Tracking all the triggers and abilities in Marvel Champions is one of the easiest things to mess up in this game. There are conditions on nearly every card, and as the game goes on, there are only more things to track. In this article, we’re going to take a look at triggering conditions for abilities, trigger windows, and timing priorities. We’ll do a few examples along the way, and there will be a few hidden answer examples at the end if you want to test your knowledge.
Psst! I know after that title you were expecting a bouncing, stuffed tiger, but you're stuck with me instead. I’m here as the “Ackchyually” guy. In some cases being perfectly technical gets in the way of learning, so there will be some stuff Astrodar leaves out, glosses over, or even makes up for the sake of clarity. I’ll let you know when this happens. I’ll also include some fun* tidbits of extra info along the way. Don’t worry, though! You have my word that his info is still correct, regardless of omissions and made-up terms. Scout's Honor!**
*Fun in a “I don’t understand what the word fun means” kind of way.
**Technically he made me say that.
Triggered Abilities
Abilities are essentially any non-trait text in a card’s text box. Some are constant abilities that are always active when a card is in play, while others are keywords defined separately in the rules. Others yet are triggered abilities, where the text is preceded by a bold timing trigger indicating the ability is only active when triggered. These triggered abilities are what we’re focusing on in this article. While some triggered abilities are optional, others are mandatory. I've listed them below. While we won’t really go into it here, keep in mind that some of the timing triggers on abilities are also labeled Hero or Alter-Ego, which further limits when they can be triggered.
Mandatory Triggered Abilities
Boost
Forced Interrupt
Forced Response
Setup*
When Defeated
When Revealed
Optional Triggered Abilities
Action
Interrupt
Resource
Response
*It’s worth noting that Setup is a keyword, while Setup is a timing trigger. There is no separate RRG entry for Setup, however, the ‘Ability’ entry and ‘Appendix II: Setup’ mention the timing trigger. See! "Fun!"
Setup abilities are the first that you’ll run into during a game. These occur during step 12 (on the main scheme) and step 16 (on identity cards) during the game’s setup. After that, the easiest ability to understand is the Action ability. This is the easiest, because the triggering condition is… you! As long as it is the player phase and no other game step or ability is being resolved, you can choose to trigger an Action ability. This can be on your turn or another player’s turn! Resource abilities are nearly as simple, and they can be triggered when you’re paying the cost of another card or ability. There may be further limitations imposed, such as limiting the card type that a Resource ability can be used for (i.e. “generate an energy resource for a DEFENSE event”).
The remaining triggered abilities all come with a timing trigger (Interrupt, Response, When Revealed, etc.) followed by a triggering condition in the ability text. For example, Upside the Head has the ‘Response’ timing trigger with “after your hero makes a basic attack and damages an enemy” as the triggering condition. Triggering conditions generally have “when” for an Interrupt or “after” for a Response as part of the description.
Interrupt and Response timing triggers are worth diving into a little deeper. The timing trigger tells us the relationship between the triggering condition and the timing of the ability. An Interrupt ability will occur entirely before its triggering condition, while a Response ability will occur entirely after the triggering condition. One place where this really matters is with abilities that have multiple sentences or sentences with multiple effects. These are important to highlight, because while you cannot respond to an effect before it's done resolving, you can respond between sentences of an ability. Let's look at some examples.
You're playing She-Hulk, and you're in alter-ego with the following hand: Split Personality, Surprise Attack, and four other cards each with a single resource. You play Split Personality, leaving only Surprise Attack and one other card in hand. The first sentence of Split Personality has you change form. If you do nothing else, you will resolve the second sentence and draw two cards, bringing you up to She-Hulk's hero hand size of four. However, you are allowed to respond between sentences. This means that you can play Surprise Attack (since it triggers on changing form), leaving you with no cards in hand. Then the second sentence resolves, allowing you to draw up to your full hand size. Keep in mind that moving on to the second sentence of Split Personality closes the window for 'form change' triggers. If during the resolution of the second sentence you were to draw into Surprise Attack, you cannot play it.
