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4301

Other Games / Re: Temporum

« on: November 30, 2014, 04:02:28 am »

I probably shouldn't speak for Donald but I get the impression he's softened his stance on "the rules are all on the cards full stop." The text, especially on Zone cards, is much briefer and seems just a hair less rigorous than in Dominion. Inquisition for instance has the same interpretation issue as Torturer from Dominion ("can I pick the choice that's impossible to carry out?") with less careful wording. Even the rulebook concedes Inquisition is an "exception to the usual rules," which I take to mean "This FAQ supersedes the card text."

If this is so, it's kind of understandable. Making the rules perfectly clear on the cards is a nice ideal to strive for, and obviously you don't want to stray too far from it, but I guess experience shows that no matter how carefully the card is worded, people will still screw it up until they read the manual (or someone explains it to them).

I wouldn't say that I've softened any stances. There's a basic conflict between wanting "friendly" rules and "precise" rules. The fewer card interactions you have in your game, the more you should lean towards friendly. At a certain point though friendly is unacceptable, you have to be precise because rules questions will come up. You do have to fit your text on the cards though.

You are quoting the .pdf; that "exception" business was added by an editor and I got them to take it back out. I am looking at a physical rulebook, it does not have it. Inquisition is not an exception.

I think my big mistake in the card wordings is "another." "When you play another card, draw a card" should be something like "Every time you play a card other than this, draw a card." It's clarified in the rulebook, but sometimes someone sees the printed card and thinks that the rule just happens once ever.

4302

Other Games / Re: Temporum

« on: November 30, 2014, 03:45:08 am »

Just played my first 2 player game. Still good with 2. I have a feeling it's going to be like Dominion, where 2 player is more strategic and competitive. One thing that's very cool is that in all 3 of my games, when a player won, at least 1 other player was 1 or 2 turns from winning. Of course, these are games between people who are all very new to the game.

It plays a bit differently with each number of players. With 2 players you just desperately want to stop the other player from getting ahead; they score a card, you score a card to try to nullify any benefit for them. With 3 players there's less of that but it's still harder to rule times than with more players. With 4 players it's easy to rule times and you often can't just stop someone by yourself, you just co-rule. With 5 players it's easy to rule times but not quite as easy as with 4. And then the path of history is more controllable with fewer players.

I found one small thing to be a bit confusing in the rules, and that's the definition of "visiting." During the steps of a turn, it describes step 2 as moving to the zone you want to go, then step 3 as "visiting" the place, which means "following the instructions for that zone." Based on this, you would think that to "visit" a zone doesn't involve moving to it; it means simply performing the instructions on the zone. However... when various effects tell you to visit a different zone than the one you're in, the faq for those specific cards clarify that to visit a zone you first move there, then do the instructions. So if "visit" means "move and follow instructions", then why do the steps of a turn separate "move" and "visit" into 2 steps?

The concept of "visit" was something I was aware of needing to state clearly and I tried to and well there it is. Things that tell you to visit a zone move you there. Moving on your turn is a separate step, that seems good, and then visiting normally doesn't move you because you're already there. I wouldn't combine moving and visiting for your normal turn because on your turn you move in the way you move on turns, rather than in the way you move due to Anubis Statuette or Information Age.

Also, I pulled off the Anubis Statuette / Information Age interaction/combo. This caused a confusing rule question... Anubis Statuette says that after you visit the zone you choose, you move your marker to the real zone in that time. But Information Age caused me to visit (and thus move to) other zones. So at the end of it, I was in a different time in a real zone. Does Anubis still move me back to the time where I chose to visit in the first place, in the real zone in that time? It seems not, because the Anubis FAQ says "if the player is in an unreal zone.." But it is a general rules question... why is the Anubis FAQ correct there? What stops the Anubis's normal text of "move to the real zone in that time" from happening? Has Anubis lost track of your marker?

The intention is that Anubis Statuette just moves you back to reality. In retrospect it should say "your Time" rather than "that Time." Obv. this interaction isn't especially rare; Information Age is just the kind of place you want to go with Anubis Statuette.

4303

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part II

« on: November 27, 2014, 10:58:44 am »

I am the math that cries.

someone want to explain this joke?

It's not a joke. It's uh. An insight? A way of looking at things. Contrasting different ends of the spectrum.

4304

Dominion General Discussion / Re: With my Dominion Time Machine...

« on: November 27, 2014, 01:59:02 am »

Ah. I saw the first "card" and considered it sufficient.

I too thought that was sufficient. But, perhaps not.

4305

Dominion General Discussion / Re: With my Dominion Time Machine...

« on: November 26, 2014, 11:14:46 pm »

Whoa, you do have a Dominion time machine! You went back and made that fix already!

"If you do, you are unaffected by that Attack"

"... card."

4306

Dominion General Discussion / Re: With my Dominion Time Machine...

« on: November 26, 2014, 10:34:20 pm »

When blocking an attack by Moat or Lighthouse, it's clear (or at least pretty intuitive) that i don't have to gain a Curse. But what about the drawing? That doesn't seem like an attack. Moat says "unaffected by the attack", not "by the attack card". so does this mean i can draw a card? Council Room lets me draw one and there it isn't an attack. By adding "if he did" the point becomes moot, and i would argue it avoids confusion for new players who don't have that firm a grasp on what "attack" type means.

