Question about the order of targets being chosen?

Example:

When using firestorm i have noticed that sometimes the first to receive damage when casting firestorm is enemy team, and sometimes it's my team. Is there any way to predict who takes damage first? Is it character placement on board? what is it?

I have experienced many battles where the order of the firestorm damage changed a certain win into a certain loss

So what decides who takes damage first?

 

That could be.

 

They trigger in the same way as terrain attachment, starting from the bottom rows to the top and left to right. (Imagine rotating the board 45 degrees to the right).

However, for firestorm, it appears to prioritize enemy first, that means it does the trigger process twice, first for enemy, then for your unit, order remains the same.

 

Hmm not exactly true.

Sometimes my characters are damaged first. And it's different from turn to turn.

 

It would be really weird to find out that some sort of tactical advantage is given to whoever can get their units to hold the top corner of the map. :/
I'd be a lot more comfortable just this once in knowing it's truly random, and not ordered in some way by map placement.

 

Yeah i agree. Would be cool to hear from a DEV.

It's pretty important to know the order. Ex: if i use Firestorm this turn, will i have a chance at proc'ing 2x Inspiring Armor on my priests before i am hit myself, allowing me to perhaps draw some protection to survive the firestorm and kill an opponent for the win. Or would the Firestorm simply kill off my mage, giving opponent 2 victory points ending the game.

 

What I've noticed is that when I initially cast firestorm it hits all my characters first, but the burn the next turn hits all the enemies first. It's like they realized if you're going to cast firestorm, you better be able to survive the initial hit before your enemies in case that gets you the win where you'd also die. But then on the burn, it goes back to favoring the player's party.

 

Well the last game i played, i finished with Firestorm. And the first one being affected was enemy. Perhaps it has to do with line of sight. In that game I had line of sight to my target. Usually i hide behind things.

 

Hmm. Yeah, I don't know then. It always seems to go the way I said when I cast it.

 

Watch it turn out to be alphabetical, and all Hax's characters names just start with XY or Z....

 

No need to bother the devs, any tester can un-riddle this riddle...

edit: or I might just spin it when time permits...

 

I still don't know for sure how the target order is chosen for Firestorm, but based on the discussions of this thread my guess is that the order is the order that characters are listed in the status bars. I've even less sure about which team gets targeted first. My guess is that is simply determined by whichever player is 'player 1' - but I don't really know. Whatever it is, I'm confident that it works the same way for Bless, Volcano, and Elvish Mobility - but not the same for AoE cards such as Ember Burst or Burning Fingers.

I'm starting to get use to the idea that the targeting depends on the order of characters in the party - but I think it would be quite bad if the team order for Elvish Mobility was chosen arbitrary. In my opinion, the owner of the card should be targeted second for all cards like this. ie. if a player uses Firestorm, then the enemy of that player should take the damage first; and if a player uses Elvish Mobility, the enemy of that player should move their elves first. - But I don't think that's currently how it is.

 

Well, that explains why no one has been able to figure it out reliably. Most other mechanics are deterministic, I hope this one becomes that, too.

 

Thanks for the reply Jon. I was starting to go crazy here.

Would be sweet to change it to "enemy team takes damage first" as you mentioned.

But this leads to a new question. Who takes the damage from various dot effects first? Is it currently player 0 also? Or is it tied to who goes first/last next turn? And is it the same for damage from terrain attachments?

Perhaps it could be affected by who goes first/last next turn.

 

Attachments: All cards attached to characters controlled by the starting player that trigger at the start of the round resolve. These are checked from oldest to newest, followed by those attached to characters controlled by the starting player’s opponent in the same way.

Source

 

progammer, thanks for pointing that out.

This is good news, this enables me to control the outcome of certain scenarios!

Apparently sometimes the help section is helpful!

1. Start of Round Effects

Before any cards are played, existing effects and those caused by cards in each player’s hand are resolved in the following order:

1. In Hand: All cards in the hand of the starting player that trigger at the start of turn resolve in order of oldest to newest, followed by all cards in hand of the opponent in the same way.
2. Attachments: All cards attached to characters controlled by the starting player that trigger at the start of the round resolve. These are checked from oldest to newest, followed by those attached to characters controlled by the starting player’s opponent in the same way.
3. All terrain attachments that trigger at the start of the round resolve. These are checked from the bottom of the board to the top proceeding by column from left to right and then by row from bottom to top.

 

Yep that thing helps, the only problems is that they did not mention global spell like firestorm etc... Jon clarified the order now and intend to change it to make it less arbitrarily, So it's all good.

 

Hmm i hope they change the attachment order to act the same as global spells then.

I'm actually not sure attachments act like it is described in the help section.. I just had a game vs AI.

This happened in turn 2: AI ends turn, i end turn. I take damage from the attachments first, then AI takes damage from attachments.
This happened in turn 3: AI ends turn, i end turn. AI takes damage from the attachments. Then i take damage from attachments.

"Starting player" in help-section. Is that the player receiving the option of acting first in turn 1 of the game? Or is it the player who goes first in a given turn? Either way.. It doesn't explain my experience above. Unless i was extremely tired. I will test again tomorrow to make sure.