dormouse said:

You know, the one time I dabbled in Magic, the LIFO stack was a part of what killed it for me.  The people I introduced to the game found it confusing and unintuitive, as you say.  I want to buy W:I, because I love AGOT, but the LIFO stack is bothering me -- a lot.

Why would Eric Lang choose this mechanic?  I find AGOT's save/cancel mechanic so much cleaner.  But there must be some advantages to the LIFO stack... aren't there? Can someone please help me understand why this is a good design decision?

And on a related note, what's the easiest way to teach/explain the concept (beyond simply defining the mechanics of how it works)?

There are basically two steps to abilities.

The PLAY (and the paying of its costs) of the ability, and then seperately (kinda) the resolution of the ability.

At this point, anyone is allowed to break out an ability. This new ability will resolve itself as much as possible until interrupted by another ability, which will then resolve ITSelf as much as possible unless something else comes up and so on...

For instance, say someone plays that one biggun orc guy that blows things up in a zone. That is the PLAY of him. His ability will not resolve QUITE yet... especially if I break out the Empire card or ability or something that lets me move stuff to another zone. Then that ability has interrupted the resolution of the play of the orc guy, so that'll happen first, and then we break out the orc ability.

FILO allows for things like this to happen. Without FILO you could not move your stuff with some Tactic right before/ right after (but before it resolves) something specifically targetting a zone. It wouldn't work. This is more of a nuance than merely 'save from dying' like AGoT has. This could also affect things like 'everything in a zone gets -1 power until the end of the turn" if you really cared you could move it. Without the LIFO system you could NOT pull off things like this.

Even UFS has a LIFO system (though you can only trigger responses specifically when the responses say they can be triggered...).

Well... I could play a character and you could move him before an ability he has could come into effect, it just depends on how that ability is generated. In AGoT it could be a response effect to his comking into play where everyone gets a chance to do something before his ability can trigger or it can be a passive where almost nothing does (the exception being other passive abilities which the ordering would be decided by the first player).

The long and short of it Arma is that Eric wanted more complicated card interaction and to differentiate W:I from AGoT and CoC. LIFO (as I have been corrected it is referred to by its adherents) is used only in actions. Everything else is your standard do then resolve intuitive set. The best way of teaching LIFO is saying that once you get to player actions you play a card/take an action, it does not fully resolve until everyone has a chance to play their own card/action, once everyone has passed consecutively then the card effects are sorted out starting with whatever is at the top of the stack. All effects are applied to figure out what happened then the cards are removed and placed in their respective discard piles.

If you liken it to playing War or Hearts or Spades, or any of the number of card games where everyone gets a chance to play a card no matter what was played, before that "hand" is sorted out, you figure who won that "hand" and then cleared, you may have better results than trying to use straight logic.

It was also my biggest stumbling block but after playing it I found it did not take away from the game at all.

"I am the Prince of Dorne. Men seek my favor."

Right in AGoT it'd have to specifically be a response specifically to that situation. In W:I you can have an ability that you could use to move a guy from one zone to another, and use it for a whole variety of tricks, now that it is not limited in its ability to move by that smaller timing window.

Thanks to both of you for those thoughts.  I'm still concerned that the benefits (from "complicated card interaction") may not be worth the drawbacks -- but it helps mightily to have a vote of confidence, especially from self-professed LIFO hater.

so what are the drawbacks of FILO or LIFO? really...

1/) Play ability:

2.) Anyone got anything to say about that? If no go to 3). if yes go to a new version of 1.)

Well play ability is a huge overly-broad category.

LIFO can be hard for some non-CCG gamers to get. I don't think there is a board or minitures war game out there that uses this for example).

Card interaction can seem non-sensical.

These were my two biggest stumbling blocks.

"I am the Prince of Dorne. Men seek my favor."

I think the LIFO thing is entirely a CCG thing, and that because of the ability to interrupt, cancel, and modify the actions of other players using your own cards. Usually within a board game there are specific cards that do these things but because of the closed environment of the board game their application is much easier to manage. To use an example, Memoir 44's "Ambush" card allows you to attack an enemy unit immediately before it attacks you, resolving the effects of your ambush before the enemy's turn continues. It steps out of your turn and, because of the way it works, it cannot be counter-ambushed or cancelled and futher tactics cannot be used on it - it operates without creating a chain of cause-and-effect beyond its single instance.

With the CCG, such as Magic or Legend of the Five Rings, the wider and more freeform nature of the card pool results in the possibility that actions can be dealt with and reacted to in multiple unrealised ways. The LIFO system is one way of reacting to that, though - as has been noted - not a particularly intuitive way. In fact, at the most basic level it may well be that it can't work - a card used to cancel the effects of another card can't be resolved before the other card is brought out.

I find it easier to think about as a chain of events - but a lot of interpretation involves the "spirit" of the card in question as well as how the cards seem to intuitively operate. This can be difficult as different people interpret the same cards differently. I know I'm surprised by what some people say in terms of how a card works, much as other people are sometimes surprised (or embarassed, or not surprised) by my wrong-headed grasp of the rules.

Its a computing term and also a military recognized term. Also accounting recognizes the term as well. Also inventory usage for spoiled goods... etc..

 I was a Marine long before M:tG came out... I know all about First In Last Out. ;)

"I am the Prince of Dorne. Men seek my favor."

I meant within the context of board games and such - not in the wider sense.

I think perhaps Warhammer table top had spells didn't it? Negation abilities are technically FILO right?

I mean the Monopoly effect "go to jail" (first in) and then play and resolve "get out of jail free card"  means go to jail (the last out) does not happen (canceled by effects of "get out of jail free card"). :)

I'm starting to understand LIFO possibilities in W:I and I love it :D

You say you nuke my guy, huh? Well I'm going to use rock lobber and lob that guy to your capital before you kill it :)

If I'm going to be honest, that is precisely why I dislike LIFO. I would rather you have had to make the hard decision to do it when your character was mostly safe, not until after youfind out I had a way to get rid of him.Carpe Diem and all that. Fortune favors the bold, not the person who sits back realizes they missed a chance todo something and now wants to go back and do it over. That is what LIFO feels like some times.

Eric insisted on LIFO because he wanted to be different than the other two LCG's and wanted more card interactions, but I think it came at the expense of foresight and long range planning.

"I am the Prince of Dorne. Men seek my favor."

I enjoy being able to LIFO a Rip Dere Heads off when something bad's about to happen to my development cards... You can't do that in a non-LIFO game, and still have Rip be as good of a card as it is...

AND YET STILL that doesn't mean I'm not planning on using this card for reasons like that. I mean really, I'd put that card in my development zone for that particular reason, and held on to Rip for that reason too. THERE's your long term planning. Just cause my opponent can't see all the pieces of the puzzle and doesn't get to know its going to happen or not, doesn't mean that there isn't long term planning!

.... Darned hijacing of my thread! This was supposed to be about our love-hate relationship with Magic the Gathering! :)