A mw game designer said this. Why argue your point even though its not in writing. Maybe they'll change that; for now, though, you know that it will not give you mana.
You are misunderstanding me. I am not arguing about the ruling. I 100% expected this ruling when we were discussing it before posting it here. The ruling is NOT the point - if that is your interest here, then thread closed.
What IS the interest, is because this is contrary to normal convention, language and maths, that it needs to be a formal rule. Aaron's response indicated that he thought there was an obvious reason for his rule, but actually, the reverse is true, there is a logical reason for the reverse, and that's why it needs a formal rule. The rule is 100% right, I completely support it. There's just a gap between rules and designer intent.
Because not all MW players peruse the forums regularly. It isn't only sufficient to answer a question that one player asks, but to have an answer available to anyone who might wonder the same thing. This information should probably find its way into a future FAQ and/or the clause "reduces mana cost by 1, to a minimum of 0" could be included in future discount cards.
Precisely so.
This is going to sound perjorative, and I don't intend that, but I can't think of a better way of wording it. AW has a very bad track record of understanding and wording cards/rules with arithmetic or algebra involved. If you'd like some more examples then look at Purify and Stranglevine - both cards have made very clear in how they should work on these forums, but neither card works remotely as printed.
I'll throw out a bonus errata required to get this all to where the designer's intent (presumably) is:
As debated extensively here (
http://forum.arcanewonders.com/index.php?topic=16014.0), Purify actually has been ruled to actually have a cost of zero, with X being an additional cost paid on resolution. This, together with the above ruling means that Ring of Asyra won't give Purify a discount of -1, when most would assume it would (and I presume it's intended it would). So it either needs clarifying to not, or ruling under Purify that it has a strange interaction with Ring of Asyra.