Note: the full announcement regarding the recent rule changes can be found here.

The recent REG update was supposed to include a change to how negate functions, to clear up a major misconception and simplify a number of interactions. However, while the proposed update fixed many interactions, it potentially broke others and may have left the situation even worse off and was put on hold.

Misconceptions

The major misconception about negate abilities, particularly broad negate abilities, is that they activate “in full” on any new targets, but that’s not how negate is defined. Negate has been defined as the following for almost a decade, if not longer:

• A negate ability interrupts all specified special abilities and prevents them from reactivating. A negate ability also prevents targeted special abilities from ever being able to activate.

There are further clarifications that the interrupt is instant and the prevent is ongoing, matching up with how those abilities work on their own. The interrupt activates “once”, when the ability activates, and isn’t ongoing and looking for new targets. This leads to situations where the prevent portion could be targeted without targeting the interrupt portion.

This definition of negate worked in a reasonable manner, more or less, when it was primarily limited to the battle phase. The usual way to target the prevent without targeting the interrupt involved using an “interrupt the battle” Enhancement, which interrupts a specific set of abilities that often doesn’t include the interrupt portion of a negate because it isn’t ongoing and isn’t on the last card played. This resulted in some quirks, of course, like The Rabshakeh (Kings) equipped with Two Thousand Horses (Kings) against something like Moses (Warriors) – The Rabshakeh made weapons “cannot be negated”, so Two Thousand Horses worked despite Moses’s negate, interrupting the prevent portion. This allowed whatever was played off Two Thousand Horses to activate as well, since the prevent was interrupted, opening the possibility of a battle winner like Captured by Assyria or Forgotten History to remove Moses before he could reactivate, but those weren’t the only options. A card like Confusion (Prophets) could activate during the interrupt, and when the prevent portion reactivated, there wasn’t a corresponding interrupt portion attempting to interrupt Confusion, so it was not negated and whatever was discarded remained discarded.

As the game expanded and more negate abilities were active outside of battle and lasted multiple phases, another method to target the prevent portion without targeting the interrupt portion arose. The interrupt portion is instant, and cannot be interrupted after the phase in which it activates. So any targeting of the negate ability in a later phase only targets the prevent portion, and the interrupt portion wouldn’t reactivate if the negate reactivated. In a slightly different scenario with the same result, an instant ability negated in one phase fizzles if the negate lasts until at least the end of that phase, so if the negate is negated through the end of the phase in which it activated, the interrupt portion fizzles and only the prevent portion would activate in a later phase.

This leads to a second misconception, that the interrupt portion of a negate never reactivates. That’s clearly incorrect, as anyone who has gotten 3 levels deep into a negate war knows. You play a card, the opponent negates it, you negate their negate, reinstating your original card, then they negate your negate, reinstating their negate and shutting down your original card. That doesn’t work if the interrupt portion doesn’t reactivate in that scenario. That particular scenario is less common now that special initiative requires the player to negate the ability causing the removal, so during special initiative that 3rd negate would have to target the original card, not a negate. The interrupt portion reactivating under that scenario is consistent with how any other instant ability would work in a similar scenario, as indicated by the original card reactivating after the first negate is negated.

In one potential consequence of that second misconception, there was a ruling (or at least the idea), that protection works against the “interrupt the battle and remove all characters from battle” cards, like Joseph in Prison (Patriarchs) and Achan’s Sin (Patriarchs). If you interrupt those cards with something like Protection of Angels (Priests), the thought is that the interrupt doesn’t reactivate, similar to a negate reactivating, and the protection stops the removal from retargeting the Heroes.

All of that leads to the general idea that if an interrupt (including the interrupt portion of a negate) does reactivate, it doesn’t update its targets – it just interrupts the same cards. That’s inconsistent with similar instant abilities, like the aforementioned Joseph in Prison and Achan’s Sin – if you interrupt those and band in other characters, the removal abilities would update and banish those characters as well. However, the idea that the interrupt portion of a negate doesn’t update targets is necessary to avoid loops. Take the following scenario without such a rule:

• You rescue with Eleazar, the Ahohite, with a weapon. He negates Enhancements and takes Well for David from deck.
• Opponent blocks with Foul Spirit, negating Heroes, including Eleazar.
• You play Abandoned (K), to negate Foul Spirit. This reactivates Eleazar, negating Abandoned, reactivating Foul Spirit, negating Eleazar, reactivating Abandoned, negating Foul Spirit, etc.

Each ability activated within the current phase, was then negated, then that negate was negated. That is similar to what can happen in a negate war, so the interrupt portion would reactivate for each ability, creating a loop. The rule that the interrupt portion doesn’t update targets means Eleazar doesn’t negate Abandoned, so the battle would continue with Foul Spirit negated by Abandoned and Eleazar negating (preventing) future Enhancements.

Process

The issues with negate have been coming up for a while now, so it has been an occasional topic of discussion and ideas have been simmering during that time. The most recent iteration separated negate from interrupt and prevent, at least on a literal level, and looked for what broke when negate had a “persistent interrupt”.

So, what broke?

