EDIT: Rules have changed in regards to dice resolution windows as of 7-22-2019. Look for a How Stuff Works Official Rules Update that talks about it.

With the winter holidays and all of the festive cheer, also comes the cold and sickness. I’m not quite sure what I came down with after the Thursday VLog went out, but I was down for the count. In general, I procrastinate quite a lot and was the kid who finished his homework in the minutes before class started, so I often leave myself regretting that I didn’t do it earlier. Anyways, fast forward past a Regional packed weekend and we’re at it again talking about rules. I’ll do my best to break down the explanation from the video and we’ll also be taking a look at Coercion again because it’s making the rounds and there are many new players who haven’t been a part of its prior usage.

Improvised Defense vs All In

So getting down to the nitty gritty on this is quite hard at times, but I’ll do my best to make this easily understood. The following excerpt is from “Rules Jesus” and in the interest of not messing it up / leaving it intact, I’ll be creating some “White space” and writing in BOLD to differentiate / explain what the heck stuf means.

“All In and basically all cards that resolve dice still follow the rules for the “resolve dice action”, much like the steps to playing a card are explained in the action even though there are card effects that let you play cards. So even if you are resolving dice through the ability of All In, dice are still resolved one at a time (with modifiers) with any triggers off of that resolving before you move on to resolving your next die. This, like the resolve dice action, I’ve taken to calling a “resolve dice window”. This is not an official term though.

Dice resolutions use the queue. Dice resolve one at a time (except when paired with modifiers). If something triggers off of a dice resolution, those triggers resolve before moving continuing on to more dice resolutions. If an effect is resolving dice, a special timing window (think like another queue) is created for the resolving of dice and things triggered from it.

So if you have an Improvised Defense out and an opponent plays All In, they have to resolve dice one at a time. If they resolve a focus side and turn a die, you get to trigger and resolve Improvised Defense before they move on to resolving their next die. Now if it is something like Arihnda Pryce or The Emperor’s Throne Room, those effects do a die turn which triggers Improvised Defense, but since that die turn is not part of a “resolve dice window” it won’t resolve until after the ability on Pryce or Throne Room completely resolve. Pryce and Throne Room’s abilities subsequently open a window to resolve the die – and anything triggered from resolving that die will actually resolve before Improvised Defense does. But since Improvised Defense was triggered by the ability and not the resolve die, it comes outside the window and after Pryce and Throne Room’s abilities in their entirety.”

You might find yourself re-reading this 25 times, because I know i had to. The explanation behind the “die turn is not part of a {resolve dice window}” just means that unless the end result of a die resolution is the turning of a die without resolving it, you pretty much won’t be able to touch it with Improvised Defense. Improvised Defense can’t stop things like Force Strike, Pryce Special (when she has the BF), or Emperor’s Throne Room. There are some hints to a very large “nested statement” hiding in that excerpt, but it is honestly just way too much to try to breakdown for something that is largely irrelevant at this current time, but I’ll be sure to bring it up when situations that matter come up.

TLDR: If you have an effect resolving multiple dice, and one of the dice effects is just “focus” or “turning a die” then there will be a gap for Improvised Defense to cut in and remove the die.

Coercion Coercion is a pretty odd card in that it made most of the “Top Players” learn about some silly shit. So the breakdown of said silly shit is that when your turn starts, you choose to either take an action or pass. Coercion puts you in a condition that if there is a legal option for the opponent to play an event, then that player will have to play that card at any point where they decide to take an action and it is a legal play. BUT, they also have the option to choose to “pass” instead and the condition will still continue to be maintained until one of the following occurs: They can not legally play the card, they play the card, or the round ends. The main confusion here is that you can choose to “pass” until you are good and ready to cast that event, which isn’t always useful, but could be in the situation where a “He Doesn’t Like You” gets coerced and you’ve rolled in already, but your opponent hasn’t yet. Some people also get confused about “play restrictions” which would be things like “Play only if you control the battlefield” or “Play only if you have more ready characters than an opponent” but does NOT include “Spot” which some players commonly think is a play restriction. For example, you can still play Easy Pickings, which says “Spot a Yellow Character to…” even if you can’t spot a yellow character. The card simply has no effect and will go directly to your discard pile. Many people, especially in casual play, allow the opponent to take that action back, but that’s not a legal move. The opponent played the card for no effect, and it should go to their discard pile after resolution; this too might influence people’s misunderstanding of Coercion. If you are wondering why the hell people would play this card, it’s because Vader likes to run this thing which ruins peoples lives when it gets Coerced. If any of this is confusing, feel free to leave a reply and I’ll try to get to it in a timely fashion. Good luck to everyone with Regional season and do your best to know the rules so you don’t get screwed in any big events. It’s not just on the Judges to know the rules and I’ve seen / heard of many a person lose because they weren’t caught up on rules interactions. ~HonestlySarcastc

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