Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Rules Questions => Topic started by: ehunt on June 25, 2018, 10:38:19 pm
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I just tried to summon a death cart for a burst of five coin goodness and was disappointed to learn of this ruling. I get the logic with the current way the Lose Track rule is worded, but ugh. I'd like an appeals committee or something, here.
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I am somewhat of the opinion that the Lose Track rule was made in order to arbitrate ambiguous decisions in a way which aligns with common sense and THUS in situations where common sense is violated like this, something is wrong with the rule, not the common sense (which the rule ought to preserve)! But I do get that dominion, especially online, should be as precise as possible.
(Wittgenstein once remarked something similar regarding Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground arithmetic in the rules of logic (the work, famously, takes many dozens of pages before even proving that 1+1=2). He noted that basic arithmetic couldn't possibly be grounded in such a project, for if their logical structure told us something that contradicted a basic belief about arithmetic, we would automatically assume that it was their work that was wrong, not our naïvw arithmetical beliefs.)
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I don’t see ignoring lose track here as “common sense”. If the discard pile were allowed to be looked through you’d have more of an argument, but since it cannot be, you can’t “go get” that Death Cart anyway, so it make sense that the game loses track of it.
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that's very fair!
That said, if you explained all the basic rules of dominion to someone, and then set them up with a game in which this situation occurred, I doubt that anyone but the most precision oriented person would even think that something funky might possibly occur. Pretty much everyone, I imagine, would just set aside the death cart.
Maybe i'm wrong on this point though. I guess we could run it as an experiment and find out....
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If you trash/top-deck each ruin using Watchtower or Royal Seal, then Death Cart is sitting there on top of your discard pile when Summon tries to set it aside.
But Summon has still lost-track of Death Cart, right?
I suppose you just have to keep track of which cards/events have lost-track of which other cards...
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If you trash/top-deck each ruin using Watchtower or Royal Seal, then Death Cart is sitting there on top of your discard pile when Summon tries to set it aside.
But Summon has still lost-track of Death Cart, right?
I suppose you just have to keep track of which cards/events have lost-track of which other cards...
For WT/RS, you still need to gain the Ruins first, into your discard pile, thus you still lose track. You would need to prevent the gain of the Ruins in the first place.
However, Nomad Camp can be Summoned, as it is not lost track of - it just has a different gain destination.
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If I understand it right, the difference between Death Cart and Nomad Camp in this particular case isn't that Nomad Camp has a different gain destination, but that Death Cart has cards that come with it that cover it up. It's the Ruins that are causing you to lose track; I don't see why Nomad Camp would potentially have a similar issue.
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If I understand it right, the difference between Death Cart and Nomad Camp in this particular case isn't that Nomad Camp has a different gain destination, but that Death Cart has cards that come with it that cover it up. It's the Ruins that are causing you to lose track; I don't see why Nomad Camp would potentially have a similar issue.
It wouldn't fail for the same reason, but this makes me think about how there seems to be an implicit assumption that Summon looks for the gained card at the card's default gain location (whether that default location is the discard, top of deck, or the hand if there were any night-action cards that were gained to hand). Is Summon meant to work with Nomad Camp?
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If I understand it right, the difference between Death Cart and Nomad Camp in this particular case isn't that Nomad Camp has a different gain destination, but that Death Cart has cards that come with it that cover it up. It's the Ruins that are causing you to lose track; I don't see why Nomad Camp would potentially have a similar issue.
It wouldn't fail for the same reason, but this makes me think about how there seems to be an implicit assumption that Summon looks for the gained card at the card's default gain location (whether that default location is the discard, top of deck, or the hand if there were any night-action cards that were gained to hand). Is Summon meant to work with Nomad Camp?
I can’t answer “meant to”, but it sure does work - the card is where Summon expects it to be.
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If I understand it right, the difference between Death Cart and Nomad Camp in this particular case isn't that Nomad Camp has a different gain destination, but that Death Cart has cards that come with it that cover it up. It's the Ruins that are causing you to lose track; I don't see why Nomad Camp would potentially have a similar issue.
It wouldn't fail for the same reason, but this makes me think about how there seems to be an implicit assumption that Summon looks for the gained card at the card's default gain location (whether that default location is the discard, top of deck, or the hand if there were any night-action cards that were gained to hand). Is Summon meant to work with Nomad Camp?
I can’t answer “meant to”, but it sure does work - the card is where Summon expects it to be.
Right, I believe the rule for lose track always deals with when a card has been moved or covered up. When Summon looks for the card that was just gained; Summon doesn't "know" that cards are gained to the discard pile as a general rule. It's going off of wherever the card was gained to.
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It feels to me like it would solve several wrinkles without any downsides if each player's discards were an unordered collection of face-up cards that they could inspect and rearrange at any time, provided they always left at least one of the cards visible to the other players.
I don't feel that turning Dominion into a memory game adds much to it, so have never been thrilled about the need to remember what I've discarded. And I don't see why anything need lose track of discarded cards just because other cards have been discarded, or even fished out of the discards.
