Next Card Climax

The Weiß Schwarz Online Judge Test just closed, so I wanted to talk about one of the questions. I’ve put a modified version below:

Player A has 2 Reticent Sushi Chef, Hoshimachi Suisei on their stage (henceforth Chef #1 and Chef #2), and plays COMET on their climax area. All 4 AUTO abilities trigger and are in standby. Player A intends to use the CX Combos to play 2 STELLAR into the GALAXY, Hoshimachi Suisei (henceforth STELLAR #1 and STELLAR #2) onto the stage. Which of the following scenarios can occur?

1. Player A resolves the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #1, then the CX Combo of Chef #1, then the heal ability of STELLAR #1, then the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #2, then the CX Combo of Chef #2, then the heal ability of STELLAR #2.
2. Player A resolves the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #1, then the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #2, then the CX Combo of Chef #1, then the heal ability of STELLAR #1, then the CX Combo of Chef #2, then the heal ability of STELLAR #2.
3. Player A resolves the CX Combo of Chef #1, then the heal ability of STELLAR #1, then the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #1, then the CX Combo of Chef #2, then the heal ability of STELLAR #2, then the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #2.
4. Player A resolves the CX Combo of Chef #1, then the heal ability of STELLAR #1, then the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #2, then the CX Combo of Chef #2, then the heal ability of STELLAR #2, then the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #1.
5. Player A resolves the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #1, then the CX Combo of Chef #1, then the CX Combo of Chef #2, then the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #2, then the heal ability of STELLAR #2, then the heal ability of STELLAR #1.
6. Player A resolves the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #1, then the heal ability of STELLAR #1, then the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #2, then the CX Combo of Chef #2, then the heal ability of STELLAR #2, then the CX Combo of Chef #1.
7. Player A resolves the CX Combo of Chef #1, then the CX Combo of Chef #2, then the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #1, then the 1st AUTO ability of Chef #2, then the heal ability of STELLAR #1, then the heal ability of STELLAR #2.

Answer: A, B, C, D, E, and G. The only thing you can’t do is heal before using the climax combo, since of course the climax combo is what puts the level 3 Suisei on stage to activate her heal ability to begin with.
(The first 3 options are from the original question, though worded differently; the other 4 are ones I added.)

The key thing that I’ve seen people get confused about (which the original options didn’t challenge at all) is thinking that you have to do abilities like the level 3 Suisei’s heal here as soon as that Suisei is placed on stage, before moving on to the next combo. I suspect this is a result of thinking of it the same way as playing characters to the stage normally, or moving characters to the waiting room during encore step, or using ACT abilities: in each of those cases, you perform some action that isn’t an AUTO ability, there’s then a check timing during which you can resolve any AUTO abilities that activated as a result of that action, and then once all of those are finished you move on. If you play or encore multiple characters, or use multiple ACT abilities, you can’t wait to resolve an AUTO ability that activated as a result of the first action until after you do the second action.
But that’s not the case here: even though there are two different Suiseis being placed on stage, they’re being placed by AUTO abilities, and those AUTO abilities both happen in the same check timing (namely, the one specified in section 6.6.1.3 of the comprehensive rules). So you can mix and match the ordering of all of these AUTO abilities however you want (once they’ve been activated in the first place, of course). Once you place the first level 3 Suisei on stage, her heal ability joins the bucket of activated abilities that also includes second climax combo (and the power pump abilities if you haven’t already resolved them), and you can resolve those abilities in any order.

To try to visualize this, here’s a diagram showing what happens when you do both combos first and both heals afterwards. The green box represents the bucket of activated AUTO abilities, and the Suisei cards represent the climax combo ability and the heal ability; I’m ignoring the power pump ability for simplicity. (Perhaps using cards to represent abilities will just confuse matters? But I’m hoping it helps overall.)

Going through the steps:

1. After playing the climax, you have two instances of the climax combo activated and available to resolve.
2. You resolve one instance of the combo, bringing out a level 3 Suisei and activating its heal.
3. You now have one instance of the combo and one instance of the heal.
4. You resolve the second instance of the combo, bringing out another level 3 Suisei and activating its heal.
5. You now have two instances of the heal.
6. You resolve the first heal, and have one left.
7. You resolve the second heal, and have no more AUTO abilities left to resolve.

In this particular case, all this doesn’t make a lot of difference, of course; whether you heal directly after playing each Suisei or all at once afterwards probably doesn’t affect the gameplay. You’d have to have another ability that could activate in the same check timing and do something like mill you to refresh (e.g., HOL/W104-E069), if for example you wanted to pay out a climax, then refresh, then heal afterwards — and note that it does have to be your ability, not your opponent’s, so something like anti-heal (e.g., KLK/S27-E046) wouldn’t work, since all of the turn player’s AUTO abilities are resolved before any of the opponent’s. But there are other cards where this sort of ordering is more likely to matter, and just in general, AUTO abilities and check timings are a fundamental part of the rules of Weiß Schwarz; the better you understand how they work, the better equipped you are to think about interactions between all sorts of cards.