Infuse gets around Tough Hide? How?

[Golden 12]

Reading the Smoke release spoiler today, this caught my eye:

Quote

Do note that condition damage ignores Tough Hide, so this is really useful for getting round those pesky Brewer players who bring whole teams of Tough Hide models!

How does that work, exactly?  Infuse is a character play which is doing damage.  Tough Hide reduces damage done by plays by one.  How is a player to know there an exemption for character plays that do "condition" damage?

[kryzak 386]

"Condition Damage" is explicitly excluded from Tough Hide from an old FAQ somewhere in this forum.  That's why the character play specifically mentions "3 condition damage".

[Golden 12]

That's certainly the implication of the blurb, but that isn't what's written.  A character play is still a play, yes?  

[Spinsane 244]

As kryzak said, it's for the same reason Fillet's Exsanguinate and Smoke's Chemical Shower currently bypass it too:

(From the Collected Clarifications Thread)

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Tough Hide:- Works on all Plays – Character, Heroic and Legendary.
Does not work on Character Traits or condition damage (i.e. has no effect upon Exsanguinate and Chemical Shower).
In the case of multiple playbook damage results (e.g. from a wrapped attack), Tough Hide reduces each individual result by [1] DMG.

[Golden 12]

So a play isn't a "play" play if the word "condition" is used.  Huh.

 

What other unwritten exemptions are there?

 

edit: does "condition" beat "action" on Ebb's card?

[Falkman 46]

7 minutes ago, Golden said:

edit: does "condition" beat "action" on Ebb's card?

Infuse is an action so will only deal two damage to Ebb. Actual Condition effects however are not actions, so the Bleed condition will deal three damage to Ebb.

[Golden 12]

So it's a character play and an action but it isn't a "play" play.

Wild.

And the guiding principle isn't that condition damage can't be reduced as part of the core rules, it's that the Tough Hide ability specifically has a call out somewhere regarding condition damage, but it doesn't appear on the card?

This may be a dumb follow up question, but how on Earth is anybody supposed to know that?

[Falkman 46]

It is not intuitive at all, and will hopefully be clarified in the S4 rules.

[MilitaryCoo 778]

Correctly answered