Charge and Teleport

[zombie peanut]

I am relatively new to MageWars and have a question about teleport and charge.  Someone attacked my wizard the other day and as he did stepped into a teleport trap.  I had originally wanted to teleport him to the same spot, thinking that since he was teleported his "charge attack" was interrupted.  I was told no that it is a move action and it continues as if nothing happened.  To me, the charge is a move and attack combined so if your movement is interupted before the attack ( as in a divine intervention ) the attack then fails. 

The argument was as follows.  If you are running towards someone, and are teleported you will continue to keep running towards that said person, so if you are teleported to the same zone you keep running towards the target, regardless of the direction you are facing.  They basically said you aren't really running, so that if you are teleported to the same zone you can still make your attack.  I was ok with that except it would seem as follows:

You are being charged.  Normally this is what happens.

Attacker moves into your zone. 
attack then rolls attack dice having arrived.

If you are teleported this is what they say happens.

Attack moves into zone.
Attacker is teleported out of zone or to same spot
Attacker continues.

Now it specifically says in charge unless interupted before damage is dealt. 
The argument was that because they were teleported, even though they were
"done" running, since they didnt roll attack dice yet they could continue their
movement and thus the charge.

Rules?

TY

[sdougla2]

Lets say that your opponent casts Charge on a Steelclaw Grizzly, and it moves 2 zones towards you, ending up in your zone, where you have a Teleport Trap. After completing the second move action, the Teleport Trap is revealed. Assuming that you pay the reveal cost, you can teleport the Steelclaw to a zone within 2 zones. After completing this teleport, the Steelclaw gets to continue his activation. Regardless of where you teleport the bear, he can't move anymore, since even fast creatures cannot take a third move action in a turn. He can still attack or guard though.

Charging is not an action. It is a minimum of 2 actions. First you take one or two (assuming that you have the Fast trait) move actions. Then you make an attack. Divine Intervention can be used to interrupt the attack action, and cause the attack to miss, but that's because you can reveal Divine Intervention during any step of the attack, and if either the source or the target of an attack are teleported during the attack, even if they are teleported into the same zone, the attack misses.

[aquestrion]

he attacks and no charge bonus?

[zombie peanut]

well that i what I am wondering.  Technically charge is a combo.  You cant just walk in and not attack and you cant already be there and attack.  You have to move AND attack.  Basically my idea was to make his charge into a regular attack, keep the guy there then attack him after his attack with my hydra and wizard.  My question is, is the charge changed to a regular attack once you teleport?  if a monster is teleported out of a tangle vine but back to the same exact spot, he is no longer in the tanglevine.  So would the charge just be turned into a regular attack?  I need a moderator to actually rule on this because my friend said they know the rules best.. Ty

[sdougla2]

Oh, I thought that you were asking about whether the creature would get to make an attack at all, but if you're asking whether the creature would get the charge bonus, that's less clear. I would argue that you get the charge bonus, although it makes sense to me intuitively that you would lose the charge bonus after triggering a Teleport Trap. The next thing that the creature is doing after moving at least 1 zone is making an attack. I don't think triggering an enchantment affects this, even if it teleports the creature (although using Divine Intervention to teleport the creature in the declare attack step would cancel the attack).

[aquestrion]

Teleport move the creature immediately into the zone without moving through any zones in between. Charge says that it gains the bonus if they make the attack immediately after the move action. My 2 cents is that if I teleported a creature (in the next FAQ it will dictate what a move action is thank you blue gremlin) that the charge isn't going to continue. Teleporting it is giving it a !move action! to teleport. But the creature still can attack since it has the fast trait. This whole problem could be solve if u move the creature away....

[zombie peanut]

oh i know.  The problem was it had the fast trait and the guy would just charge, back away and charge again.  It couldnt really hurt me without the charge bonus and I wanted to just leave it there to kill it that round.  It was a bit of a mess.  lol  

[sdougla2]

As things currently stand, the creature is not making a move action or equivalent when it gets teleported by Teleport Trap. It's getting teleported, but that's not something that the creature is doing, and it is not an action. Depending on the wording that they choose to use to resolve the Blue Gremlin issue, this may become clearer in the next version of the rules, or they may choose to address this separately.

The real issue is the lack of a clear statement about what constitutes immediately. It's clear that passing or guarding instead of attacking will lose you the charge bonus, but it's not clear whether things happening between the move action and the attack as a result of revealing enchantments has an impact. My current reading is that revealing enchantments does not impact getting the charge bonus, but I can see arguments either way.

[zombie peanut]

so there is a bunch of ambiguity to thi argument.  It can obviously be seen two ways, so could a person who moderates for the site aka MAGE WARS who truly knows the rule get back to me?  TY

[jacksmack]

Charge +X
Creature gains +X attack dice for its very next melee attack, if it makes that
attack immediately after it takes a move action, and moves at least 1 zone.

