Upper Deck Entertainment Forums

ok I've been playing for nearly a year and I like to think I have a pretty firm grasp of most of the rules, but ok here we go. there is a card from infinite Crisis called Return Fire, and the ability is you exaust a non defending villains united character to inflict damage equal to your opponents attacker. ok is that targetting the character or the opponent?

also the card systematic torture, if you play that card and use the payment effect on a stunned character can your opponent reply with a card to recover them even though you played the plot twist and used the payment affect?

I really need imput

Return Fire - To play, exhaust a non-defending character you control or a Villains United defender you control. The controller of target attacker loses endurance equal to that attacker's cost.

When you see the word Target, that is going to tell what the effect is going to target. in this case it is targeting an attacker not the opponent.

Systematic Turture - To play, exhaust a Villains United character you control. KO target stunned character. If you do, that character's controller loses 3 endurance.

Since it says "target stunned character" then it has to be stunned when you play the effect and when it resolves. If it had said "KO target character that is stunned.", then it would not matter if it was stunned when it resolves just when it was played.

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WoW RK2
VS RK2
PM LV2
Specialist LV2 (formerly demo team)
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Spotsknight, "target character that is stunned" would still definitely check whether the character was stunned twice, it's no different from "target stunned character."

If you had "target character if it is stunned," then the targeting requirement would only be "target character." The "if" clause in that text would not be checked at all as you played the effect, and the effect would even get to resolution---the "if" condition would only be checked during resolution. (Note that other "if" templates might have different rules, this one isn't applying to every "if.")

Also, to the original poster, not everything with a cost is a "payment effect," that only refers to effects from powers with an arrow separating costs from effects.