Discussion Forum

Ok, potential rookie question on targeting.

Plauge Strike: Attach to target hero. Ongoing: At the start of your turn, your hero deals 1 shadow damage to attached hero. When damage is dealt this way, target ally in attached hero's party has -1 health this turn.

Target Rule Definition: If a card or effect tells you to target something, you must choose the target as you play the card or effect. If there is no legal target, you can’t play that card or effect. Once you choose a target, you can’t change your mind, even if something happens to the target you picked. If a card or effect resolves and none of its targets is legal, it is interrupted. If at least one target is legal, it is not interrupted.

I'm trying to interpret the Plauge Strike effect(s) correctly. That is, there's a target hero, and there's an additional secondary target ally. Does this second targeted ally have to be decalred at the time the ability is cast, or "when damage is dealt"?

In the first case, based on the rules for targeting, would that then mean that no existing allies would mean that the card didn't have a valid target and would not be succesfully cast? The last sentance of the targeting rules are ambigious to me in this regard. It's clear that if the ability has multiple targets (ie, deal 1 damage to 3 targets) and less than 3 targets exist, then the card still resolves against however many valid targets DO exist. But what if the ability has TWO effects that target one target each as is the case with this card. If the SECOND effect (target ally in attached hero's party has -1 health) doesn't exist, does THAT mean the card can't be cast, or ceases to be a valid ongoing ability if the second target ceases to exist?

I tend to lean toward the latter in that case because a scenario like "Target Ally A gets +1 health and Target Ally B gets -1 health" would certianly not be valid if only 1 target existed. So that would seem to imply that multi-effect cards need at least one valid target for EACH effect.

So, thoughts? Offical rulings I didn't see in my searches? Am I being over pedantic about interpretation? Thanks in advance for any responses!