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In the card game Unstable Unicorns there is a card called "Blinding Light", whose description states:

Triggered effects of your Unicorn cards do not activate.

Does this refer to the abilities starting with "When...", or to those with "If..." or something completely different?

I'm specifically interested in any possible distinction between recurring ("at the beginning of your turn") and one time events ("When this card enters your Stable") and between automatic ("discard a card") and voluntary ("you may sacrifice this card") effects. In other words, can we treat this card as if it only said: "The abilities of your Unicorn cards do not work"?

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    Magic: The Gathering is often a good reference for other games. In that game, triggered abilities are those that start with "when", "whenever, or "at". In other words, triggered abilities consist of those that occur the first time a specific game state occurs, those that occur each time a specific game state occurs, and those that occur each time a game phase is reached.
    – ikegami
    Jan 2, 2019 at 15:49

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Ok, so after looking through my game and rulebook and I read the "Triggered and Continuous Effects" section and all the examples you gave ("at the beginning of your turn, When this card enters your Stable, discard a card, you may sacrifice this card") are triggered. The last two are triggered because "Some triggered effects are mandatory (ex. 'If this card is in your stable at the beginning of you turn, DISCARD a card'), while others are optional ('If this card is in your stable at the beginning of your turn, you may STEAL a Unicorn')"

The other two are triggered because triggered effects can also be preceded by a "when" like in your example ("Triggered effects are always preceded by an 'if' or 'when.'"). Some more proof that are triggered is that the next paragraph states that "Any effect on an Upgrade card, Downgrade card, or Unicorn card that is not a triggered effect can be assumed to be a continuous effect. A card's continuous effect is active as long as that card is in a Stable (unless otherwise stated)." and none of the examples you gave up in your question are continuous so therefore they must be triggered.

As for your "in other words", it's not the same because unicorn cards like the Queen Bee Unicorn can have continuous effects (If you're wondering what the Queen Bee Unicorn's effect is, it's "Basic Unicorn cards cannot enter any other player's Stable").

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  • Thank you for this analysis! I have totally forgotten about such continuous effects, but it does make sense that they would not be affected, while all beginning with "if" and "when" are.
    – zovits
    Feb 13, 2019 at 6:26

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