Had a long aggrvating argument at a tournament tonight, I'd like a ruling so as not to have further long and aggrvating arguments.

Here's the scenario.

Joker has Poison and the Armor Piercing feat card on him.

Currently, he is next to Wonder Woman and Aquaman. Wonderwoman has invulnerability showing aquaman has toughness.

The armor wars BFC is in effect.

I say that because this BFC is in effect when the Joker poisons WW and aquaman, each of them will take two damage. My reasoning is this, Poison does one damage, Aquamans toughness and Invulnerability try and reduce the damage, Armor Piercing doesn't let them but because they attempted to reduce it, Armor Wars ups my damage to 2 and they both take it.

The guy I was playing says that because I have armor piercing the damage isn't being reduced at all and they each take 1 as normal.

The venue judge doesn't know and rolls a die to decide.

Who's right? Me or the guy I was playing?

The other guy is correct. Poision does one click of damage to all opposing figs next to them. One damage. AP says that damage cann't be reduced lower than one. Armor Wars states that if damage is being reduced, then take an additional click of damage. Since the one click of damage was not reduced, Armor Wars is not affected.

I would be more inclined to agree with Morand's assessment of the situation. The way I see it, Armor Wars increases the damage after any attempt to reduce damage by a power, whether or not any reduction was actually done.

But then, I'm not a judge so I could be wrong.

Actually, Morand is correct.
The ruling is that the *attempted* reduction of damage from Toughness/Invulnerability is enough to satisfy the conditions of the Armor Wars BFC, so the Poison damage would be increased.
It's not a ruling I agree with, but it is the official answer.

I am a judge and Morand, Quebbster and Uniclonus are right. tchad, sorry you are wrong.

Because damage was dealt and the damage reducers are active, they are activated triggering armor wars. Armor peircing prevents the 1 damage from being reduced any lower than 1 but they do try to reduce the damage. So each adjacent fig takes 1 damage and armor wars adds a second click with the end result of having both figs take 2 clicks of unavoidable damage.

For an "official" official ruling you would have to go to the official rules forum but you would get the same answer.

I would disagree.

Morand is asserting that that Poison deals 1, it is reduced (by, say Invulnerability), increased back to 1 by Armor Piercing and then increased again by Armor Wars, to 2 damage.

My understanding is that with Armor Piercing in play, Poison cannot be reduced below 1, and since it starts at 1, it isn’t actually being reduced at all.
According to the wording on Armor Piercing, damage is not reduced to 0 and then increased to 1, it is simply not reduced at all.
That being the case, Armor Wars would not take effect because damage was never reduced, thus dealing the original damage of 1.

I can’t see any reasoning how the Armor Wars BFC would cause the increase of the original damage from 1 up to 2. (In every other case of Armor Wars, the final damage taken never exceeds the damage value of the damage dealt.
(In a normal attack, no knockback, etc,) there’s no way someone with a 2 printed damage could end up dealing 3.

If someone sees how this would work in Morand’s favor, I’d like to understand the reasoning behind it.

According the wording of the AW BFC: "when damage is reduced...."
Says that it actually has to be reduced. "Trying" to reduce damage doesn't count.


Morand and I have posted to the rulings forum on WK site and are hoping Hair will come back with a real answer.

Azs, while I and others fully agree with you regarding the wording, the ruling from Prophus is that as long as a damage reducer "attempts" to reduce damage then the AW BFC kicks in.

I always looked at damage dealt as a number line, and Armor Piercing stops the damage dealt number from going below 1. If the damage dealt was already at 1, it's sure not being decreased at all.

I would fully support the ruling if the Armor Piercing card said "if damage dealt is reduced to zero then it is increased to one", but it doesn't.

Oi vey, I thought this was resolved when Armor Wars was first released... with the decision being the damage is NOT reduced so Armor Wars does NOT take effect. Siding with AZS on this one and hoping he's right. Poison doesn't need any more help.

He's not. Just like everyone else has been saying, AP + Armor Wars = 2 damage for Poison (and any other 1 damage dealt affect).

While this is certainly one of the more controversial rulings out of the Armor Wars set, hair10 and Prophus have been very consistent on this point.

Feel free to search the WK forums, if you like... but that's the way it is.

When they did rule on it, did they explain the 'reasoning' or was it one of those decries from on high "this is how it is because we say so"?

I'll fully support a ruling, even if I don't like the answer, if it makes sense.
I support that you can't use L/C with Pounce because of the specific wording, even though I think its one of the worst rulings ever.

It was ruled as such shortly after Armor Wars came out.

Quebbster already gave a pretty good summary. In addition, hair provided the link on the WK page you looked in on so you can always go check it there, too.

so then if the same situation would arise but both opponents were playing Armor Wars then the subsequent damge would be 3 (adding one more to the already established two damage)?

Yes. From the HC General FAQ, page 11:

This is one of the rare times (and rarer still since it would have to be in the perfect situation) where having Impervious being optional is beneficial.

Assuming no one could attack you OR you have a non-optional defensive power on the next click, it would be worth cancelling your Impervious to take only 1 click of Poison instead of the 2.

Oh, an AZS - the ruling has been clear and consistent but the reasoning is so-so. It comes down to a new term 'attempting to reduce' which in game terms is the same as "reducing". Armor Piercing is only activated when a defensive power reduces damage. So even though no damage is reduced (in the instance of a 1 damage figure), the activating of the defensive power (even though its a failed attempt) still qualifies as to activate Armor Wars.

So to go through the action:

Joker deals 1 damage via poison.

Aquaman's Toughness reduces the 1 damage to 0. Wonder Woman's Invulnerability reduces the 1 damage to 0.

Armor Piercing kicks in not allowing the damage to be reduced below 1.

Armor Wars is activated as the damage reducer was activated and the damage was reduced - however its a technicality that the reduced amount is the same as the damage dealt.

Its not Math - its somewhere between game rules and semantics. The only way it makes sense is with Impervious - and I think the ruling was done maybe to keep Impervious in line with Toughness and Invulnerability (in a way).

Wonder Woman w/ Impervious is dealt 4 clicks of damage by a figure with AP. She makes her Imperv roll and all 4 clicks are reduced to 0. Armor Piercing is activated stating the damage cannot be reduced below 1 - so Wonder Woman takes one damage. Armor Wars is activated since Impervious tried to reduce damage and therefore another click would be taken by Wonder Woman.

Doubt it helps but its as close to understanding the ruling as I can get...