Heroic Sacrifice
Card Text:
As an additional cost to play Heroic Sacrifice, stun a non-defending Teen Titans character you control.
Exhaust target Teen Titans defender you control and remove all attackers from this attack

Ok My q is this I had alreadt exhausted the defender that HS was been palyed on (Magneto at start of my Att step)
Resolved.
Then attacked with Magneto, Oppenent played HS, stunned a non def characeter and then said he could exhaust the already exhausted Defender to remove Magneto from that attack which left Mag tapped out etc.

Surely u cant exhaust an already exhausted character?
:ermm:
Btw explaination as to why he could do this is that the exhausted bit wasnt part of teh cost (stunning a guy) and there fore effect was paid for and could exhaust the exahausted guy.
surely this is Wrong.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your opponent was absolutely right. the "cost" of Heroic Sacrifice is the stun, which must be payed for the card to work at all, but the "effect" of the card is to exhaust one of your characters, and, incidently, tell everyone who attacked him to go bugger off.

So yes, you CAN play Heroic Sacrifice on an already exhausted Titan, which makes this card infuriatingly good. The only thing to do about it is work around it, and save your heaviest attacks to the very end, hopefully forcing his hand.

Regards
Melkhor, who hates the Titans and their annoying heroics as much as the next man!

fair enuff but thats feckin stooooooopid, if a card says exhaust someone then he should be non exhausted B4 u can do it.

Whats next u can Stun someone whos already stunned. Fer feck shake. :( :|

As part of an effect, you may exhaust an exhausted character or stun a stunned character... unless the effect says "exhaust a ready character" or "stun a non-stunned character".

so, you can target a defender that is already exausted with "heroic sacrifice"? the logic behind it being that "heroic sacrifice" does'nt require you to exaust a "ready character"?

and you can stun a charcter that was already stunned as a cost to play it? do you still take stun endurence loss for stunning an already stunned character?

i don't mean to take this thread in circles. i just wanted to make sure i got that straight.

The only cost of playing Heroic Sacrifice is to stun a non-defending character.

When the effect resolves, you exhaust the defender if possible, and then remove any attackers from the attack if possible.

The key here is that effects aren't required to work normally. If the card said, "Exhaust target ready Teen Titans defender you control," as an effect, then it wouldn't work on an exhausted defender. This is because the status of targets is checked on resolution. Since this isn't the case, the effect merely does what it can. If the defender is exhausted, it tries to exhaust it anyway. It doesn't change the game state at all, but it does its job, and that is sufficient.

The logic of cost vs. effect is that a cost must always be enacted in full for it to work, whereas effects only have to do as much as is possible. That's why effects tend to be wordier when they're made to do 'cost-checking', or making sure all aspects of an effect actually occur.

A good example of this difference is to take a Brave and the Bold deck with Superman in it. While Superman is ready, he cannot be stunned. That means he cannot be used to pay the cost of playing Heroic Sacrifice. However, if he team attacks with somebody and is readied, you can use Tim Drake's replacement modifier to move the stunning effect to Superman, even though he'll end up unharmed.

Costs have to be fully enacted for an effect to be added to the chain. Effects merely need to resolve out as much as possible. A cost that exhausts a character must be using a ready character, since the definition of 'exhaust' involves removing the ready characteristic and gaining the exhausted characteristic. An effect that exhausts a character, however, just tries to remove the ready characteristic and tries to give the exhausted characteristic. Only if the effect has an additional comment about requiring the character to have been ready or checking to see if being exhausted was actually accomplished does it matter. Look at Cracking the Vault or Narrow Escape for what I mean by this... both demonstrate the wording needed for an effect to do the 'cost-check'.

You cannot stun a stunned character if the cost to play the card is to stun a character. If you cannot pay the cost, you cannot play the card.

For Heroic Sacrifice, the exhaustion of the defender is part of the effect and not the cost. Therefore, it is possible to exhaust an already exhausted character.

And questions like this are why none of us are ever going to get a level 5 rules certification for the VS system.