Depending on how "immediately" is interpreted it will be either:

A)
Teleport trap interrupts the creature so it doesn't immediately attack, so it cannot get melee bonus from charge.
Remember the creature is still fast and can take one move action - another move action and then a quick action.
Just because the incantation spell is named "charge" it doesn't mean any1 charging.... it can be used on huginn that moves 2 zones and then cast teleport - where as normally he could only move 0 or 1 zone in order to cast a spell.

B)
As long as creature moves and attacks (no guarding to save up charge bonus etc.) then it gets the bonus.

Im pretty sure the answer is B.

[sIKE]

oh i know.  The problem was it had the fast trait and the guy would just charge, back away and charge again.  It couldnt really hurt me without the charge bonus and I wanted to just leave it there to kill it that round.  It was a bit of a mess.  lol

Since I am more of a thematic guy, I would rule that the Trap interrupted the action sequence of the Charge. How do I see this in my mind video? The Steelclaw Grizzly is charging straight at me (the winning and powerful Earth Wizard from Gencon, of course) moves into the zone, the trap is triggered, he zaps out and zaps back in to the same zone, facing a different direction, has to pull up and turn around to make the attack, no Charge Buff. It is a trap after all....

[Moonglow]

But depending on the ummm lets say physics ..  of teleport work, the attacked could still have the momentum of their charge...

oh i know.  The problem was it had the fast trait and the guy would just charge, back away and charge again.  It couldnt really hurt me without the charge bonus and I wanted to just leave it there to kill it that round.  It was a bit of a mess.  lol

Since I am more of a thematic guy, I would rule that the Trap interrupted the action sequence of the Charge. How do I see this in my mind video? The Steelclaw Grizzly is charging straight at me (the winning and powerful Earth Wizard from Gencon, of course) moves into the zone, the trap is triggered, he zaps out and zaps back in to the same zone, facing a different direction, has to pull up and turn around to make the attack, no Charge Buff. It is a trap after all....

[Memnaelar]

I honestly don't know.  On the one hand, the text says "immediately", which leads me to believe that since the teleport is what actually takes place *immediately* after the move, the attack that follows the teleport, as opposed to the creature's movement, is no longer a charge.

On the other hand, the next action the monster is taking after the move is the attack.  One can fairly argue that the "immediately" refers to actions over which the moving player has control.

Love to hear an official answer on this.

[ringkichard]

Have you ever read through the rules for every use of the word "Immediately"? I recommend doing it with the pdf's search function.

Just looking around, I don't really see a rules jargon meaning for the word "Immediately." I'm not sure it has a meaning, really, other than as an English word for, "before the otherwise normal next step."

Did you know that Quick Cast actions must happen immediately before or after a friendly creature action, but Wizard's Tower activates only "before or after"? If you wanted to take that hyper-literally you could propose that this means that the Quick Cast action must always be between the Wizard's Tower action and the Creature action, and not the other way around. I think you'd be wrong, though.

Also, all Enchantments may be revealed immediately between a creature's movement and it's quick action. I
I don't think that I should be able to disrupt a Charge Bonus by revealing an irrelevant Enchantment in that moment and then claiming that the attack wasn't immediate.

So the only question left is, "Is there something about Teleport Trap that would be especially relevant, when revealed just then?" I don't think so. If it was being revealed during the attack action (during step 2, maybe) it could work like Divine Intervention, or if it had teleported the attacking creature into a different zone that would also disrupt the attack because the creature would then have to attack a target in its new zone, but I see no rules reason teleport would be a special case here. Teleporting a creature 0 zones in-between its move action and it's attack action doesn't really do anything.

Mage Wars isn't a game with special Charge actions; The spell Charge grants two independent benefits that are unrelated: one for movement (Fast) and one for combat (confusingly also named Charge +1). You can't disrupt them by decoupling them, because they're already decoupled. The use of the word Immediately doesn't change this. Go see what other rules it would break if that's what Immediately meant.

The answer to this question is pretty clearly "No, Teleport Trap can't deny the attack bonus from Charge if it doesn't stop the attack in the first place."

Attempting to draw conclusions from game physics--or anything but the black letter rules--is a privilege reserved for the designers alone.

[sIKE]

Attempting to draw conclusions from game physics--or anything but the black letter rules--is a privilege reserved for the designers alone.

I love the game and think that it is of great design, but the designers are of a very busy lot and don't respond with the urgency that us players would like.

Mage Wars isn't a game with special Charge actions; The Spell Charge grants two independent benefits that are unrelated: one for movement (Fast) and one for combat (confusingly also named Charge +1).

The answer is pretty clearly "No, Teleport Trap can't deny the attack bonus from Charge if it doesn't stop the attack in the first place."

I clearly disagree with you here. Your argument provides a massive weight to the "Charge" trait and then you basically state it is what it is and declare it gospel by designers’ intent. I disagree and would strongly argue that the enchantment “Teleport Trap” by including the word “trap” in the name of the spell, is to interrupt whatever is planned by the opposing player and give advantage to the player controlling the “trap”. The charge fails as result.