Remember that while you can respond between sentences of an ability, you cannot respond in the middle of a sentence. Let's take a look at Spectrum to illustrate this point.
If you play Gamma Blast, you will change to Gamma form and deal 7 damage. Those things happen simultaneously, and you cannot interrupt or respond to any part of it until the full sentence is resolved. This means you cannot trigger Gamma's Response ability to deal 1 damage until after the 7 damage has already been dealt. Bummer if your target has a Tough.
So far we've been going through timing triggers, but that isn't the whole picture. Now let's dive into trigger windows.
Trigger Windows
When a triggering condition is met, it opens a window during which any ability with a matching triggering condition may be resolved. Multiple triggering conditions can be met at once, but only one window is opened. For example, the “after the villain attacks” condition shares a window with the “after your hero defends” condition. For the most part, a window stays open as long as players choose. However, it closes once the players do one of the following:
move on by proceeding with another game step
choose to activate an Action ability
return to an outer trigger window (see below)
resolve an ability or effect that invalidates or closes a trigger window
There better be something below! What the hell is an outer trigger window?
The first two are pretty simple. Essentially the players choose to move on, because there is nothing they want to do in the current trigger window. Once an Action ability is activated or you have moved to a new games step (such as finishing the villain attack and moving to deal encounter cards to players) you close all open windows. With the final two methods, there will be things that allow a window to remain open (even while playing other cards) or that prematurely close a window.
Nested Trigger Windows
After a trigger window is opened, secondary windows may be opened by abilities being resolved during the initial window. These windows are nested inside one another, meaning that when a new nested window opens, it doesn't close the current window. In other words, you can play Response and Interrupt abilities to this new trigger without closing the current window. As an example, we’ll look at Ms. Marvel’s Morphogenetics ability, Turn the Tide, and Justice Served.
As the Ms. Marvel player, you use an event to clear the last threat on a side scheme. This opens up a window to play all cards that trigger off:
your hero thwarting
scheme being defeated
all threat being removed from a scheme
etc.
As you can see, there are multiple triggering conditions, but they will share only one window. You chooses to play Turn the Tide, whose triggering condition has been met. Upon resolution of Turn the Tide, a second window opens up for all cards that trigger off
your hero attacking
playing an attack event
etc.
Thanks to this second window, Ms. Marvel can trigger her Morphogenetics ability, exhausting her identity to bring Turn the Tide back into hand. We don’t have anything else that triggers off playing an attack event or our hero attacking, so we let this window close and return to the outer trigger window*. Since the second window was nested inside the first, the first window hasn't closed, meaning we can play Turn the Tide again. After that, we have no further abilities to use, so we let this window close and move on.
*I’m not sure if Astrodar knows this, but there is nothing about ‘nested’ or 'outer' windows in RRG 1.5. Actually there’s nothing about it in 1.6 either, but I’m not supposed to know that. It seems he is really just using these concepts to help demonstrate how players are choosing to close a trigger window by moving on with the game.
To further the example above, let's assume the same situation given, but you also have Justice Served in play. Now you can pull Turn the Tide into hand a third time, by doing the sequence shown below.
Invalidated Trigger Windows
While most of the time players can choose to close a window at their whim, occasionally triggered abilities will invalidate or close a window. The best explanation here is, again, through Ms. Marvel.
As the Ms. Marvel player, you are being attacked and dealt 5 damage. Luckily, you have Wiggle Room in hand, so you play it. As an Interrupt, its effect takes place before the damage is dealt, reducing the damage to 2 and drawing you a card. Being the clever Ms. Marvel player that you are, you trigger her Morphogenetics ability to pull Wiggle Room back into hand. Similar to our example above, the 'when you would take any amount of damage' window is still open. You play Wiggle Room a second time, reducing the damage to 0 and drawing a second card.