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However, Nomad Camp can be Summoned, as it is not lost track of - it just has a different gain destination.
That makes complete sense for the new wording ("This is gained onto your deck (instead of to your discard pile)"), but what about the original wording ("When you gain this, put it on top of your deck.")?
It feels as though in that case you gain the Nomad Camp, then you move it from your discard pile to the top of your deck, then Summon looks for the card where you gained it and fails to find it there.
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That makes complete sense for the new wording ("This is gained onto your deck (instead of to your discard pile)"), but what about the original wording ("When you gain this, put it on top of your deck.")?
The original wording always worked as though it had been the new wording.
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However, Nomad Camp can be Summoned, as it is not lost track of - it just has a different gain destination.
That makes complete sense for the new wording ("This is gained onto your deck (instead of to your discard pile)"), but what about the original wording ("When you gain this, put it on top of your deck.")?
It feels as though in that case you gain the Nomad Camp, then you move it from your discard pile to the top of your deck, then Summon looks for the card where you gained it and fails to find it there.
The original wording was worded the same as other in gain effects but the manual explicitly stated it behaved differently. This was the impetus for the wording change. The card didn’t actually change behavior, it’s wording changed to make it more clear.
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I just tried to summon a death cart for a burst of five coin goodness and was disappointed to learn of this ruling. I get the logic with the current way the Lose Track rule is worded, but ugh. I'd like an appeals committee or something, here.
Lose track has to exist due to ways you can actually lose track of cards. It needs a straightforward rule for what it means to lose track and well there it is. Summon meanwhile had to check for the card, because otherwise it might play a card that was hidden away, which is bad multiple ways.
Summon could have changed the gain-destination of the card to set-aside-land, rather than gaining it and setting it aside. That would be way more wordy and confusing, just to improve a small number of interactions.
Summon could not exist. There, now are you happy?
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I just tried to summon a death cart for a burst of five coin goodness and was disappointed to learn of this ruling. I get the logic with the current way the Lose Track rule is worded, but ugh. I'd like an appeals committee or something, here.
Lose track has to exist due to ways you can actually lose track of cards. It needs a straightforward rule for what it means to lose track and well there it is. Summon meanwhile had to check for the card, because otherwise it might play a card that was hidden away, which is bad multiple ways.
Summon could have changed the gain-destination of the card to set-aside-land, rather than gaining it and setting it aside. That would be way more wordy and confusing, just to improve a small number of interactions.
Summon could not exist. There, now are you happy?
:'(
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I'm trying to think what would break if the lose-track rule didn't include covering a card in your discard pile, but only moving it from the discard pile. Does that actually cause any issues? I think it's the cover-up part of lose-track that causes the most counter-intuitive rulings.
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I'm trying to think what would break if the lose-track rule didn't include covering a card in your discard pile, but only moving it from the discard pile. Does that actually cause any issues? I think it's the cover-up part of lose-track that causes the most counter-intuitive rulings.
In order to get the card out of your discard pile, you have to allow for searching through your discard pile, which is not allowed.
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I'm trying to think what would break if the lose-track rule didn't include covering a card in your discard pile, but only moving it from the discard pile. Does that actually cause any issues? I think it's the cover-up part of lose-track that causes the most counter-intuitive rulings.
In order to get the card out of your discard pile, you have to allow for searching through your discard pile, which is not allowed.
one question here is, if Dominion hadn't become such a computer-heavy game where programming precisely is necessary, would anyone interpret the rule like that? It isn't like you are generally sifting through your discard; you know EXACTLY where the card is.
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I'm trying to think what would break if the lose-track rule didn't include covering a card in your discard pile, but only moving it from the discard pile. Does that actually cause any issues? I think it's the cover-up part of lose-track that causes the most counter-intuitive rulings.
In order to get the card out of your discard pile, you have to allow for searching through your discard pile, which is not allowed.
one question here is, if Dominion hadn't become such a computer-heavy game where programming precisely is necessary, would anyone interpret the rule like that? It isn't like you are generally sifting through your discard; you know EXACTLY where the card is.
Right. And if you really needed to be explicit, you could just specify in the rules that you're allowed to dig a card out of your discard pile in these situations. You could bury that rule somewhere, though. Nobody who's not a pedant is going to need it.
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I'm trying to think what would break if the lose-track rule didn't include covering a card in your discard pile, but only moving it from the discard pile. Does that actually cause any issues? I think it's the cover-up part of lose-track that causes the most counter-intuitive rulings.
In order to get the card out of your discard pile, you have to allow for searching through your discard pile, which is not allowed.
one question here is, if Dominion hadn't become such a computer-heavy game where programming precisely is necessary, would anyone interpret the rule like that? It isn't like you are generally sifting through your discard; you know EXACTLY where the card is.
