RulingHall of Heroes (rules 1.7)2026-01-17

About the RRG1.7 Piercing rule and prevent all abilities: 1- Some card abilities can prevent all damage but…

Question

About the RRG1.7 Piercing rule and prevent all abilities:
1- Some card abilities can prevent all damage but do not specify whether they prevent damage dealt or damage taken.
For example: If an enemy with Piercing, attacks me playing Rogue, and using “Bulletproof Belle” to prevent all damages and give her a Tough status card. Is Piercing removing the tough status, or not ?
2- “Piercing discards any tough […] before dealing damage”, but after dealt damage is calculated (ATK – DEF) because it need to check if the attack would deal any damage. I assume the Piercing keyword timing resolution is “would deal”.
Falcon’s “Aerial Evacuation” interrupt is also triggered on: “would deal” Since a keyword has timing priority over interrupt, does piercing removes any tough just before “Aerial Evacuation” prevent all damages?

Answer

Effects that “prevent damage” prevent damage taken, not dealt. Because of this, if Rogue plays Bulletproof Belle and gets a Tough status card, an attack with Piercing that still deals damage to her will remove that Tough status card.
Piercing triggers when the attack would deal damage to the target, so the same timing as Aerial Evacuation; however, since Piercing is a keyword, it has timing priority over a triggered ability. So, a Piercing attack would remove the Tough status card from the attacked character before Aerial Evacuation triggers to prevent the damage taken.

— Alex