Bone Wall....confusion.

[Seravy]

Okay...I've played Bone Wall many times and I think the behavior is contradicting itself.

When you play a Bone Wall, it has a 7 written on it.
At first I though that means 7 "wall counters", on a single card, so destroying the card would remove the shield altogether.
This isn't the case, it acts as 7 copies of the Bone Wall card. Destroying it reduces the counter by one, and stealing it also reduces the counter by one...and the stolen Bone Wall will be able to gain additional copies for you as well.

So..I though I finally understand how Bone Wall works : when you play it, it comes into play as seven copies of the card all stacked into your shield slot (like pillar clusters), and all copies have the ability of creating more copies when a creature dies, so even a stolen copy can. So I though Bone Walls are all each their own card, but stack together, like pillars.

Today, I got a mutant with steal. I had 47 Bone Walls in play and the opponent got 7 (he just played the card). When I used Steal to reduce his walls by one, instead of my newly gained Bone Wall stacking with the existing ones, and I ending up with 48 and the opponent 6, ALL 47 of my Bone Walls were destroyed and replaced by the single copy.

So...

Bone walls are separate cards that stack together to stay in the same slot (normal behavior) <-> Bone Walls don't stack together but replace each other (steal behavior)

They either stack or don't stack but they shouldn't do both at the same time. Fix please.

[suxerz]

I understood the 'confusion' and I agree it doesn't seems to make sense but I believe it should be the way it is now. I would try to think bone wall as a card with a counter - the counter will go up by 2 when a creature dies and goes down by 1 when hit by physical attack or deflag/steal. Bone wall is not a stackable card or else you would play multiple bone walls at once, thus stealing a bone wall is usually not a good idea.

[Seravy]

Bone wall is not a stackable card or else you would play multiple bone walls at once

Sure, but that wouldn't make the card much stronger anyway. So I see no reason why it shouldn't be a stackable card if it otherwise works as one.

Besides, if it's counters, the the card should get destroyed by deflags.

Current version works according to this text (yes, the text is not on the card, you have to guess for it like usual, but anyway...), which is extremely complicated for something not even written on the card, but matches the "counters" version :

 "
Shield.
Whenever Bone Wall comes into play, if you played it from your hand, put 7 bone counters on it.

Whenever Bone Wall would be destroyed, instead, remove a bone counter from it.

Whenever Bone Wall would be stolen, create a copy of Bone Wall under the control of the opponent with one bone counter on it, and remove a bone counter from Bone Wall.

Whenever there are no counters on Bone Wall, it is destroyed.

Whenever a creature is killed, put two bone counters on Bone Wall.

Whenever you'd take damage from an attacking creature, remove a bone counter from Bone Wall and prevent that damage.
 "

(Yes, that's SIX different triggered and/or replacement abilities, if I were to speak in MTG terms.)

If it would stack, it would be that much simpler :

"
Shield.Stacking.
When you play Bone Wall, put 6 additional copies of it into play.

Whenever a creature is killed, put two additional copies of Bone Wall into play, and this ability cannot activate more than once per creature killed.

Whenever you'd take damage from an attacking creature, sacrifice a Bone Wall and prevent that damage.
"

THREE abilities fewer!
With the only actual difference of being able to play two in a row and...why is that bad? I can play it next turn after the previous one is destroyed anyway. Only time it matters if I'm that low on life to be unable to survive a turn without two of these but in those situations, it is rarely much of a help anyway...still gonna lose a turn later.

[Higurashi]

It would make it quite a bit better, as I see it. Mainly because once you've played a Bone Wall and buffed it up with creature deaths, you could possibly have more Bone Walls clogging up your hand. 7 counters is usually enough to let you survive for one turn, but once you've buffed it up to a large size, you can be almost untouchable (and it's renewable!).
I use Bone Wall in a stall deck, and I think it's a neat feature that it can only be strengthened with creature deaths. Means you have to build your deck around it. That's appropriate for a card of such power.

That said, I wouldn't mind if it worked in a simpler way as you suggest. It would also make sense, but be a lot simpler to understand. Wouldn't offset the balance that much. Not to the point where it matters for most games, anyway. It would, however, change the spirit of the card.

[smuglapse]

OK, this is basically a resurrection of this thread: http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,8574.0.html.

I'll summarize how this works.

1)A rule common to both the shield and weapon slot is that anytime a new shield or weapon is played it destroys whatever was in the slot previously.  This is why your 47 Bone Walls were destroyed when you stole a shield from the opponent.  This is why any new shield you play (even another Bone Wall) will destroy the entire stack.

2)The card that you play from your hand states that it summons 7 bone shields--not charges or counters, but shields.  So, there are 7 permanents stacked on each other in the shield slot.  This effect actually breaks the first rule I stated, because each of the 7 shields does not destroy the one behind it to leave you only with one shield.  Cards can break general rules if they state on the card how they affect the game.  This is exactly like Rustler's ability that you can use multiple times per turn.  The gain of 2 new shields per creature death also breaks the rule, but the effect is clearly stated on the card and would be unplayable by any reasonable person if it left you with only 2 shields every time a creature died.

3)The card states each shield absorbs damage from a single source.  Each time a creature or weapon permanent attacks a whole Bone Wall permanent is destroyed.  Again, not counters or charges, but whole shields.

The innate effect of a Bone Wall is to gain 2 shields whenever a creature dies, not to summon 7 shields whenever a Bone Wall is played.  That effect is a result of playing the Bone Wall card.

[suxerz]

@Seravy: I can now see where this is going and I respect your opinions, though I must say that I'm not keen enough to discuss it further simply being that I feel that this is not a bug. And because of that I would strongly suggest that this topic should be moved to game suggestion section.