RulingHall of Heroes (rules 1.6)2024-11-23

49 – Could you clarify how the card Three Steps Ahead (Jubilee #15) works? I’ve seen a couple of rulings…

Question

49 – Could you clarify how the card Three Steps Ahead (Jubilee #15) works? I’ve seen a couple of rulings stating that the different instances of damage are dealt simultaneously. However another ruling seems to contradict this, stating that they should be resolved separately, and, by extension, sequentially. Additionally, in RRG v1.6, under “For Each” it states: “- If a “for each” effect with a “choose” instruction deals damage or removes threat, each iteration of that effect is considered a separate instance of damage or threat removal, even if the same target is chosen multiple times.”
Which again seems to state resolving them separately, and by implication sequentially. Which is correct? Specifically, what happens in these two scenarios: 1: I have a crisis side scheme in play with 2 remaining threat. May I use Three Steps Ahead to first clear the threat of that side scheme, removing it, and then remove threat from the main with subsequent iterations of the For Each on Three Steps Ahead? 2: I have a side scheme in play with more than 6 remaining threat, attached to that side scheme is Overwatch, and there are no crisis icons in play. I play Three Steps Ahead, paying for it with three different resource types, so I remove 6 threat from the side scheme and pop Overwatch.
Will Overwatch allow me to remove 6 threat from another scheme, or just 2?

Answer

The ruling on Three Steps Ahead being “simultaneous” threat removal was based on the precedent that single-sentence abilities have their effects resolve simultaneously in MC, e.g. “Deal 2 damage to each enemy.” In this interpretation, even if a side scheme with a crisis icon had all of its threat removed, it would not be discarded until after all instances of threat removal with TSA were resolved. While this is a valid reading of the current rules, we have observed that this is largely unintuitive to players.

We are going to adjust the rules to better match what players intuit: Three Steps Ahead’s instances of threat removal are sequential, not simultaneous. If choosing a scheme and removing 2 threat from it causes a side scheme with a crisis icon to leave play, the main scheme can then be chosen as a valid target for any remaining instance of threat removal. We are going to adjust the rules of “for each + choose” to make this interaction clearer.

As for Overwatch, we are firm on our last ruling of it: you can trigger Overwatch’s interrupt based on a single instance of threat removal. Even if Three Steps Ahead targets the same scheme multiple times, it is removing only 2 threat per instance, so triggering Overwatch with it will only remove 2 threat from a different scheme.

— Alex