First Tradition and Unlock Phase

narpassword wrote: First Tradition: The Masquerade
Requires a prince or justicar.
If this referendum is successful, put this card in play. A Methuselah can choose to skip his or her entire turn. Each Methuselah must burn 2 pool during his or her unlock phase. Burn this card when the controller has either skipped 3 turns or burned a total of 6 pool by this effect.

This is a non-fix.
1) Your version still doesn't state when a player can make the decision to skip their turn.
2) If your answer is, "They decide before their turn starts," that's a de-errata, re-introducing the apparently contentious issue of making decisions during a phase that doesn't exist. (I'm not actually sure why the text was ever changed from "While in play, each Methulselah must skip his or her turn or burn two pool," which is much clearer to me.)

narpassword wrote: take my reply to mean 'no matter how much someone thinks they've got the perfect wording, there is still a very high chance someone can misinterpret it'

you presented a choice:

"choose to either skip their entire turn or take their turn as normal before their unlock phase"

choose to:
a - skip their entire turn
or
b - take their turn as normal before their unlock phase

This is easy to fix: "Before their unlock phase, any Methuselah can choose to either skip their entire turn or take their turn as normal." It also doesn't solve the problem of the phantom "before their unlock phase" issue, though.

The only solution to that issue that I can formulate would be to have players decide during their predator's discard phase if they're skipping or paying, which I guess could result in some discard phase trickery, but otherwise seems to keep the intended effect without creating more subphases during (or maybe more to the point, between) anyone's turns. That'd also make the card considerably wordier, though.

In any case, mostly I'd just like a ruling/clarification from Ankha that the current card text is still functionally the same as older card text; ie, if you skip your turn, you don't get to unlock your cards.

yea - i wasnt really trying to fix it because it doesnt seem broken at all to me.

i see no issue in making a decision before your turn starts.

i assume the line "While in play, each Methulselah must skip his or her turn or burn two pool," was changed because that doenst tell you when to burn the pool.

narpassword wrote: take my reply to mean 'no matter how much someone thinks they've got the perfect wording, there is still a very high chance someone can misinterpret it'

you presented a choice:

"choose to either skip their entire turn or take their turn as normal before their unlock phase"

choose to:
a - skip their entire turn
or
b - take their turn as normal before their unlock phase

b is actually "[choose to] take their turn..." The bracketed part can be added for clarity or omitted if the meaning is understood (as I've done). I've reworded.

"either choose to skip their entire turn or choose to take their turn as normal before their unlock phase"

TwoRazorReign wrote:
b is actually "[choose to] take their turn..." The bracketed part can be added for clarity.

Yes - i fully understood your intention. I purposefully interpreted the card incorrectly to demonstrate that all wordings have flaws.

narpassword wrote:

TwoRazorReign wrote:
b is actually "[choose to] take their turn..." The bracketed part can be added for clarity.

Yes - i fully understood your intention. I purposefully interpreted the card incorrectly to demonstrate that all wordings have flaws.

Oh, now I get you. You're playing the contrarian I do agree with you. Nothing is perfect, especially the English language. But this is all really a matter of which wordings will have the highest likelihood of being interpreted correctly. I just think the current wording on First Tradition does no favors to the reader, and I feel like how I've reworded is better. But its definitely not perfect, as you've pointed out.

narpassword wrote: i see no issue in making a decision before your turn starts.

Neither do I, but I assume that's why the change was made? I seem to recall people making a fuss about doing stuff in between turns on the newsgroup way back when (which was the same reason that Masika's text was changed).

narpassword wrote: i assume the line "While in play, each Methulselah must skip his or her turn or burn two pool," was changed because that doenst tell you when to burn the pool.

Ha! Fair enough.