Hey, peeps! I've recently been thinking about the Beast class and White Elephan. I was thinking about that last question DKill asked about goblins and elephants in the "Ice Golems and Spectromancer" thread (
http://www.spectromancer.com/forum.cgi#pageid=4442). So I've been testing things!...
Here's some stuff I've found out about the White Elephant and how other cards react to it:
1; Goblin SaboteurWhen the Goblin Saboteur attacks "the opponent" when the opponent has a White Elephant in play the Saboteur does in fact remove a card from the Beast player's hand, even though the damage is dealt to the Elephant instead.
2; Master LichLike the Saboteur, Lich's ability triggers when it attacks the opponent, and just like the scenario above, Lich also triggers his ability when an Elephant is in play and he does increase his owner's Death power by two, even though the Elephant takes the damage instead of its owner.
3; Vampire MysticA Vampire Mystic's attack increases by two whenever the opponent receives damage; however, when the opponent is a Beast player with an Elephant, each time the Beast player receives damage the Elephant takes the damage instead and the Mystic does not receive its attack bonus.
4; JusticarA Justicar increases the damage dealt to the opponent by two whenever he is unopposed, this holds true even when the "the opponent" is an Elephant; when the Justicar is unopposed, all damage dealt to the Elephant is increased by two, just like if the opponent were being dealt the damage instead.
Justicar also says that his opposing creature receives double damage from all sources, but this doesn't work for an Elephant. When an Elephant is opposing a Justicar and the Elephant's owner receives damage, the damage that the Elephant receives is not doubled. The damage is doubled for the Elephant, just not the damage dealt to the Elephants owner. For example: An Elephant opposed by a Justicar will receive 18 damage from a Chain Lightning spell, but the 9 damage the spell dealt to the Elephant's owner remains only 9 and is not doubled for the Elephant again; so the Elephant receives 18+9 damage, not 18+18.
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The Vampires seem to contradict the expected reactions we see from Lich and Saboteur. It seems to me, based on observations, that rather than Lich and Saboteur having their abilities trigger when they "deal damage to the opponent", it is more like they trigger when they "attack an unblocked space". As for the Vampires... (
*pist!* now's the part where everyone starts debating!)
-Val
Thanx
Modified by Valentyne on 2014-09-11 15:45:24
Nice, that you always care for the deeper stuff, everybody is to lazy to find out or don´t want to spend some time for!
Surprising and interesting news you have found here!
Atm I like more to think about other philosophical stuff...but this here has the same weirdness lol...actually it begins already with Goblin Saboteur, cause the White Elephant takes the damage, so no card should be removed.
I think, we have to discuss first all questions of life with Forestry over a lot topics with different ratios to find out the deeper logic/secrets behind this all lol...
I sadly missed this topic until now, but it's very interesting.
I totally agree that the wording for Goblin Sabo and Lich should be changed to "attacks the opponent directly" instead of "deals damage to the opponent". The functionality is correct, but in this scenario the text is misleading.
With that, Vampire Mystic would be consistent, since the opponent doesn't actually take damage upon being attacked while White Elephant is in play.
Justiciar is a can of worms on its own. I forget how it interacts with the redirection from Cursed Unicorn, for example. The wording definitely needs to be changed if the Justiciar/White Elephant interaction is to be consistent with its text, but I'm not sure what the best way to do it would be.