Open Skills and Kamikaze Grimoires

[Csquared]

Okay, something interesting just happened as I was showing a new player the ropes. Here's the situation:

Opponent:
1 LP
Front line is second Berserker, first Combat Monk, last Bear-Killing Axeman (50 HP)
Casts Fire Arrow

Me:
2 LP
Last Vordore in front of two Sylphs with none left in my hand
Casts Tempest

I figure I'm about to lose the match, but I could have a little fun during the action phase. My plan was to cast Tempest to knock off everyone but his Axeman and my Vordore. Since Vordore would go first, I could then kill off the Axeman, fooling my opponent into thinking he might lose, and then I'd explain how effects that hurt the entire field punish the caster first.

But the Fire Arrow threw a monkeywrench in my teaching-game plans, and not for the reason you'd expect. Since we were talking a lot during the match, my opponent accidentally targeted his Axeman with the Fire Arrow. Tempest went off, and the field was cleared totally except for my Vordore. Since it was his last copy of the Axeman that closed first, I calmly explained that this changed my undeniable loss to his. Rather than Iczer attack, I stood by and skipped my summon phase to prove my point.

But lo and behold, my sylphs left the field first, giving my opponent the victory. Huh?

This scenario probably won't happen very often, but it is interesting to try to find out what occurred. I'm not 100% certain, but maybe some other Iczer has a similar experience and can explain the phenomenon. I can only think of two possible solutions.

1) I am misremembering the match, and his Axeman did not close. The Open Skill phase considers everything to happen simultaneously, and my Tempest went off at what the game considers to be the same time, and therefore I as the caster was punished first. This doesn't quite jive since if that were the case, Cure versus Fire Arrow wouldn't always be a random toss-up as to which Grimoire occurs first.

2) The game designers consider field-affecting effects to be so powerful that they must always punish the caster first in the revival phase. Even if other effects trigger first.

If anyone has had more experience with these types of effects, speak up. I'll try to do some testing on my end, but the issue is a bit curious.


CSquared

[DWildstar]

This has come up in the forum before about field clearing grimoire cards.

[Romdeau]

Darn, and I thought this was something new and big considering CS Squared wrote a thread on it

[Csquared]

Yeah, I know the order of units being closed was discussed before, but this is slightly different. Anyway, I was asked by Logress to post about it. The question is why the closing order was reversed of how you would expect it to be, since logic would dictate that the first unit closed would be removed from the field. That is not what happened during the match.


CSquared

[ManiacalSoul]

Csquared, I think the axeman didn't close, and the open skill counts everything simultaneously. I remember instances where i've seen a grimoire reduce a lycantrope to 0 hp with an open skill, but where a succubus was played at the same time, and the lycan didn't close after getting damaged, the succubus changes it to night after damage is done but before the lycan can close, and so it gets to regenerate.

[Peralisc2]

i am sure i lost to a tempest because i got 1 unit removed before my oponent >_>

1 LP vs 1 LP fight!

[Gota]

C^2, in addition to MS's example, another very basic example can be looked at, which is Cure vs Fire Arrow.

The Fire Arrow will not be able to close the monster if it went first, meaning that the axe-man didn't actually 'close' yet when Arrow went first.

In any case, users of 'kamakaze' grimoirs will always be punished first, even in cases like these.

I'm also guessing that swan cavalier will be punished the same way, given MS's example, even though they are monster open skills, they still count as 'simultaneous'.

[Csquared]

Okay, I just replayed the match and as it turns out, I was definitely mistaken. Fire Arrow did not close the Bear-Killing Axeman, and then even though it technically "died," the Tempest went off and piled more damage on top of that. So the game considers damage dealing to obviously occur at the same time. Still this does pose an interesting issue, because the Cure versus Fire Arrow is still a problem. If the Cure effect goes first, it was a waste, so I guess it can be said that similar effects are kind of encapsulated together. However, the Open phase definitely does not consider different effects to occur simultaneously by any means, otherwise a Cure would always cancel out a Fire Arrow.


CSquared

[Phades]

Okay, I just replayed the match and as it turns out, I was definitely mistaken. Fire Arrow did not close the Bear-Killing Axeman, and then even though it technically "died," the Tempest went off and piled more damage on top of that. So the game considers damage dealing to obviously occur at the same time. Still this does pose an interesting issue, because the Cure versus Fire Arrow is still a problem. If the Cure effect goes first, it was a waste, so I guess it can be said that similar effects are kind of encapsulated together. However, the Open phase definitely does not consider different effects to occur simultaneously by any means, otherwise a Cure would always cancel out a Fire Arrow.


CSquared

In order for cure to be balanced in the sense that everything occurs at the same time, the game enginge would have to allow for "stored damage". What i mean by this is that even though cure may fire first, it will always heal the maximum rated damage and technically push the unit to beyond "normal" HP numbers. Then, as a counter action to this, fire arrow could be accurately calculated against it taking the gowen levels stored to compete against the maximum potential hp + current hp of the creature. Of course doing this would require a revisiting of things like corruption and flesh recycle versus damaging grimoire as well.