That might be true when you gain 1 card on top of it. Death Cart has you gain 2. What if you were gaining 5? For real life play, it would by physically cumbersome to pull the third card down out of the pile without seeing what the second card down is. (And you aren’t allowed to see the second card down, even if it’s 5 seconds after you gained it).
The point of the lose track wording is to simply cover situations, both those that exist now and might exist some day later. The rule can’t be loosely worded like “you can’t move a card out of your discard pile if it has been covered up by however many cards it takes to make it difficult to retrieve that card.”
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Why couldn't Summon have just been worded "Set aside an Action costing up to (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/2a/Coin4.png/16px-Coin4.png) from the Supply", similar to Inheritance? That does mean you acquire a card without gaining it, which could have some snags, but that issue already exists with Masquerade.
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Why couldn't Summon have just been worded "Set aside an Action costing up to (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/2a/Coin4.png/16px-Coin4.png) from the Supply", similar to Inheritance? That does mean you acquire a card without gaining it, which could have some snags, but that issue already exists with Masquerade.
It’s not intuitive from the wording that after you play the set aside card, you would get to keep it.
*Edit* The same problem exists for Inheritence + things that count your cards at the end of the game, but that’s a much rarer situation where it matters.
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Why couldn't Summon have just been worded "Set aside an Action costing up to (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/2a/Coin4.png/16px-Coin4.png) from the Supply", similar to Inheritance? That does mean you acquire a card without gaining it, which could have some snags, but that issue already exists with Masquerade.
I don't like gaining without gaining, that's creating more rules questions than Summon / Death Cart stuff.
But, aha: "At the start of your next turn, +1 Action and gain to your hand an Action card costing up to $4." Villa and Cobbler technology. Since we don't actually play it we don't need to worry about where it is, and since we delay the gain we don't need to set it aside. You do need to remember that you bought this. And of course it's dangerous with low piles.
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But, aha: "At the start of your next turn, +1 Action and gain to your hand an Action card costing up to $4."
Bit of a shame to lose the opportunity for cost-reduction shenanigans. /-8
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In order to get the card out of your discard pile, you have to allow for searching through your discard pile, which is not allowed.
Again, though, I wonder out loud: why not allow people to inspect their discard piles?
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http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=94.0
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I'm trying to think what would break if the lose-track rule didn't include covering a card in your discard pile, but only moving it from the discard pile. Does that actually cause any issues? I think it's the cover-up part of lose-track that causes the most counter-intuitive rulings.
In order to get the card out of your discard pile, you have to allow for searching through your discard pile, which is not allowed.
Welllll, if you discard a Faithful Hound and four Coppers, technically you then have to search through your discard pile to retrieve the Hound and set it aside. So it's not like there's nothing in the game that implicitly makes you do that anyway.
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I'm trying to think what would break if the lose-track rule didn't include covering a card in your discard pile, but only moving it from the discard pile. Does that actually cause any issues? I think it's the cover-up part of lose-track that causes the most counter-intuitive rulings.
In order to get the card out of your discard pile, you have to allow for searching through your discard pile, which is not allowed.
Welllll, if you discard a Faithful Hound and four Coppers, technically you then have to search through your discard pile to retrieve the Hound and set it aside. So it's not like there's nothing in the game that implicitly makes you do that anyway.
Yeah, Tunnel and Faithful Hound are messed up. I think it was said back in Tunnel discussions that “when you discard this” really ends up needing to be played as “as you are discarding this.”
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But, aha: "At the start of your next turn, +1 Action and gain to your hand an Action card costing up to $4."
Bit of a shame to lose the opportunity for cost-reduction shenanigans. /-8
Not so much! Generally dodging rules confusion is worth a lot more than any specific combo. And someone will point out that it still works with Bridge Troll and Ferry.
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http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=94.0
Hohum. Slow players are quite capable of spending ages trying to remember what's in their discard pile. And of playing so slowly that I forget what's in my own discard pile, which can be pretty annoying.
I sometimes wish I could ban slow players from looking at their hands...
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Obviously the best idea instead of the lose-track rule would have been to create a second discard pile that contains only cards you gained this turn, which you're allowed to look through, but have to put into your regular discard pile if you shuffle.
There's no way that could become confusing, right?
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I'm trying to think what would break if the lose-track rule didn't include covering a card in your discard pile, but only moving it from the discard pile. Does that actually cause any issues? I think it's the cover-up part of lose-track that causes the most counter-intuitive rulings.
In order to get the card out of your discard pile, you have to allow for searching through your discard pile, which is not allowed.
Welllll, if you discard a Faithful Hound and four Coppers, technically you then have to search through your discard pile to retrieve the Hound and set it aside. So it's not like there's nothing in the game that implicitly makes you do that anyway.
Yeah, Tunnel and Faithful Hound are messed up. I think it was said back in Tunnel discussions that “when you discard this” really ends up needing to be played as “as you are discarding this.”
"When you would discard this"?
