Quill & Tankard Regulars - Issue 30

Beware the Sphinx - Blood Magic Ritual

Beware the Sphinx is a series of articles concentrating on important cards with several peculiar, complex or unintuitive interactions. An emphasis is kept on both new and competitively relevant cards. Remember, the Sphinx is the riddle, not the riddler.

When Blood Magic Ritual (TCC) (hereafter referred to as BMR) first came out, there was a lot of confusion and controversy over whether or not it let you revive "no attachments" characters, with the result essentially being "yes but that's stupid". The reason why this card could bring back your dead dragons was that the wording specifically said "kill attached character" - if the character had no attachments then the Ritual never successfully attached, so there was no "attached character" to kill. There was also the question of whether the card ever actually left play, which we'll get to in a bit.

This was changed as per the 4.1 edition of the FAQ, published on the 1st August. The errata'd version of the card now reads as follows:

Response: After Blood Magic Ritual comes out of Shadows, choose a non-Army character in your dead pile and put it into play. Attach Blood Magic Ritual to it. If Blood Magic Ritual is discarded or leaves play, kill that character.

So that fixed it, right? ...Right?

Ahmm, read on. But one quick look at the rules forum on the official FFG boards will give you some idea.

Well, let's examine what this new version actually means. There are two changes from the original. The most obvious one is the change from "kill attached character" to "kill that character". What this does is change the meaning of the card, essentially. Beforehand, it was ambiguous whether the final sentence of the card created a lasting effect on the character resurrected - the moment BMR leaves play, kill the character initially targetted - or if it created a lasting effect on the attachment - the moment BMR leaves play, kill the character it is currently attached to (if any). With the change it is now immediately obvious that this creates a lasting, passive effect on the character - the moment BMR leaves, it is the character that was revived who dies, not whoever - if anybody - the card was attached to at the time. What this change does is stop some sneaky plays that were being made using Crown of Meereen (QoD), or rather to confirm that such plays won't work when it had previously been ambiguous.

The second change is from "If BMR leaves play..." to "If BMR is discarded or leaves play...". This change might seem unnecessary - surely if it was being discarded it was leaving play already, right? Wrong. As per the FAQ on attachments coming out of Shadows:

The text on a Shadow attachment explains and clarifies how a Shadow attachment attaches when it comes out of Shadows. If the Shadow card cannot legally attach (or the attempt to attach is canceled) the card is instead discarded and is not considered to have come into play.

What this means is that, should you bring out a Blood Magic Ritual when there is no valid target, or the BMR does not attach to a character (be that because the character has a No Attachments keyword or it is cancelled), the Blood Magic Ritual doesn't enter play and is instead discarded. This happens after the character enters play, so under the previous version of the card, BMR would be discarded, not enter play and therefore not leave play, and the chosen character would stay revived in perpetuity (or at least until it was killed by another effect). However, the errata'd version allows for this provision and ensures the character would be killed regardless.

So now it's impossible to revive a No Attachments character with BMR without that character immediately dying, right? ...Not as such, for a few different reasons.

Firstly, note that the effect on Blood Magic Ritual does not state that the character cannot be saved. So if, for instance, you had Strong Belwas (VD) on the table and brought back Drogon (QoD) with your BMR, the BMR would be immediately be discarded but Belwas would be able to save Drogon by triggering his response. Other saves are also perfectly valid.

Secondly, there is the situation with Aegon's Hill (TTotH). If this card had been used to move a character from your hand to the dead pile while you already had a copy of that character in play, you could use Blood Magic Ritual to bring that second copy out. The character would immediately become a duplicate, and thus would not be a "character" for BMR to kill (as well as not being a valid target for the attachment, ensuring it is discarded without entering play). This means the attachment would go away and you'd be left with a duplicated character on the table.

