Professor Scott wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 11:55 am
@BCSWowbagger any help here?
I don't have a lot to do at work this morning, so let's do my occasional Much Too Deep A Dive into this question:
TLDR: Official rules documents aren't clear, but I think precedent and logic compel us to rule that reporting is a form of "arriving."
Much as I want this to work against
They Will Be Coming Borg, I don't think it does.
First, we look for official rulings.
Topological Anomaly is based partly on Quantum Singularity Lifeforms ("cure with... new ENGINEER arriving"). QSL's Glossary entry sheds no light on this question. We could stop right there. Since the Glossary doesn't define "arriving" as a term, nor does it explain whether "arriving" includes reporting in its entries for Topological
or QSL, there is no official ruling on this.
Second, we turn finally to ordinary English, which is the true controlling authority when official rules documents don't specify. If the Compendium doesn't say anything about a word, go to a dictionary.
It does seem to fit with the ordinary English language to say that a card reporting for duty is "arriving" at a location. The only dictionary worth reading, the Oxford English Dictionary (sorry Merriam-Webster, but you deserved that), defines "arrive" very simply: "To come or be brought to a place." A card reporting for duty starts out in one zone (your hand; not a location) and comes to a new place (the reporting destination, which is a location). It's hard for me to see how reporting a card at a location would not count as "arriving."
Indeed, that seems to be the story behind our card "
New Arrivals," which has "arrive" right there in the title.
So it does seem as though, under ordinary English, QSL and Topological Anomaly should be cured by reporting the cure requirement to the location. This seems pretty clear and does not rely on any complicated grammatical arguments or chains of logical inferences. It seems pretty cut-and-dried to me. If the official rules don't define something, and the English language unambiguously does, the English language generally binds.
However, in many cases, there is at least
some doubt about how to construct the English language. So, third and last, we look for unofficial rulings and precedents. Ordinary players should not generally feel bound to do this, but (like in any court system) it's essential to Rules work to make sure we understand and respect our predecessors and their contributions before we offer our own judgment.
And QSL
does have a ruling in the useful-but-not-authoritative DRG:
If any condition met (either player plays Emergency Transporter Armbands OR Timepod Ring anywhere in play OR either player moves or reports a new ENGINEER to the location), discard cured dilemma.
The DRG is explicitly a "play aid, not an authoritative rules document." It isn't approved by the Rules Committee. It is occasionally (sometimes even
notoriously) wrong. T.D.'s can override it if they think it's wrong. This isn't even the same card -- and Topological Anomaly's DRG entry is silent on the arrival question.
On the other hand, the good people who write the DRG (lately, @Takket, praise be unto him) do put some real thought into how to interpret each card outside the context of trying to get an edge on Borg or whatever, often ask me my opinion about ambiguities, and are worth taking seriously. The Rules Committee always checks for informal precedents and rarely wants to overturn them. This
particular interpretation was decided by Major Rakal, who was Rules Master at the time, as we can see when we look at the
2002ish DRG (ha, "Timepod Ring cure mechanism is still unknown"). This interpretation was consistent going back to the first DRG I have,
from 1999.
So the Decipher Rules Committee clearly thought that a newly-reported ENGINEER was "arriving" at the location, and repeatedly ruled that way, even though they never made it "officially official" by putting it in the Glossary. There's nothing in the official rules documents to say that they're right, but there's also nothing to say they're wrong. If this disagreed with ordinary English, I'd be inclined to side with English, but rarely does an informal ruling directly disagree with the English language -- they're almost always fairly reasonable interpretations of the language. In this case, the ruling matches up perfectly with what I said above from the dictionary.
So if I'm a T.D., my ruling is that reporting a Borg with SCIENCE to the location is "new SCIENCE arriving". But I think that it would be good and meet for the Rules Committee to officially put a definition of "arriving" into the rules to confirm the ordinary English meaning. (And @Takket, I think it would be advisable to update the Topological DRG entry to use some of the language from the Quantum Singularity Lifeforms DRG entry.)
Note that the Borg arriving must actually
have SCIENCE; skill-sharing does not work here because the Borg are not stopped but in stasis, and thus treated as blank. The stasis also blanks most Borg downloading mechanisms.
Borg Queen is in stasis.
Four of Nine is offline.
Activate Subcommands will work, but only if you still have one of each in the deck.
Redirected Effort shuts down, assuming all your Borgs are together.
Distribution Node could work, but you'll need to play two drones: one to gain the skill and one to discard (the Borg in stasis can't be sacrificed to the Node while in stasis).
Maturation Chamber might be the best answer.