Also, presumably if you don't wind up gaining any Ruins, the Summoned Death Cart will get successfully set aside (Case 1: Ruins pile is empty; Case 2: Trader while Silver pile is empty).
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But, aha: "At the start of your next turn, +1 Action and gain to your hand an Action card costing up to $4."
Bit of a shame to lose the opportunity for cost-reduction shenanigans. /-8
Not so much! Generally dodging rules confusion is worth a lot more than any specific combo. And someone will point out that it still works with Bridge Troll and Ferry.
And Princed Bridges.
Is Cobbler then your idea of a "fixed" Summon?
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But, aha: "At the start of your next turn, +1 Action and gain to your hand an Action card costing up to $4."
Bit of a shame to lose the opportunity for cost-reduction shenanigans. /-8
Not so much! Generally dodging rules confusion is worth a lot more than any specific combo. And someone will point out that it still works with Bridge Troll and Ferry.
And Princed Bridges.
Is Cobbler then your idea of a "fixed" Summon?
As you can read in the Secret History, Cobbler evolved into that shape over time. It was never the idea to make it like Summon. The penultimate version of Cobbler was actually more like Summon, since you gained the card when you played Cobbler and set it aside for next turn. I think of the final version as being much closer to Transmogrify. It's the workshop to Transmogrify's remodel.
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I suppose you just have to keep track of which cards/events have lost-track of which other cards...
I'm pretty sure all abilities lose track of a card when it moves except the ability that actually moved it. When a card is covered, all abilities lose track of it. (You can say that the second rule follows from the first because the card moved when it was covered, in the sense that it no longer has the position it had on the top of the pile. No ability moved it though, so that's why no ability still has track of it.)
Welllll, if you discard a Faithful Hound and four Coppers, technically you then have to search through your discard pile to retrieve the Hound and set it aside. So it's not like there's nothing in the game that implicitly makes you do that anyway.
Yeah, Tunnel and Faithful Hound are messed up. I think it was said back in Tunnel discussions that “when you discard this” really ends up needing to be played as “as you are discarding this.”
The reason Tunnel works, is that you're not moving the Tunnels, you're revealing them. So in this case you're allowed to fish them out of your discard pile, which is what you're technically doing if you discarded several cards and then revealing one or several Tunnels (even though IRL you're revealing them as you're discarding).
Of course this means that the rules about fishing out cards from the discard pile are confusing. You're allowed to do it when you're revealing Tunnels, but not when Summoning a Death Cart. It also tells us that the basis for this rule is not the fact that you can't look through your discard pile, as people have suggested. If you know where a card is and an ability allows you to look at or reveal it, you're allowed to do so, even in your discard pile.
People are talking about how it would be if we didn't have that part of the lose-track rule. But note that it doesn't just apply to your discard pile, it also applies to your deck. You can Develop two cards to the top of your deck, and the lower one would be lost track of.
But this makes me wonder how Faithful Hound doesn't break lose-track? Since you're allowed to order the cards when you discard several, you could always put the Hound on top, and then no problem. But if you discard several Hounds, I don't see how you can set aside more than one. Donald?
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But this makes me wonder how Faithful Hound doesn't break lose-track? Since you're allowed to order the cards when you discard several, you could always put the Hound on top, and then no problem. But if you discard several Hounds, I don't see how you can set aside more than one. Donald?
A card can make itself an exception of course, though that's a bad rule to do that with.
I'm going to again go with, it's "as you discard this." Technically this means you could briefly see an extra top-of-discard card with Cellars.
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But this makes me wonder how Faithful Hound doesn't break lose-track? Since you're allowed to order the cards when you discard several, you could always put the Hound on top, and then no problem. But if you discard several Hounds, I don't see how you can set aside more than one. Donald?
A card can make itself an exception of course, though that's a bad rule to do that with.
I'm going to again go with, it's "as you discard this." Technically this means you could briefly see an extra top-of-discard card with Cellars.
Then it has another timing than Tunnel, since Tunnel can't be "as you discard this", unless you change the ruling that you can't Watchtower a Tunnel-gained Gold when you discard your whole hand.
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But this makes me wonder how Faithful Hound doesn't break lose-track? Since you're allowed to order the cards when you discard several, you could always put the Hound on top, and then no problem. But if you discard several Hounds, I don't see how you can set aside more than one. Donald?
A card can make itself an exception of course, though that's a bad rule to do that with.
I'm going to again go with, it's "as you discard this." Technically this means you could briefly see an extra top-of-discard card with Cellars.
Then it has another timing than Tunnel, since Tunnel can't be "as you discard this", unless you change the ruling that you can't Watchtower a Tunnel-gained Gold when you discard your whole hand.
Not sure why that follows. Even if Tunnel were" as you discard this", you wouldn't be into that timing until all cards, including Watchtower, are being discarded.
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I'm going to again go with, it's "as you discard this." Technically this means you could briefly see an extra top-of-discard card with Cellars.
