The first and perhaps clearest example of this being applied to a download (and printed in an official ruling) is
Montana Missile Complex:
Seeding a Phoenix from outside the game beneath this time location is mandatory. If you do not have a Phoenix to seed, you may not play the time location.
I've pointed to a line in the
downloading Glossary entry that I think makes the same point more generally -- albeit badly and in a way that's in need of cleanup:
Although some downloads are optional, others require you to download a certain target card (or group of target cards). If you cannot do everything required, the entire download is invalid.
And yet, having cited those entries... it almost feels like something that doesn't need backing up, doesn't it? If you want to play a card, but that card says you
must do something as part of playing the card, and you
can't do that thing, then
the card itself has just told you that you can't play it. This logic is pretty foundational to the whole concept of mandatory downloads.
Not a perfect analogy, but playing a card with a mandatory download that fails (but then leaving the card in play) would be
sort of like playing
Tactical Console on an undocked ship with no SECURITY aboard. The game doesn't say, "Oh, sure, you can do that, it just won't have any effect because the conditions weren't met." The game also doesn't say anywhere explicitly, "No, you can't do that." The card tells you under what you have to do to play it -- and, since you can't accomplish those things, you can't play it. It stays in your hand, and, if you play it anyway, your opponent will point out the illegality and you will undo the play. Having any other rule for this situation, it seems to me, would be exactly the kind of newbie-hostile rules-loophole spaghetti that both of you correctly and forthrightly condemn on a regular basis.
Anyway, if you think this is improper generalization from the Montana Missile Complex precedent to try to cover a big area that the rules don't currently actually cover, I'll certainly listen to the discussion... but Rules and Design have built
quite a lot of cards around the assumption that mandatory downloads cannot be bypassed. (e.g.
Obsession,
Sherman's Planet,
Federation Flagship: Relaunched;
Consume: Outpost.) We cite it internally on a regular basis, both within teams and between them, and have done so for years. (I can only assume that Decipher Rules did the same, because I have never managed to find Kathy McCracken's current email address.)
If this assumption isn't currently sufficiently clear in / supported by the current rules documents, then my guess is that the rules docs will end up getting updated (rather than the assumption) -- unless this discussion shows that there is something unforeseen and dangerous about the assumption itself.
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