So, I'm fairly new to MW, been playing with the GF and we love it. I've been looking at the new videos for the Ro8 of the Thunderdome II tournament (awesome work, you guys) and I now have a question about this card. This actually also kinda come up a game we played here yesterday.

The description on [mwcard=DNJ10]Stranglevine[/mwcard] is as follows:

The target is Restrained and gains the Unmovable trait. Each Upkeep phase, before paying Stranglevine's upkeep cost, place 1 Crush token on Stranglevine. X = the number of Crush tokens on Stranglevine. When you pay Stranglevine's Upkeep cost, this creature receives X direct damage. Stranglevine gains Life +2X.
Stranglevine cannot target creatures with the Flying or Uncontainable traits. Ranged attacks cannot target Stranglevine.

The way we played it, was that the life of strangelevine just equals: 6 + 2X and that seems to be the consensus when looking info on this card and looking at how the tournament deals with it. However, I'm beginning to believe that this is wrong. Is there any official ruling on this? I have not found anything in the rules or rules supplement.

The issue with this card stems from the phrase: Stranglevine gains Life +2X. No where is it specified when it gains this. Imo, there are two ways to interpret the description, with the first one being:

The target is Restrained and gains the Unmovable trait. Each Upkeep phase, before paying Stranglevine's upkeep cost, place 1 Crush token on Stranglevine. X = the number of Crush tokens on Stranglevine. When you pay Stranglevine's Upkeep cost:

• this creature receives X direct damage.

Stranglevine gains Life +2X.
Stranglevine cannot target creatures with the Flying or Uncontainable traits. Ranged attacks cannot target Stranglevine.

Which is what the appears to be the accepted way of playing this card. The idea is that the text fires once and it now has Life +2X trait on it, after which the phrase does not do anything anymore. Thus, because of the trait, every upkeep it increases its life by 2 (if you keep paying upkeep and is thus not discarded). But... it does not say it gains the Life +2X trait. It just says that it gains Life +2X. With that in mind, you could actually rule it as firing once, when cast and thus gaining no extra life. After which the phrase does nothing anymore. There are more complications as well, see later.

The second interpration could be:

The target is Restrained and gains the Unmovable trait. Each Upkeep phase, before paying Stranglevine's upkeep cost, place 1 Crush token on Stranglevine. X = the number of Crush tokens on Stranglevine. When you pay Stranglevine's Upkeep cost:

• this creature receives X direct damage.
• Stranglevine gains Life +2X.

Stranglevine cannot target creatures with the Flying or Uncontainable traits. Ranged attacks cannot target Stranglevine.

Here, the phrase is triggered every upkeep phase, just like the damage. It does not need to specify it is gaining a trait, it just gains +2X life. Hence, first time it gains 2 Life, second time it gains 4, then 6, ... I can't find any complications here, like I do with the first interpretation. So, to me, this seems like the correct interpretation. Other than that it seems like its giving it a lot of life, which might break the card's balance?

It seems to me that this card should probably be clarified a bit more, perhas in the rules complement to indicate what the correct ruling is here.

For those who know the situation that occurred in the tournament, it probably would not have made any difference. Deathlock should either have stopped the gaining of an additional 2 or an additional 2X. Though with Deathlock in play, the first interpretation becomes even more troublesome, because we can't tell what happens when you change a trait. Does the first one go away to be replaced by the new one? Does it change instantly? These distinctions would need to be made for Deathlock to be properly evaluated. Another complication which does not arise in the second interpretation.

Any thoughts?