Then it has another timing than Tunnel, since Tunnel can't be "as you discard this", unless you change the ruling that you can't Watchtower a Tunnel-gained Gold when you discard your whole hand.
I am looking at Tunnel and well. The wording is simple, people get it, what a success story. It does not want to be something convoluted in order to better handle exotic cases. Maybe it's okay if they are technically different, provided that that difference is completely invisible to almost all players ever. It looks like "as you discard this" works fine for both though.
No-one is going to think you can't set aside two Faithful Hounds; it is sure better if you can. So I'm going with, you can, you can do it, just like people are doing. However the precise ruling goes, you can set aside both Hounds, that's established.
Fishing Tunnel out of your discard pile to reveal it is bad; it may no longer be there for example, or it may no longer be clear if that's the same Tunnel. At the same time Tunnel wants you to get the Gold after discarding - not with cards in a new limbo. Well maybe I can have that too.
When you discard some cards, you can reveal Tunnels and set aside Faithful Hounds. Did I say "when"? It's part of the discarding process, these abilities. Then, if you revealed Tunnel as you were discarding it, you gain a Gold; the cards are all in the discard pile. It is maybe slightly simpler if none of the cards are in your discard pile - but then they're in being-discarded limbo and who needs that.
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But this makes me wonder how Faithful Hound doesn't break lose-track? Since you're allowed to order the cards when you discard several, you could always put the Hound on top, and then no problem. But if you discard several Hounds, I don't see how you can set aside more than one. Donald?
A card can make itself an exception of course, though that's a bad rule to do that with.
I'm going to again go with, it's "as you discard this." Technically this means you could briefly see an extra top-of-discard card with Cellars.
Then it has another timing than Tunnel, since Tunnel can't be "as you discard this", unless you change the ruling that you can't Watchtower a Tunnel-gained Gold when you discard your whole hand.
Not sure why that follows. Even if Tunnel were" as you discard this", you wouldn't be into that timing until all cards, including Watchtower, are being discarded.
Hmm, maybe you're right. In this old thread (https://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/10096047#10096047) Donald is saying that it doesn't work to reveal Tunnel before you finish discarding, based on the Watchtower case. That was after I mentioned it. But maybe I only thought about revealing Tunnel either in your hand before discarding, or after putting it in your discard pile before discarding the other cards. I didn't think about revealing it when it's in being-discarded limbo. I guess if you reveal it in limbo, when all your being-discarded cards are in limbo, there is no Watchtower problem.*
I see that Donald has replied while I was writing this. It sounds like being-discarded limbo is when you reveal Tunnels and Hounds, then when all the cards are in the discard pile, you gain Golds. But I guess the Hounds are not set aside then, because then you have the situation of having to fish out Hounds, which also breaks lose-track. So the Hounds get set aside when you reveal them in limbo, I guess.
* Is there a lose-track problem? What is a bunch of cards in limbo anyway? It's not unordered, because the rules say you can order them before discarding. If you order them in your hand and then discard them all, then only one card is on top and the others are covered even in limbo, so it seems lose-track applies. Or maybe it's a fanned out set of cards where no card is on top even if it's ordered. That makes sense. So you separate all to-be-discarded cards from your hand, reveal whichever you want, then put them in discard. You have to reveal all cards at once though, otherwise we get the old "is it the same card?" problem.
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I see that Donald has replied while I was writing this. It sounds like being-discarded limbo is when you reveal Tunnels and Hounds, then when all the cards are in the discard pile, you gain Golds. But I guess the Hounds are not set aside then, because then you have the situation of having to fish out Hounds, which also breaks lose-track. So the Hounds get set aside when you reveal them in limbo, I guess.
You have to discard some cards. You take those cards in your hand, and then, hey set aside these Faithful Hounds and flash these Tunnels. Which is what people actually do - no-one fishes Tunnels out of their discard pile.
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Would a wording like "Gain a card costing up to 4, setting it aside as you do" work? Now both things happen at the same time, so you can pick the order, right? Or is that already a confusing/wordy solution or does it break other things?
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Would a wording like "Gain a card costing up to 4, setting it aside as you do" work? Now both things happen at the same time, so you can pick the order, right? Or is that already a confusing/wordy solution or does it break other things?
Having to know the correct order isn't great (yes this comes up with real cards sometimes due to lose track and triggered gains). Really that approach wants to end up the hypothetical good phrasing of "gain a card to set-aside land." But if I were changing the card now I prefer the Villa/Cobbler approach anyway and so wouldn't put in the work on that wording.
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Would a wording like "Gain a card costing up to 4, setting it aside as you do" work? Now both things happen at the same time, so you can pick the order, right? Or is that already a confusing/wordy solution or does it break other things?
Having to know the correct order isn't great (yes this comes up with real cards sometimes due to lose track and triggered gains). Really that approach wants to end up the hypothetical good phrasing of "gain a card to set-aside land." But if I were changing the card now I prefer the Villa/Cobbler approach anyway and so wouldn't put in the work on that wording.
