Damage Matters (ping + damaged-payoff) rule candidate (115 cards, 6 inks)

[Doberjohn]

Rule candidate: Damage Matters (ping + damaged-payoff)

Auto-surfaced by the rule-candidate miner (pnpm mine-rules). The miner's top clusters
(banish this item, character is banished, etc.) are already claimed by the open
Banish Matters / Sacrifice candidate (#365), so they were deduped out. The first novel
coherent axis walking down reports/rule-candidates.json is damage: deal damage to
(#2, 39 cards, score 2092) + the damaged-state payoff side.

Coherence note: the sibling cluster up to damage (#5, 28 cards) shares the damage
anchor but is mostly healing (remove up to N damage — Healing Touch, Healing Decanter,
Restoring the Heart). Healing is the opposite axis and is excluded here (53 heal cards).
Unlike the banish clusters, this cluster's payoffCount: 52 is not an anchor-keying
artifact: 54 cards literally reference damaged-character state (verified below).

Mechanic

The classic Emerald/Ruby "damage matters" archetype: cards that deal damage to
opponents' characters (ping enablers) feed cards that reward damaged characters existing
(payoffs). A 1-2 damage ping leaves an enemy body wounded-but-alive, which the payoff side
then converts into removal (banish chosen damaged character), extra damage, lore, draw, or
stat buffs. Chip damage becomes a value/removal engine.

Category

playstyle (density-based) — a new playstyle (damage-matters). Does not fit any
existing playstyle (lore-denial, location-control, discard, ramp, toy).

Roles

Role	Detection (gist)	Count	Ink lean
ping (enabler)	deal \d+ damage to (chosen|each|another chosen|all) ... character	~73	Steel 41, Emerald 17, Ruby/Amethyst-Ruby
finisher (peak payoff)	banish chosen damaged character OR deal \d+ damage to chosen damaged character	15	Emerald-heavy
exploiter (value payoff)	references damaged character state for lore/draw/+stats/ready/return (e.g. while challenging a damaged character, your damaged characters get +, for each ... damaged character)	~39	Emerald 35, Ruby 6, Amethyst 4

Payoff side total: 54 cards referencing damaged state. Enabler + payoff union: 115 cards
(12 self-sufficient cards are both — e.g. Ed - Laughing Hyena deal 2 damage to chosen damaged character).

Gating nuances for the implementer:

• The truest ping enablers are small/repeatable (1-2 damage, activated abilities) that leave
  bodies damaged but alive. A one-shot deal 5 damage that outright banishes leaves no damaged
  body — weight small/repeatable pings higher.
• Self-damage-as-cost (Scar deal 2 damage to chosen character of yours, Hades - Fast Talker)
  damages your own board, which can turn on your damaged payoffs (Ratigan your damaged characters get +2, Gaston cost less per damaged character you have). A real secondary
  flavor worth a sub-role, but optional for v1.

Score matrix (5-baseline)

Mirrors the Toy rule's 8/7/5 shape (peak kill combo, compounding value, density floor; 6 left
deliberately empty):

Pair	Score	One-sentence justification (audit rule)
ping ↔ finisher	8	Win-condition combo — a cheap ping wounds an enemy body so the finisher's banish chosen damaged character becomes guaranteed removal, turning two soft effects into a hard kill.
ping ↔ exploiter	7	Mechanical compounding — the ping reliably manufactures the damaged characters the exploiter farms for lore/draw/+stats every turn.
ping ↔ ping	5	Parallel removal pressure — stacking damage sources on the opponent's board, no compounding.
payoff ↔ payoff	5	Same axis (both want damaged characters) without creating the condition themselves.

Explanation templates (UI strings)

• Kill combo (8): {A} wounds a character so {B} can banish chosen damaged character — chip into a guaranteed kill.
• Compounding (7): {A}'s damage manufactures the damaged characters {B} pays off for value.
• Ping density (5): Both deal damage — stacking removal pressure on the opponent's board.
• Payoff density (5): Both reward damaged characters without creating the condition.

({A}/{B} swap based on which card is the searcher, per the existing convention.)

Overlap check

• vs. Banish Matters (sacrifice) rule candidate (68 cards, 6 inks) #365 Banish Matters / Sacrifice: opposite boards. Sacrifice banishes your own
  characters (of yours gate) to fire death-triggers; damage-matters damages the opponent's
  characters to enable removal/value. Cards like banish chosen damaged character (Anna, MegaBot,
  Walk the Plank!) are damage finishers, not sac-outlets — they consume an opponent's damaged
  state, not your own body. No role conflict.
• vs. removed Exert / Challenger rules: damage ≠ exert ≠ Challenger keyword; no overlap.
  (No "damage" rule has ever been removed — see REMOVED_RULES.md.)
• vs. Toy banish-trigger: tribal-gated and keyed on banish, not damaged state. Distinct.
• Excludes healing (remove up to N damage / heal) — the inverse axis; a future "heal
  matters" micro-axis if anything.

Evidence (from the miner + card-text verification)

• Anchor cluster: deal damage to — 39 cards, 5 inks, score 2092 (Deck sharing via URL #2 in reports/rule-candidates.json); payoffCount: 52.
• Verified counts (against apps/web/public/data/allCards.json): ~73 ping enablers + 54 damaged-state payoffs (115-card union, 12 overlap).
• Ink spread: both sides span all 6 base inks; payoffs are Emerald-dominant (35), enablers Steel/Emerald-dominant — a genuine cross-ink Emerald/Ruby/Steel axis.
• Sample ping enablers: Tug-of-War (Deal 1 damage to each opposing character without Evasive), Twin Fire (Deal 2 damage to chosen character. Then ... deal 2 damage to another chosen character), Food Fight! (gain "⟳, 1 ⬡ — Deal 1 damage to chosen character"), Kakamora - Long-Range Specialist, Hot Potato, Scar - Heartless Hunter.
• Sample finishers (peak): Anna - Diplomatic Queen / MegaBot / Scroop - Odious Mutineer / Walk the Plank! (banish chosen damaged character), Ed - Laughing Hyena / Cheshire Cat / Hercules - Baby Demigod (deal 2 damage to chosen damaged character).
• Sample exploiters: Scar - Vengeful Lion (whenever one of your characters challenges a damaged character, you may draw a card), Shenzi - Head Hyena (gain 2 lore), Ratigan - Party Crasher (your damaged characters get +2 ¤), Robin Hood - Sneaky Sleuth (+1 ◊ for each opposing damaged character), Shenzi - Scar's Accomplice (while challenging a damaged character, gets +2 ¤).

Next step

Implement via /implement-issue <this#> then /inkweave-add-rule. Suggested helpers in
packages/synergy-engine/src/utils/ (e.g. getDamageRoles returning ping / finisher /
exploiter, with a heal exclusion guard) + a damage-matters playstyle rule in rules.ts,
following the Toy rule's role-matrix structure.