Hi All,

As threatened last week, this week’s column involves an assortment of questions I hastily scrawled on various scraps of paper during the last three major events I judged: PC NY, $10K Manila, and $10K Sydney. I’ve loosely grouped the questions by topic rather than event. It is left as an exercise for the reader to figure out which questions came from which tournament! Without further ado:

My opponent resolves Savage Beatdown, then plays Overload targeting an attacker I control. Can I respond by playing, say, Flame Trap to stun the defender, thereby removing the attacker characteristic from the attacker and in turn removing the Beatdown bonus and negating the Overload?

A number of today’s questions are about the recently departed Overload, but I don’t think that diminishes their educational relevance. And there’s quite a bit of education to be had with this first one, which I’ve encountered a number of times in a number of different guises.

The answer is no because the question is based on a couple of flawed assumptions, which we’ll go through one by one.

First, stunning an attacker or defender or otherwise removing its attacker/defender characteristic has no immediate impact on the characteristics of any other characters. If the Flame Trap resolves and stuns the defender, the attacker(s) will keep the attacker characteristic. It’s not until both players pass on an empty chain during an attack substep that the attack concludes and any remaining attacker/defender characteristics are removed from participants.

Second, once an effect like Savage Beatdown’s resolves, the target character keeps the bonus for the duration of the modifier, whether or not it still meets the targeting criteria. In other words, the target has to be an attacker when playing and resolving the effect, but will then keep the +5 ATK until attack conclusion even if it is no longer an attacker. Note that the story would be different if an effect said “target character gets +5 ATK while attacking this attack.”

Applying these concepts to the question, Flame Trap resolves and stuns the defender, but the attacker(s) keep the attacker characteristic until attack conclusion. In any case, Overload was never going to be negated because the attacking character keeps the +5 ATK from Savage Beatdown until attack conclusion, even if it stops being an attacker.

If I boost Ch’p and then he becomes stunned the same turn, do my attackers and defenders continue to get the DEF bonus until the end of the turn? Similarly, on the turn I boost Owlman, does my opponent lose the additional endurance even while Owlman is stunned?

The answer is no to both. Prior to Marvel Knights, all boost powers triggered when their source character came into play. If the resulting triggered effect created a continuous modifier (like Tim Drake ◊ Robin, Young Detective’s), that modifier would persist even if their source became stunned (just like any other continuous modifier from an effect).

However, starting with two characters in Marvel Knights (Dr. Strange and Natasha Romanoff ◊ Black Widow) and continuing with several more in Green Lantern, boost powers no longer necessarily trigger when their source comes into play. Some (like Ch’p’s) are continuous powers and don’t trigger at all. Others (like Owlman’s) are triggered powers that trigger on something other than their source coming into play. Regardless of what sort of power they are, they are only active during the turn their source was boosted and only while their source is face-up in play.

So, just to close the loop on this answer, if Tim Drake ◊ Robin, Young Detective read “Boost 2: Teen Titans characters you control cannot be stunned while attacking,” his boost modifier would stop working as soon as he became stunned.

Can I KO any equipment attached to Thing, Ben Grimm at any time?

That’s correct. Even if there are no other characters in play, you can always target Ben with his own power. If you’d like to know more about why (and are the kind of person who really enjoys reading the CRD), then the next paragraph is for you!

A look at the card as originally printed shows that this wasn’t always the case. His text was changed because it clashed with the rules for playing an effect, which demand that targets be chosen before costs are paid. The original wording required you to choose a target with cost less than . . . an equipment you hadn’t yet nominated. See the problem? You couldn’t choose the target without foreknowledge of the equipment to be KO’d as a cost. The new wording allows you to target any character before nominating the equipment.

If I recruit an equipment card but my opponent Overloads the target in response, do I still draw a card from Antarctic Research Base?

Yes you do, as long as you control a Fantastic Four character when ARB’s triggered effect resolves.