Question for Donald (or anyone interested in game design):
How much emphasis do you place on getting the wording of a card technically correct/precise on first print? Obviously, you do it if you can, but how much time/energy do you generally feel inclined to spend on it versus other priorities like coming up with more cards or getting them out earlier?
Like with the Tunnel thing, there's the common sense approach of "most people know you don't fish them out of your discard pile or look at the rest of that pile." How important do you think it is to keep the game competitively "unbreakable," versus just expecting the players to to play the card as intended?
(let me know if that question isn't making sense)
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This is probably a silly question, but if you gain Nomad Camp with Summon, then reveal Watchtower to try topdecking the Nomad Camp, does Summon still succeed in setting it aside?
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I wonder if lose-track could never have existed in the first place.
First of all, you have the cases where a card is covered. The problem is that you have stuff like Warrior finding a Tunnel and not being able to trash it because it gets covered by a Gold. I'm pretty sure almost 100% of people who play IRL plays that wrong, because nobody thinks about that rule applying then. Arguably that also goes for all cases with triggered gains on when-gain (or triggered gains on when-trash resulting from when-gain). Almost everybody not intimately familiar with lose-track (or having played a lot online very observantly), wouldn't think that you can't move the card.
Secondly, lose-track is the reason cards played from trash don't jump out*, which was relevant from day 1. But in most cases people don't need to know the rule, because that's the way they play it intuitively - the opposite of Warrior/Tunnel. Of course you need a rule, but it could just be that cards played from trash stay there.
The third type is when the card is actually lost track of for the players. I can think of Inn shuffling in a card. In this case it's obvious that it's lost track of; you hardly need a rule, but it could be a rule about shuffling a card.
The fourth type is cases where a card moved. For instance, abilities moving a card twice: Counterfeit and Procession don't trash a card that moved in the meantime; Vassal doesn't put a Faithful Hound in play after it was set aside; Summon or Replace don't move a gained card that was moved by Watchtower/Royal Seal/Tracker/Travelleing Fair. Or multiple abilities triggered by a card moving: Alchemist, Scheme, Hermit, Prince and Faithful Hound all trigger on discard, so then just one of them can move the card; and we also have Fortress + Possession.
My question is whether lose-track is needed to regulate this type of interaction. Why not just allow that everything happens? All abilities move the card. Well, one weirdness with Watchtower is that it would let you move a card from trash without even gaining it. We could revise the rule about playing from trash to cover both cases: "A card can't move from trash unless an ability lets you can gain it from there." Another weirdness would be that Hound would be put in your hand at end of turn but still be played by Prince the next turn, but I guess that would be okay. (It would be an optional and dumb move.) (Edit: Not a real case, since a Princed Hound can't use its ability.) I can't think of other problems right now.
The fifth type is cards specifically designed to exploit lose-track, like Madman, Prince, Wish. These can't be successfully Throned because of lose-track. A rule about moving cards from trash doesn't help, because these cards move from somewhere else. This type might be a bigger problem. The problem is purely with TR variants. A fix could be to make all TR variants like Royal Carriage: "You may play a card from your hand, then if it's still in play, replay it". (It would mean that Madman and Wish doesn't even give +Actions on second play, but that doesn't really matter.**)
Conclusion: Lose-track is complicated, so I probably haven't covered all cases, but if I designed Dominion from scratch, I might try to do it this way:
Rule 1: A card can't move from trash unless an ability lets you can gain it from there.
Rule 2: A card that is shuffled in a face-down deck can't be moved.
Change Throne Room variants to: "You may play a card from your hand, then if it's still in play, replay it".
The point of these two rules is that they are intuitive. Someone might wonder about moving cards from trash, but most people wouldn't assume that you can without checking the rules at least.
*except when an ability tells you to play a card from the trash: only Necromancer, which specifically prohibits the card from moving.
**Late edit: It would of course, as Donald has pointed out, also mean that things like TR+Feast doesn't work.
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A separate, more doable, idea is scrapping covered-card-is-lost-track-of (the first type in my previous post). That would solve a lot of problems and make the game more intuitive. Unfortunately it's stated in the Dark Ages rulebook.
EDIT: It seems that lose-track is not even mentioned in any other rulebook. So unless you have Dark Ages, you only know about it through the examples given for certain card interactions. But the Hinterlands rulebook, for instance, doesn't mention anything about lose-track weirdness with Border Village. I don't think any rulebook has any examples of a card being lost track of because it's covered.
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This is probably a silly question, but if you gain Nomad Camp with Summon, then reveal Watchtower to try topdecking the Nomad Camp, does Summon still succeed in setting it aside?
Yes. A card can't get lost if it doesn't actually go to a new location. Nomad Camp goes onto your deck, and Watchtower moves Nomad Camp from the top of your deck...to the top of your deck. So Summon can still find that Nomad Camp.
