Hi,
In this game [0.5.9.188]-spider-man-sinister_six-expert-(45)-(919814581).json, I'm trying to pay for Across the Spiderverse with a Web-Warrior ally from my hand to then choose it to be put in play as the effect of Across the Spider-Verse. I cannot, because I'm being forced to choose the ally from the discard pile before paying. However, this should be allowed according to this ruling:
If the Winter Soldier player is in alter-ego and tries to use their Cybernetically Enhanced (CE) ability while Cybernetic Arm (CA) is in their hand, and actually use said Cybernetic Arm card as a resource to pay for the ability’s cost of 1 resource, what happens? Is this valid because we know where the card is and thus know it has no valid target?
There are other abilities in the game which search for a target where it’s a lot trickier as to whether there might be a valid target, and I assume both abilities would be beholden to the same rules. For example, Hawkeye’s Quiver asks us to search the top 5 cards of our deck for an arrow event. But it’s possible to know where all 10 of his arrow cards are if they are all in “open information” areas such as your hand, discard pile, or already under the Quiver.
So ultimately I think our real question is less about Winter Soldier’s alter-ego ability or Hawkeye’s Quiver, but more so on the rules about valid targets on initiating abilities that search your deck (and how much information the player is meant to memorize and how many areas they are meant to search through to confirm if there might be a valid target).
Yes, you would be able to use Bucky Barnes’s ability and discard your Cybernetic Arm to pay for it, allowing you to “search” your discard pile for the Arm and put it into play. Similarly, you could use Hawkeye’s Quiver to search the top 5 cards of your deck for an Arrow event, even if you already know that no Arrow event can be found there.
When we discussed these examples we ultimately determined that “search” abilities should be exempt from “valid target” rules, with the consideration that most searches will be made using incomplete information (similar to ability costs requiring discarding a deck to locate a valid target). Most of the time a player using the ability of Hawkeye’s Quiver won’t know the specific location of each of their Arrow events, and the game shouldn’t require them to keep track in order to use the ability; they should just need pay the cost of exhausting the Quiver and having 1 or more cards in their deck to search.
And we’d want to treat Bucky’s ability the same, where as long as the cost can be paid, a search can be made, and knowing the location of the Arm beforehand does not prevent the search. We will continue to discuss how exactly to implement this in the rules.
-Alex – May 16, 2025
There was a previous ruling that prevented this, but this supersedes it.
Thanks in advance!