An equipment card becomes recruited once it has been announced with a legal target and its costs have been paid. ARB’s triggered effect will actually be added to the chain on top of the recruit effect before you get priority. As a result, ARB’s triggered effect will resolve before the recruit effect, even if the recruit effect is negated.

Say I recruit Flamethrower targeting She-Thing. While Flamethrower is on the chain, my opponent targets She-Thing with Overload. Can I use Mr. Fantastic, Stretch to transfer a Personal Force Field from Stretch to She-Thing, negate the Overload, and then transfer the Force Field back to Stretch before the Flamethrower resolves?

Excellent play. She-Thing is unequipped while the Flamethrower is on the chain. The Overload effect will be negated when it tries to resolve targeting a character equipped with Personal Force Field. And Flamethrower’s recruit effect only checks that its target is unequipped on announcement and resolution, not in between.

So the sequence goes: pay 2 endurance to target Personal Force Field, successive passes, transfer Personal Force Field to She-Thing on resolution, successive passes, Overload is negated, pay 2 endurance to target Personal Force Field, successive passes, transfer Personal Force Field to Stretch on resolution, successive passes, Flamethrower resolves.

I control Pier 4. Can I play Mr. Fantastic, Stretch’s effect in response to itself to transfer two different equipments to the same unequipped Fantastic Four character?

No. Although Stretch’s effect doesn’t target the destination character, it does specify that that character must be unequipped on resolution.

So, after successive passes, one of the effects will resolve and transfer its target equipment to the unequipped F4 character. After further successive passes, the other effect will resolve, but you won’t be able to transfer its target equipment to the now-equipped character. If you control one or more unequipped F4 characters, you must choose one of them to be the recipient. Otherwise, the effect does nothing.

If, by some miracle, I control five ready characters as I enter my attack step and my opponent’s visible area is vacant, can I team attack directly with all five characters and then play Advance Recon to gain much endurance?

Yep, that works.

There still seems to be some lingering doubt that direct team attacks cause breakthrough, probably because many players are taught that “team attacks can’t cause breakthrough” rather than “team attacks attacking a character can’t cause breakthrough” when they first learn the game.

Just to be clear, direct team attacks can (and generally do) cause breakthrough, so the above sequence of play is fine.

Can I exhaust an opponent’s character by boosting Vivisector, Lunatic Lycanthrope if Lacuna is the only other character I control?

Yes. When a character comes into play, relevant continuous modifiers (like Lacuna’s) interact with that character before any come-into-play triggers fire. So Lacuna will have the X-Statix affiliation by the time Vivisector’s triggered power checks.

Zeitgeist is the only character I control. During the combat phase I activate him, targeting a Spider-Friends character. My opponent plays Nice Try! in response. Zeitgeist keeps his cosmic counter, right?

Right. Nice Try! negates the entire payment effect, including the removal of Zeitgeist’s cosmic counter.

In my opponent’s recruit step, he exhausts Azrael ◊ Batman to play Bat-Signal, and I allow it to resolve. If he chooses Superman, Big Blue Boy Scout, is there any window in which I can remove Azrael from play before he recruits Superman?

If Bat-Signal was the only effect on the chain, then there’s no window. Your opponent gets priority after resolving Bat-Signal and can immediately recruit Superman. By the time you get priority, the recruit effect is already on the chain, having satisfied the “Bat-Loyalty” requirement.

If, however, there are one or more effects left on the chain after Bat-Signal resolves, then you will get priority before your opponent can recruit Superman (because he can only recruit on an empty chain).

Can I play Signal Flare with no deck?

Sure! It will resolve and do nothing.

If I end the combat phase with -5 endurance and a face-up Ganthet, do I gain 6 endurance before I lose the game?

That’s correct. I included this last one just to throw a link to my introductory column, which I like to do from time to time for new readers. It answers many FAQs about the game, including this one.

Back to you fine folk next week. The competition is already heating up for the next feature question. If you’d like to join the fray, please send your Vs. rules question (and mailing address!) to vsrules@gmail.com.