What if, however, there were only 2 damage initially being dealt? The beginning of the sequence is the same. You play Wiggle Room and use Morphogenetics to bring it to hand. However, at this point you have reduced the damage to 0. The 'when you would take any amount of damage' window has closed, because there is no longer any damage being dealt. This means you cannot play Wiggle Room a second time, no matter how much you want that card draw.
Similar Triggers and Timing Priorities
First and foremost, it is important to remember that the triggering condition is the really important part! The timing trigger simply tells you when the ability happens in relation to the trigger (An Interrupt is before and a Response is after) and the ability’s priority if multiple abilities trigger off the same triggering condition. When there are multiple abilities that trigger from the same triggering condition, they will resolve according to the priority timing chart on page 5 of RRG 1.5. I have reproduced it here.
Timing:
Constant abilities, keywords, and acceleration, amplify, crisis, and hazard icons
Status cards
“Forced Interrupt” abilities
“Interrupt” abilities
“Boost,” “When Defeated,” and “When Revealed” abilities
“Forced Response” abilities
“Response” abilities
Consequential damage
Remember that the triggering condition must be met first. The timing chart only applies within the same trigger window. If there are multiple abilities with the same triggering condition and timing trigger, you can resolve them in the order of your choice. Let's take a look at some Protection upgrades as an example.
Forcefield Generator, Energy Barrier, and Defensive Stance are all upgrades with the "when you would take any amount of damage" triggering condition. This means they will all have the same trigger window. Forcefield Generator has a Forced Interrupt ability, so it must be resolved before the Interrupt abilities on Energy Barrier and Defensive Stance. If Forcefield Generator prevents all the damage, Energy Barrier and Defensive Stance cannot be triggered. However, if there is still damage left over after Forcefield Generator, you can choose the activation order for Energy Barrier and Defensive Stance, because they share the same timing trigger.
When you have cases like above, it's worth emphasizing that you should ensure they do actually have the same triggering condition. There are many similar, but different, triggering conditions to track. This is a particularly good spot to talk about ‘would.’
In Marvel Champions, ‘would’ shifts a triggering condition to an earlier point in time. Using the example from RRG 1.5, “when a character would be defeated” occurs before “when a character is defeated.” This is important, because it can prevent some triggering conditions from ever happening. For example, let's look at some defense events.
Both Defiance and Preemptive Strike have Interrupt abilities that depend on a boost card being turned face up. However, Defiance's trigger cares about when a boost card "would be turned faceup," while Preemptive Strike cares about when a boost card "is turned face up." This means Defiance actually triggers at an earlier point. If you play it, the boost card is discarded instead of being turned faceup, and Preemptive Strike does not have an opportunity to trigger.
As another example, we can look at an interaction Colossus may run into with Master Mold.
Armor Up and Master Mold's ability both care about the villain activating. Though Master Mold is more specific, requiring a scheme activation, there is no timing difference between a villain activating, scheming, or attacking. Activating is just the more general term that encompasses both scheming and attacking. However, Armor Up's Interrupt ability has the trigger condition 'when the villain would activate,'* while Master Mold's Forced Interrupt ability has the condition 'when Master Mold schemes.' If these shared a window, Master Mold would trigger first. However, 'would' pushes Armor Up to an earlier time, meaning it is actually triggering in a different window.
*I know what you're thinking. "Astrodar has lost it. There is no 'would' on Armor Up." While that first bit is true, the second isn't! There is an errata for Armor Up that changes 'activates' to 'would activate.' This allows the interactions to all work properly. You can find the errata on page 55 of RRG 1.5.
Windows During Enemy Attacks
To give us an idea of what triggering conditions we may see during an enemy attack and when we might see them, let’s look at this list below. This list isn’t guaranteed to be complete, but it does contain the most common triggers. (At least he’s honest about the carefree way he throws rules to the wind.)