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How much emphasis do you place on getting the wording of a card technically correct/precise on first print? Obviously, you do it if you can, but how much time/energy do you generally feel inclined to spend on it versus other priorities like coming up with more cards or getting them out earlier?
The exact wording matters, it comes up, so I try to have a good wording to start with. However in the rare case that it isn't clear what the wording should be (in a major way, not, do we need to remind people here that "each player" includes them or whatever such thing), I don't put the work in there until it seems like the card is good and will stick around.
This goes back to a card called Harvest in Cornucopia. It said something like, "gain Silvers to hand until you have 5 cards in hand." We had a 12-page thread arguing about the best wording for that. Then it died. A lesson in not doing that.
Like with the Tunnel thing, there's the common sense approach of "most people know you don't fish them out of your discard pile or look at the rest of that pile." How important do you think it is to keep the game competitively "unbreakable," versus just expecting the players to to play the card as intended?
Well the rules have to work, I am stuck there.
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I wonder if lose-track could never have existed in the first place.
If your game is simple enough, or has a small enough set of cards that you're careful with, it doesn't need such a rule (for example Temporum doesn't have it); past a certain point you need it. You might actually lose track of a card; what then?
At first glance it seems like "do two things with a card" is the culprit, e.g. Thrones. But if you have enough triggered abilities, you can build the problem cases.
Rule 1: A card can't move from trash unless an ability lets you can gain it from there.
Rule 2: A card that is shuffled in a face-down deck can't be moved.
Change Throne Room variants to: "You may play a card from your hand, then if it's still in play, replay it".
These days I think I would go the other way on Throne / Feast; if you can't put a card into play and it isn't there, you don't follow the instructions. That seems like it would work, and well, to follow the instructions we have to know what they are, and this means they're always there when you have to follow them. So it just seems better. And then it deals with some problem situations, saves some words in places. Note again that Thrones look special but are just the easiest way to get the problems they create. Playing a card a single time can also generate problems.
Probably I wouldn't give up on having one-shots and durations; however I could have had types for one-shots and Thrones, so that cards could refer to them (and thus could exempt them) and that could have helped in places too, getting rid of e.g. Procession problems.
I don't think it's reasonable to argue that we can probably just fish cards from the discard pile so why not allow it. Ditto for cards on top of decks. I think, once the card is out of sight, you have to stop messing with it, or you'll have problems. I think you could cut way down on how much that matters though, by changing the "play a card" rules and then tweaking a few specific cards, e.g. the tweak for Summon I posted earlier.
Ideally you simply work on your game for 10 years without getting it published; then you can take everything into account and get it all perfect. And I recommend this approach to anyone who otherwise would be my competition.
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I think the wording thing also really depends on the game.
One is the number of interactions. 7 Wonders for example has a wonder from an expansion that does the same thing as one of the base game (grabbing cards from the shared discard pile), and the rulebook hard-codes that the base game's wonder goes first if both try to do that the same turn. It's not terribly elegant to hardcode things like this, but if your game doesn't have that many interactions, you can still do it. Dominion has countless interactions, so printing hard codings in the rulebook would be impossible.
A second thing is how easily rules can be guessed from a "what makes sense" perspective. Tunnel is a case where nobody really has a problem with it, because, uh, it doesn't really make sense that you'd be able to gain the entire Silver pile. For games that are more thematic than Dominion, this can't only be applied in that sense, too, it also can help memorize edge cases that would otherwise be hard to remember. This ties in with the hard-coded thing: For example, in the game lifeboat, when you have a bucket of chum in the boat and fall overboard, the bucket will do the same thing as played - attract sharks. Other things don't do this, but it makes sense the bucket would do that thematically, so it's not as hard to remember.
The last thing is lightness, of course. In a cooperative game or a game where the winner doesn't matter (party games), you can just vote to resolve a lack of clarity. In a strategic game where people actually try to win against other players, this can't really work.
Just my 2 cents.
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it doesn't really make sense that you'd be able to gain the entire Silver pile
Now I'm idly wondering how much a "gain every Silver in the supply" Event would need to cost. My reckoning is "only" about $12?
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it doesn't really make sense that you'd be able to gain the entire Silver pile
Now I'm idly wondering how much a "gain every Silver in the supply" Event would need to cost. My reckoning is "only" about $12?
It's essentially unpriceable; in the games where you want it, it just wins, whereas in the games where you don't, you're probably not really interested.
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When I read this a question comes to mind:
Consider the following situation:
0: I have a Watchtower in hand.
1: I buy a Border Village (any on-buy effects are resolved, there are none).
2: I gain the bought Border Village (the way I understand it, bought cards are first bought, then gained. The gaining puts them in your discard, not the buying. On-buy effects are resolved BEFORE they are in your discard unless otherwise specified). The Border Village is placed on top of my discard pile (there are no on-gain effects that say 'instead').
3: Any on-gain effects are now triggered. There are two: the optional revealing the Watchtower, and the mandatory 'gain a cheaper card' on Border Village. Since they happen at the same time, I get to decide which one happens first.
