Possession with Messenger

[Polk5440]

Is this how Messenger on a Possession turn is supposed to work? I would have guessed that I should have gained two (not one) Wishing Wells. One for "your first buy" (i.e. L, but possessed by P, so P gains) and one for "other player" (i.e. P).

[Stef]

I'm not sure here about the Dominion rules... I'll ask Donald to have a look at this thread.

It distributed only one Wishing Well because the gaining of the Wishing Well "failed". It got cancelled out by Possessions when-would-gain, so that the initially planned gaining of a wishing well never happened. Messenger refers to the thing that never happened with "it", so the opponents never got anything.

I can imagine that being correct (would make more sense with Trader) but it can also be wrong. Or maybe Trader and Possession are even supposed to be different, but that sounds unlikely.

[Polk5440]

Oh, gosh, this is confusing. I'm not very good with the Trader-style exceptions. I can see it working the way you suggest. The wording on the text does seem mechanically different from "Name a card. Each player gains a copy of the named card," which is how I (evidently incorrectly) think of it.

[Donald X.]

It's the blue dog! As with (first edition) Ironworks I'm ruling that "it" means "that card you gained" and so if you didn't gain it (which is what happens with Possession) then there is no such card and the part referring to it fails. So the implementation is correct.

[Polk5440]

Thanks.