME EVENT OCCURS → ABILITY WINDOW OPENS
Abilities (ones that are in-play or otherwise active), are constantly waiting for a particular game event to occur, and when they do, they are queued up for pending resolution.
"The Snapshot Method" (Game Event Properties)
Here's the meat and potatoes of the topic: In addition to game events occurring outright, game events occur with any infinite number of properties that define them. I'll use brackets below to demonstrate those properties, around the context of game events of a card being played.
- After [a creature] is played,
- After [your opponent] plays [a creature],
- After [your opponent] plays [a creature] [on their right flank],
- After [your opponent] plays [a non-Logos] [creature] [on their right flank],
- After [your opponent] plays [a non-Logos] [creature] [on their right flank] [adjacent to a creature of the same house] [while you are at happy hour] [drinking $3 beers] [on a Friday afternoon],
I joke, fear not! nobody needs to go all "Doctor Strange" and consider all possible permutations in every possible reality. You only really need to worry about the ones in which abilities care about, and typically each ability doesn't care for more than a few at a time. However, those properties of the game state exist, and abilities do typically care about some of them.
What I believe multiple FAQs in the Master Rulebook teach us, as well as common understanding of several game interactions, is that whenever a game event occurs, there is a snapshot of all of the properties that define it as it occurred. This is a framework I like to call The Snapshot Method. Abilities will reference this snapshot when determining if they are eligible to resolve or not. I use the term snapshot because, even if the game state changes from abilities which resolve after the game event occurs, the snapshot of the game event is still kept unchanged for as long as the resolution window for that game event is kept open.
This is supported by a number of FAQs in the Master Rulebook:
- Little Niff / Ronnie Wristclocks: Even though Ronnie is no longer a neighbor of Little Niff because it was destroyed in the fight, it was when the game event snapshot occurred. A neighbor of Little Niff was used to fight. (Link to FAQ)
- Dexus / Code Monkey: Even though Code Monkey wound up on the right flank (after archiving its neighbors), it was not when the game event snapshot occurred. It was not played on the right flank. (Link to FAQ)
Additionally, here are some non-rulebook examples of what I would personally consider to be common understandings of certain scenarios:
- After you use a friendly Brobnar creature to fight, even if it's destroyed in the fight, a Brikk Nastee you control should still resolve to give you 1 Æmber. Even though that Brobnar creature is not friendly anymore (it's in the discard pile), it was when the game event occurred. A friendly Brobnar creature was used to fight.
- If you reap with Kangaphant while your opponent controls a Psionic Officer Lang. Even if you choose to resolve Kangaphant's self-granted ability first to destroy it, you would still have to resolve Lang and have your opponent archive the top card of their deck. An enemy creature was used to reap.
In short, this can all be summed up by asking: "Did the thing happen?"
Static Snapshots, Dynamic Abilities
Even though my proposed framework references a static or fixed snapshot, admittedly, not everything is static. It's a small curveball in all of this, but thankfully it is one that is pretty well and clearly established in the Master Rulebook. The curveball here being that ability sources are dynamic:
- Abilities can leave a resolution window, by virtue of the card providing the ability leaving play or otherwise losing that text.
- Abilities can enter a resolution window, by virtue of the card providing the ability entering play or otherwise gaining that text.
- Abilities can change written 'orientation', by virtue of the card providing the ability changing control.
All of these dynamically update, even mid-resolution window, thanks to the oft-cited Nexus / Spectral Tunneler FAQ. This dynamic nature may not be pertinent for every scenario, but does come up in some, including one of the ones we'll review below.
Applying the Snapshot Method
As we reach the end of this essay, hopefully things are starting to coalesce. So now, I'd like to apply all of this to both the established FAQs, as well as the questions that were asked at the started of this essay. To reiterate what this essay has explored: game events are underlined and key properties are [bolded and in brackets]
Little Niff / Ronnie Wristclocks (FAQ)
- GAME EVENT PROPERTIES: Little Niff resolves after [one of it's neighbors] is used to fight.
- SNAPSHOT: A neighbor of Little Niff (Ronnie Wristclock), was used to fight.