Thirdly, in the case of the Dragon characters specifically, they have another form of duplicates - their equivalent hatchlings (the versions from the Queen of Dragons set). So what happens if you bring back Viserion (Core) and have White Hatchling (QoD) in play, or vice-versa? Unlike every other 'duplicate' effect in the game, the Hatchling version is not instantaneous but instead a passive effect. The 'kill' part of Blood Magic Ritual is also a passive effect (sidenote: for those confused by these terms, passive effects, lasting effects and so on, check this Q&TR for a clear and comprehensive rundown on the subject). In this instance the passive effects would conflict, and the first player would get to choose what happened. If the first player chose for Blood Magic Ritual's effect to resolve first, the revived character would die immediately, BMR would be discarded and the other character would remain in play. If the first player chose for the Hatchling's effect to resolve first, then it depends on whether Viserion was the one revived or the Hatchling.

If it was Viserion who was revived, the Hatchling would become Viserion's duplicate, then BMR would resolve, killing Viserion - only Viserion's controller would have the opportunity to discard the Hatchling to save him. On the other hand, if the White Hatchling was the target of BMR, then when it became Viserion's duplicate, BMR would no longer consider the White Hatchling a character to be killed - because it isn't anymore, it's a duplicate. The attachment would fall off, leaving Viserion in play with a White Hatchling duplicate still attached.

There's one last quibble with this card, and it stems from a comment made by one of the designers of the game, Archmaester Damon Stone, when he was asked about a similar issue - when a character leaves play, attachments immediately and simultaneously become moribund:discard. So does this mean that if a character was returned to hand, the Blood Magic Ritual would immediately become moribund:discard and thus the character would be killed at the same time they should be returning to hand? No, for three reasons. Firstly, BMR's kill effect wouldn't immediately occur but would instead be resolved as a passive effect, after the character has definitively been declared moribund:hand - and as we've discussed in the past, once a card becomes moribund:destination, it cannot become moribund:another destination unless a card specifically says it changes the destination (for example Retreat (Core)). Secondly, even if BMR's effect kicked in immediately, just by a basic flow chart of events it cannot become moribund:discard until after the character it is attached to becomes moribund:hand - at which point the destination again cannot change. Thirdly, lead designer Archmaester Nate French was asked about this and gave the following answer:

...the majority of the community has understood and played attachments so that they go moribund passively, during step 4, when the card they are attached to leaves play.

So, in my opinion, the best course of action is to maintain that they go moribund passively during step 4, and correct the FAQ on page 19 to reflect the way the game has been being played for 10 years.

So it is essentially a non-issue of a question anyway, and something that will be addressed in a future FAQ.


This hopefully addresses all queries remaining about this Sphinx. If you have any other questions or comments on the card feel free to post them in the comments section. Otherwise, until next time, keep forging those chains.



Antti Korventausta (WWDrakey) is a self-proclaimed Finnish AGoT philosopher and nitpicker, who also used to practice Quantum Mechanics, but found that it paled to AGoT in both interest and complexity. As a Stahleck regular and judge, he sometimes has oddly vivid dreams of understanding portions of the game. In AGoT, he'll play anything as long as it's suitably twisted... often ending up with something that has horns on it.

Helmut Hohberger (Ratatoskr) started playing AGoT in September 2010 and has never looked back (although his wife has, longingly). As a German, he loves rules - and I mean *loves* 'em. Try triggering a Response at the end of a phase on his watch, and he'll probably invade your country. He has actually read the FAQ, and was made a judge at Stahleck and at various other events. He sometimes answers rules questions on boardgamegeek and the FFG rules board. Some of his answers haven't even been contradicted, corrected or expanded upon by ktom - there is no higher accolade for a rules board morlock.

Every Maester needs a Raven on his shoulder. As a Finn, Iiro Jalonen (Ire) got pulled under the waves by Krakens years ago, and has never looked back. A self-inflicted Shagga and active member of the global AGoT community, he has always strived to know the rules of the game, in order to make them do ridiculous things.

James Waumsley (JCWamma) started playing Thrones in January 2012. Although he’s not got many links on his collar just yet, he’s a fiendishly competitive player who delights in making sure the rules are upheld, so that his opponents have no excuses (or in practice, so that he has no excuses himself).