“when [character] attacks”, “when [character] initiates an attack”, “when [character] activates”
when [character] basic defends
turn boost card faceup
deal damage
take damage
defeated (if applicable)
leaves play (if applicable)
after [character] attacks, after [character] activates, after [character] defends
Conditions 3-7 each have a ‘when’ and ‘after’ version that occurs before/after the listed condition. Remember that adding ‘would’ to any of the above statements shifts it immediately above the same statement without ‘would.’ It’s also worth noting that in the outline above, I only pointed out the basic defense trigger. A ‘when [character] defends’ trigger can happen at any point in the process due to various timing on defense events. If you don’t use a basic defense, but later play a defense event, that would create the ‘when [character] defends’ triggering condition.
I want to emphasize that dealing damage and taking damage are two separate steps during an attack. For example, let’s look at Rhino with a Tough status card and his Armored Rhino Suit attached.
For the sake of precision, the RRG 1.5 entry for Tough states:
If a character with a tough status card would take any amount of damage, prevent all of that damage and discard a tough status card from that character instead.
Our two triggering conditions are “when any amount of damage would be dealt to Rhino” and “if a character with a tough status card would take any amount of damage.” If we attack Rhino with a 2 ATK hero, we exhaust our hero and deal 2 damage to Rhino. This opens up the ‘dealing damage’ window, triggering Armored Rhino Suit’s Forced Interrupt and placing the damage on the card instead. Since there are no more abilities that trigger on ‘dealing damage,’ we close the window and move on. There is no longer any damage for Rhino to take, so the ‘taking damage’ window never opens, and Tough* does not interact in any way.
*This is a good time to mention that the first sub-bullet to the third bullet of the Damage section is incorrect. If that’s not enough bullets, I swear I’ve got more. We know this entry is incorrect via the Official Rules Specialist, Alex. Dealing damage happens first, then tough, then taking damage.
Conclusion
I hope this helps give you a better grasp on triggering conditions and timing windows. With luck, I’ll be back to make any adjustments based on a new RRG, rules answers, or maybe even just with more examples. For now, you can find a few more examples below.
Thanks
Thanks to the discord rules gurus who helped out with this one: igorbone, journeyman2, SCOE, Scott Hill, and Theorel.
Get a load of this guy! He doesn't even give me credit in the Thanks section? What's a guy gotta do around here to get a little recognition for all his hard work?
Relevant RRG Entries
Ability p4
Action p5
After p6
Appendix II: Setup p43
Forced p17
Interrupt p21
Resource Ability p30
Response p31
Tough p36
Triggered Ability p37
Triggering Condition p37
When Defeated Abilities p39
When Revealed Abilities p39
"Would" p40
Examples
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle:
Question 1:
Building upon the example given in the article, let’s say that Ms. Marvel has Counter-Punch in hand and Indomitable in play. If she plays a defense event (aka defends against an attack), how many times can she play Counter-Punch?
(If you're getting stressed about playing Counter-Punch for Ms. Marvel's measly 1 ATK, pretend she used Repurpose during the player phase to boost her ATK to 4.)
Answer 1
All Dressed Up, and Something Must Go
Question 2:
Both of these attachments are on one minion, and that minion has two hit points. What happens if you attack it and it takes two damage?
Answer 2
Question 3:
Both of these attachments are on one non-elite minion, and that minion has two hit points. What happens if you defeat the player side scheme Take Out the Guards?
Answer 3
The Thorn in Thor's Side
Question 4:
Loki has 1 damage on him. Thor swings his mighty hammer, exhausts his identity, and deals 3 damage to Loki. If the top card of the encounter deck is a treachery, will you be able to trigger Battle Fury?
*Back in my day, Loki's ability was optional. However, someone decided it was an error that needed to be errata'd to a Forced Interrupt. You can find the errata on page 54 of RRG 1.5. Though depending on how frustrated one is by Loki healing sixteen goddamn times, one may choose to ignore that errata. #PlayHowYouWant
Answer 4