Rulings for 4 February 2000

destroy vs. remove

The whole Gaheris vs. destruction actions has nothing to do with whether being destroyed results in him not being in the battle any more. It's entirely a matter of stated versus secondary effects.

Flashback to Anvil of Despair, and the debut of Yogo Junzo's Army (known as the Shadowlands Horde these days). According to Stronghold text, a Junzo player can't take actions that cause another player an honor loss. Seems pretty straightforward, right? Well, a question soon arose: does this prevent them from killing dishonorable Personalities? The ruling, then as now, was that any honor loss that happened as a later side-effect of the action didn't count. I could still Kolat Assassin your dishonored Otaku Kamoko, because your resulting honor loss is not a direct, stated effect of Kolat Assassin.

This precedent was upheld by a similar ruling on Shashakar, in the same set. He can cancel any action that lowers a Naga Personality's Chi, yet he does not become legally able to cancel any action that destroys any Naga Personality while someone has the Ancient Spear of the Naga, even though destroying Naga Personalities reduces the Chi of the Spear and, thus, of the Naga holding it. Again, the result is not direct.

Someone's already mentioned Dave's old ruling on Deadly Ground vs. Torrential Rain.

Gaheris's ruling is not new and is not unusual. Yes, if you destroy him, he won't be in the battle anymore, but that doesn't matter. Only the stated effects of the action you want to use against him are important, not what else will occur as a result of those things.

Note that this doesn't address, one way or the other, the issue of whether destroying a card counts as removing it from a battle. That's a separate issue -- and, in Gaheris's case, also an irrelevant one.