- Even if Ronnie Wristclock is destroyed in the fight and in the discard pile by the time Little Niff's ability would resolve, the game event still occurred as specified, and Little Niff resolves.
Dexus / Code Monkey (FAQ)
- GAME EVENT PROPERTIES: Dexus resolves after [your opponent] plays [a creature] [on their right flank]
- SNAPSHOT: Your opponent did not play Code Monkey on either flank.
- Even though resolving Code Monkey's Play: ability results in it being the only creature on the battleline (and thus on both flanks), the game event did not occur as specified, so Nexus does not resolve.
Orator Hissaro / Tails, You Lose
- GAME EVENT PROPERTIES: Tails, You Lose resolves when during their turn, [your opponent] plays [a creature] [adjacent to any creature of a different house]
- SNAPSHOT: Your opponent played Orator Hissaro adjacent to a creature of a different house.
- Even if Hissaro's Play: ability is resolved first to change its neighbor's houses, the specified game event still occurred as described, and Tails, You Lose should resolve and fulfill.
Aerial Pedlar / C.Æ.N.D.L.E. Unit
- GAME EVENT PROPERTIES: C.Æ.N.D.L.E. Unit's ability resolves when [an enemy creature] (relative to C.Æ.N.D.L.E. Unit's controller) is used to reap.
- SNAPSHOT: A creature controlled by player 1 (Aerial Pedlar) was used to reap.
- If the active player chooses to resolve Aerial Pedlar's ability first, C.Æ.N.D.L.E. Unit changes control. Since ability sources are dynamic, C.Æ.N.D.L.E. Unit now resolves if a creature controlled by Player 2 was used to reap. The game event did not occur as specified (a creature controlled by player 1 did), so C.Æ.N.D.L.E. Unit's ability should not resolve.
Qincan: My Arch Nemesis
Those who know me or have heard my ramblings on this topic on Discord, know my personal disdain for this part (and as a result, this particular denizen of the Crucible), however I still feel it's important it gets mentioned. There is one contradictory FAQ for Sci. Officer Qincan and Techivore Pulpate that goes against not only this framework, but also the existing FAQ's in the rulebook listed above. It reads:
-
Sci. Officer Quincan’s ability and Techivore Pulpate’s ability resolve in the same timing window; the active player can choose which to resolve first.
This doesn't adhere to the principle that the game event should be referenced as occurred, but rather, proposes an ability should reference the most current game state to determine if it should resolve. This FAQ ultimately states it doesn't care about "did the thing happen?" but rather "is the thing now true when you want to resolve it?". If it followed the former, even having Pulpate resolve first to remove other cards shouldn't matter, as it wasn't true that an active house that matched no cards in play was chosen. I would make the argument that this FAQ causes Qincan to behave more as if it were written this way instead:
After a player chooses an active house, if there there are no cards of that house in play, steal 1 Æmber.
Written that way, the game event that causes Qincan to resolve would simply be a player choosing an active house. Then, the active player could choose to resolve Qincan along with any other abilities that are eligible to resolve in the same window, and only once it resolves would the game state be checked to see if any cards of that house were in play.
Personally, I'd advocate for the removal of that specific FAQ as it notably contradicts existing FAQ. Another approach could be to errata Qincan to something like what's written above, but personally I'm less keen on an errata to a card introduced in Worlds Collide, when an FAQ removal can do the same thing. Either way, this has become more relevant in Prophetic Visions due to Outlook Not So Good which uses similar templating.
In Closing: Recommendations & Thanks!
I'd like to close out this essay by making two small suggestions to Ghost Galaxy:
- Consider removing the Qincan/Pulpate FAQ from the Master Rulebook, given that it is contradictory to other FAQs, is less annoying as an erratum, and shouldn't have major game repercussions.
- Consider adding to the Master Rulebook, language surrounding what causes an ability to resolve. This could be added to the Ability glossary entry, or a newly refined "Resolving Abilities" glossary, which could combine this concept, along with Resolve Abilities in the Order Written and Resolve As Much As You Can.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found this essay useful in one way or another!
This essay was written by Dead-Sync. You can find him on Bad Penny Press, KeyChain, and as one of the judges for NEKO! Don't hesitate to say hi on Discord!