World A:
4: I first do the Border Village effect. I gain a new card which covers up the Border Village in my discard, and since I only know the top card of my discard, I cannot top-deck Border Village with Watchtower. I can still reveal Watchtower to top-deck or trash the newly gained card, revealing the Border Village below it, but I don't know if this was the same Border Village as before. Furthermore, since I resolved the Border Village `gain' first, revealing the Watchtower can only refer to the most recent gain, and not one before it.
World B:
4: I first do the Watchtower effect. Since Border Village hasn't dissapeared to below the top card of my discard pile, or has been shuffled through my deck, I know with certainty that the top card on my deck is the gained Border Village. I reveal my Watchtower and top-deck it or trash it.
5: I now resolve the Border Village effect. Since Border Village was gained, the effect is triggered regardless of where it goes, so it being moved to the top of my deck or the trash doesn't remove its on-gain effect. So I now gain a new card and put it on my discard.
6: I can now use Watchtower to trash/top-deck the newly gained card as well.
So as far as I understand it, the problem with Summon is that it says "Gain. Set aside." Which is ordered, and not concurrent/parallel, so the actual gaining can mess up finding it when you need to set it aside, because other 'when you gain'-effects come before the 'Set aside'.
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If your game is simple enough, or has a small enough set of cards that you're careful with, it doesn't need such a rule (for example Temporum doesn't have it); past a certain point you need it. You might actually lose track of a card; what then?
That was my "third type", where I could only think of a card actually being shuffled in, which you could have a specific rule for. But I guess you're implying that there are other cases, which doesn't seem unlikely.
These days I think I would go the other way on Throne / Feast; if you can't put a card into play and it isn't there, you don't follow the instructions. That seems like it would work, and well, to follow the instructions we have to know what they are, and this means they're always there when you have to follow them. So it just seems better.
Right, that's a much better general rule than changing the text on Throne Rooms like I suggested, and it would have the same effect.
Note again that Thrones look special but are just the easiest way to get the problems they create. Playing a card a single time can also generate problems.
Yes, that was my "fourth type", a big category. My idea was to allow "losing track" then, assuming that the players know where the card is. Actually, the Princed Hound example was wrong (it doesn't happen), but a Princed Alchemist would be put on your deck and also played by Prince next turn (normally from your hand); and this is actually not so great because the Alchemist could be put on your deck or discarded in the meantime. At the very least the tracking would be horrible. Clearly my rules are not enough.
But I'm still not sure that I agree with you that simply having a card covered up means you should lose track. Given that the current lose-track is in place for all physical movement of cards, I don't see the problem (at least right now). And it would make some counter-intuitive interactions more intuitive and simpler. You could Summon Death Cart, or Watchtower-trash/topdeck whichever card you wanted with Cache, Border Village, etc.
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World A:
4: I first do the Border Village effect. I gain a new card which covers up the Border Village in my discard, and since I only know the top card of my discard, I cannot top-deck Border Village with Watchtower. I can still reveal Watchtower to top-deck or trash the newly gained card, revealing the Border Village below it, but I don't know if this was the same Border Village as before. Furthermore, since I resolved the Border Village `gain' first, revealing the Watchtower can only refer to the most recent gain, and not one before it.
Everything you wrote is correct except this. The conclusion is correct, but there's a mistake in the reasoning. You can still reveal Watchtower for the BV gain, since that window is still open - you're still doing when-gain stuff for the BV gain. You can choose to move the BV, but it will fail. The only reason Watchtower can't move the BV, is that it lost track of it since it was covered up.
This distinction actually matters when you gain Rocks and have a Watchtower.
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World A:
4: I first do the Border Village effect. I gain a new card which covers up the Border Village in my discard, and since I only know the top card of my discard, I cannot top-deck Border Village with Watchtower. I can still reveal Watchtower to top-deck or trash the newly gained card, revealing the Border Village below it, but I don't know if this was the same Border Village as before. Furthermore, since I resolved the Border Village `gain' first, revealing the Watchtower can only refer to the most recent gain, and not one before it.
Everything you wrote is correct except this. The conclusion is correct, but there's a mistake in the reasoning. You can still reveal Watchtower for the BV gain, since that window is still open - you're still doing when-gain stuff for the BV gain. You can choose to move the BV, but it will fail. The only reason Watchtower can't move the BV, is that it lost track of it since it was covered up.
This distinction actually matters when you gain Rocks and have a Watchtower.
Makes sense. The program hasn't jumped out of the 'Border Village gain'-level yet:
Border Village gain
---Border Village when-gain effect (other card gain).
------Watchtower when-gain effect (top-decking/trashing).
---Watchtower when-gain effect (top-decking/trashing).
Border Village gain
---Watchtower when-gain effect (top-decking/trashing).
---Border Village when-gain effect (other card gain).
------Watchtower when-gain effect (top-decking/trashing).