RulingHall of Heroes (rules 1.5)2023-09-21

91 – Regarding costs in this game. I’ve seen some cost rulings that have me confused. So I understand that…

Question

91 – Regarding costs in this game. I’ve seen some cost rulings that have me confused. So I understand that you can only pay a cost with cards or game elements that you control, but when your just simply “choosing” something within a → cost like with the Game Time event, Why is it considered “paying”? For example, why can Major Victory target any Guardian ally with his ability but Game time cannot target any ally with a training upgrade attached because it uses the word Choose in its effect? Also encounter cards like the Knife fight treachery for example, tell you to choose an enemy with the highest ATK as a cost, but you don’t control enemies so I’m wanting to understand.

Answer

We discussed these cases today and this is where we landed: If the cost within an ability requires the player to “choose” a target/game element, the act of choosing a valid target satisfies the cost requirement, regardless of if the player controls that target. Note that this does not get around abilities that require more than just choosing a target for the cost—for instance, if the cost required the chosen target to exhaust as well, the player would have to control that target, since they can’t exhaust a card they don’t control. This means that for each card—Major Victory, Game Time, and Knife Fight—you’re able to “choose” a card you don’t control to satisfy the cost in the ability.

— Alex