Thanks for your reply. Regarding the "choose" part of the TARGET section, I think you will find the following official rulings (taken from https://hallofheroeslcg.com/official-ffg-rulings/) interesting:
- First one:
I have questions regarding the card Spiritual Meditation, which has the effect: “Draw 2 cards. Choose and discard 1 card from your hand.” Do the Choose rules prevent me from playing Spiritual Meditation when it is the only card in my hand? The Choose rules say that if there is no valid target, then the ability cannot be initiated. Would the single Spiritual Meditation in my hand be a valid Choose target just to initiate the ability? Am I able to change the Choose target after initiating the ability? More specifically, am I allowed to Choose one of the 2 drawn cards by Spiritual Meditations first sentence after Choosing a card that was already in my hand to initiate the ability in the first place?
Abilities are resolved one sentence at a time. If Spiritual Meditation were the only card in your hand, you could play it and draw 2 cards before needing to choose 1 card to discard from your hand.
-Alex
- Second one:
I have questions regarding the card Spiritual Meditation, which has the effect: “Draw 2 cards. Choose and discard 1 card from your hand.” Do the Choose rules prevent me from playing Spiritual Meditation when it is the only card in my hand? The Choose rules say that if there is no valid target, then the ability cannot be initiated. Would the single Spiritual Meditation in my hand be a valid Choose target just to initiate the ability? Am I able to change the Choose target after initiating the ability? More specifically, am I allowed to Choose one of the 2 drawn cards by Spiritual Meditations first sentence after Choosing a card that was already in my hand to initiate the ability in the first place?
- When you determine if the card’s ability can be initiated, you can make that determination based on the first part of the Action, drawing 2 cards. So yes, you could still play it in that situation.
- If it helps, the designers have informed me that the “choose” clause under Initiating Abilities is mainly intended for cards where their only ability is a choose ability. We may adjust the rules reference to make this clearer.
-Alex
Also related to the fact that you do not need to select targets for the ability of the card in advance:
I have a couple of questions about the new Remy lebeau card. With Thief Extraordinaire, Do I need to pick a scheme to remove the threat from before I see what the top two cards of the encounter deck are? I couldn’t find anything that says you target a scheme from the beginning of a thwart. And if I have a confused status card on Remy, and I try to use Thief Extraordinaire, which is a (thwart), Do I still get to look at the top two cards of the encounter deck and discard one?
- No, you aren’t required to determine a scheme before looking at the top two cards of the encounter deck.
- And yes, when you are Confused and you attempt a Thwart, you must pay all costs of the Thwart and then replace the effect of the ability with the removal of Confused. So while Confused as Remy, you’d do everything before the cost arrow (exhausting, looking at top 2, discarding 1) and then replace the removal of threat with the discarding of Confused.
-Alex