1. Loops: The “interrupts don’t update targets” rule is contradictory with the goals of the change, and doesn’t really work if there’s not a proper interrupt portion. So we need a new solution to eliminate loops.
2. Modifiers: The current definition of the “cannot be” modifiers, based on the timing of the activation of the interrupt, prevent or negate ability in relation to the playing of the card with the modified ability, has some potential issues with a persistent interrupt.
3. Limited Target Negates: Negating a card is generally assumed to undo everything that card did that phase, regardless of its current state. So negating a card that moved itself from battle to territory (like The Woman of Thebez), or between territories (like Hopper Lost Soul) was assumed to negate what the card did in other locations. There is a very stupid consequence of that assumption that will be covered later, that scuttled the change for now.

Addressing loops pretty much requires a hard rule to shut them down, like a more limited version of the “interrupts don’t update targets” rule. There a couple of immediately obvious options:

1. Stop the loop at the very beginning: The negate with the most recent activation or reactivation, that “started” the loop, cannot target any ability that will create a loop.
2. Stop the loop at the end of an iteration: The last negate in the loop, that attempts to negate the one that “started” the loop, cannot target that ability.

Applying those to the loop above, option 1 says Abandoned cannot target Foul Spirit, and option 2 says Eleazar cannot target Abandoned. There are pros and cons both ways. Option 2 functions like potential loops currently do, to a degree, but the last negate in the loop is harder to clearly define. Option 1 is simpler to define, since it’s based on the most recent card, but the target exclusion doesn’t seem quite as clean there.

Another concern associated with loops is “collapsing loops”, where one of the abilities targets enough of the others that nothing actually loops. Something like the Moses/Rabshakeh/Two Thousand Horses/Captured by Assyria situation above – Moses gets special initiative, negates Captured by Assyria, allowing Moses to reactivate and he negates both his negate and Captured by Assyria, so there’s no loop. That doesn’t always collapse the entire loop, just enough of it that it doesn’t last forever.

There may be other options, and the specific implementation isn’t particularly important here – there’s a problem and a potential solution, so we can move on to the other problems.

Addressing the potential issues with modifiers requires defining what they mean by activation. If they mean the initial activation, there is the potential for a negate to affect a “cannot be interrupted” card, like Incurable vs. Nicolaitans’ Teaching played in battle and placing itself on a Hero in territory. Incurable was active (and/or reactivated) first, so it should be able to affect Nicolaitans’ Teaching. That’s not the end of the world in this situation, but some “cannot be interrupted” cards are designed specifically not to be undone, so that probably needs some adjustment.

If they mean the reactivation, or it is redefined as the reactivation, there is the potential for a “cannot be prevented” card to work through a negate, then get negated by a reactivation of that negate, like Plague of Disease vs. Roots King of Tyrus. Plague of Disease interrupts King of Tyrus, discards an animal and optionally plays an Enhancement, then King of Tyrus reactivates (assuming he’s still in battle) and negates Plague of Disease, which seems unintuitive.

There is some leeway within the general definitions of “you cannot stop a cannot be prevented card before (or as) it is played” and “you cannot stop a cannot be interrupted card after it is played”, so there’s a general idea of what the solution should be and again the specific implementation isn’t particularly important here, so we can move on to the last problem.

The “limited target negates” are those negates that have a more limited target selection, usually via location like “territory” or “territories”, where a card can activate in one location, then move into another location without reactivating. Under the current rules, there’s nothing for the prevent portion of a negate to target in that situation, so the ability remains active.

Under the proposed rules, the negate would update to target and fully undo that ability. That seems like the desired result when cards like The Woman of Thebez or Choked Seed move themselves into a negate like Distressed Lost Soul or an occupied Chamber of Angels.

The issues happen when you start branching outside of that scenario. There are characters that can exchange into a negate, like Deborah, the Victorious and King Jehu exchanging into the negate of a Distressed, creating questions about what happens to the character entering battle, and whether it activates.

A character that gets withdrawn into a negate, either by its own ability like Hannah (K) or by an opponent’s ability, would be subject to that negate even though its not attempting to do anything in territory. And the straw that broke the camel’s back – even a character that enters battle and survives to return to territory at the end of battle could be subject to a negate in territory to undo whatever they did in battle, since they return to territory just before the end of the Battle Phase.

Complicating the matter is that the placed cards that base an ability on themselves (or something else) being in a territory seem like they should be negated. At least everything reliant on the card being placed, if not the place itself. And a general negate like “negate a card” should be able to undo a card still on the playing surface, since there’s nothing that stops it from negating abilities in battle.

There’s not an immediately clear solution to any of that. Maybe it’s a redefinition of the end of battle return to territory to coincide with the end of the Battle Phase, solving the end of battle issue, at least, but that leaves cards getting withdrawn being potentially negated. Maybe it’s a redefinition of limited negates so they don’t reach outside of their scope, whether that’s a location or some other limitation.

Maybe it’s something else entirely, or maybe that just eliminates the possibility of a significant change.

So that’s where the potential negate update stands right now. I don’t think it will ever do quite what anyone thinks it does, and there’s no guarantee of any future changes, but there’s a better understanding of the issues going forward.

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