RulingHall of Heroes (rules 1.6)2025-01-10

58 – I have another question. This time about retaliate. You ruled, that when I attack the villain and…

Question

58 – I have another question. This time about retaliate. You ruled, that when I attack the villain and defeat the stage, that retaliate triggers, if the next stage has retaliate. However, I don’t quite get why. Going with the retaliate definition in the RRG 1.6, the attacked character has to “survive the attack” for retaliate to trigger, but I can’t find a definition, what “survive” means in the context of MC rules. If I read the “Attack (Player Ability Type)” section, it also states, that the enemy has to survive and also states in the last bullet point: “The retaliate X keyword (if the attacked character was not defeated).” Since defeating a villain stage counts as defeating an enemy, I interpreted this as retaliate not triggering, since I defeated the attacked enemy, but you ruled otherwise. So how does this work now?

Answer

The Retaliate keyword states that after a character with Retaliate is attacked, that character deals damage to the attacker if it “survived” the damage. You are right that “survived” here is not properly defined in the current rules reference, and while Attack (Player Ability Type) suggests it be understood as the character not being defeated, we are planning to rephrase it as the character still being “in play” at the time Retaliate triggers. Although it’s established that defeating a villain stage is defeating an enemy, two villain stages with the same name are considered the same “character,” aligning with the FAQ ruling on Melee not being usable on two different stages. Retaliate has always been defined as character-specific, so a newly revealed stage with Retaliate is the same “character” that was attacked in its previous stage, and with it being in play post-attack its Retaliate will trigger.

— Alex