Well the fix would be for Moat to say "Attack card." "Card" is supposed to be implicit; there is no such thing as an Attack that is not an Attack card. But it could be explicit.

4307

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part II

« on: November 26, 2014, 08:42:32 pm »

I am the math that cries.

4308

Dominion FAQ / Re: King's Court + Mountebank

« on: November 26, 2014, 08:40:32 pm »

Sorry if this has already been an answered question but I can't seem to find an answer for it.

How do you resolve this combination? Assuming the opponent does not have a Curse in his hand currently, does he get 3 Curses and 3 Copper, or do you resolve each instance of Mountebank separately giving the opponent a chance to discard a Curse on the second instance, ending up with 1 Curse and 2 Copper (+1 Curse +1 Copper, -1 Curse, +1 Curse +1 Copper).

You resolve each one separately. However discarding a Curse means discarding it from your hand to your discard pile -  it isn't trashed - and the Curse you get from Mountebank doesn't go to your hand. So if your opponent doesn't have a Curse to discard the first time, they still won't the second time (though they can choose not to discard the first time if they want).

There is a forum for rules questions! It's called "Rules Questions."

4309

Rules Questions / Re: procession card and the timing of trashing the action card

« on: November 25, 2014, 07:17:51 pm »

Procession-BoM is a hard-coded interaction. It does what it does because the Rulebook says so. IIRC (can't find the quote), Donald recognized that the way they should work, based on the wording of both cards, was too unintuitive, so he decided on this specific ruling, and that's how it is.

He really said that? Oh my, no wonder the "official" rule is so strange to me. Does anyone else know where he said that, maybe?

Here's a link to a summary with a link to the in-depth version: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=8717.msg264712#msg264712

Throne on Band as Feast would do nothing the second time via a literal interpretation (pointed out by Sir Martin). It seemed like no-one was ever guessing that, and it's not in the rulebook. So the ruling is that Throne Rooms "lock in;" and this doesn't ever matter except for Throne/etc. on Band as one-shot. The entirety of the special ruling is that Band is still Feast the second time; the rest of it follows from the rules.

4310

Rules Questions / Re: procession card and the timing of trashing the action card

« on: November 25, 2014, 06:59:38 pm »

This can't happen with information relative to the kind of card it is. The player can remember, say, the price of Feast, because there's likely another copy of it somewhere in view of everybody.

In most cases, there's the randomizer card to refer to. As always there are Exceptions.

4311

Rules Questions / Re: procession card and the timing of trashing the action card

« on: November 25, 2014, 06:57:50 pm »

So you are implying "lose track" only means that it can't move a card. I don't have any official ruling on this, but i would find it weird should it be able to find out the price of a card of which it doesn't even know the whereabouts. After all, "lose track" is a name that kind of implies that you lose, you know, track. Talking program wise, it's a lot like being unable to reference a removed object. Why should the reference be available for one thing but not for the other?

The "lose track" rule made it into the Dark Ages rulebook. It only applies to moving cards. The rule exists because you might actually have lost track of a card and thus be unable to move it (though for cases covered by the rule, you may personally know where the card is). It only applies to moving cards because that's the only issue; we can't move a lost card, but we can still know information about it.

In rare circumstances an effect may try to move a card that isn't where that effect expects the card to be. In those cases the card does not move - the effect has "lost track" of the card. Losing track of a card prevents it from being moved, but doesn't stop anything else from happening. For example, if you Procession a Madman, Procession first puts Madman in play; then you resolve Madman, getting +2 Actions and drawing cards and returning Madman to the Madman pile; then Procession fails to put Madman into play again, because Procession expects to find Madman in play, but it isn't there, it's in the Madman pile; then you resolve Madman again, only getting +2 Actions this time, since it says "if you do" before the card-drawing, and you did not actually return it to the Madman pile this time; then Procession fails to trash Madman since Procession again expects to find Madman in play and it isn't there; and then you gain an Action costing $1 if you can. Cards don't lose track of cards that they move, only cards that other cards move. For example when Procession puts Madman into play, that does not cause Procession to lose track of Madman; it's Madman moving itself that causes Procession to lose track of it. Things lose track of a card if something moves it, if it's the top card of a deck and gets covered up, or if it's the top card of a discard pile and gets covered up.

4312

Other Games / Re: Temporum

« on: November 24, 2014, 09:35:10 pm »

You have played the game and I haven't, so please explain. What is the reason the deck has 2 of each card, other than to have enough cards to make a decent-sized deck? Is there some mechanic that makes the duplicates pertinent? A location on the board, perhaps?

There's the opposite kind of location actually - one that lets you play cards as copies of other cards.

Initially there were no duplicates. Moritz from HiG played a game and commented on how I got plenty of variety from the 10 cards that change; why did I need the deck to be all unique cards? He thought going down to 3 or 4 copies of each card would make the game easier to learn. I thought he had a point but lowered it to merely 2 copies of each card. When I tried this out I found that I really gave nothing up to get there. And then, it can be fun to get two copies of the same card, and obv. it means 30 fewer pieces of art, which is a lot.

I will post the secret history once it's clear that people can actually buy it outside of the con.

4313

Rules Questions / Re: Bunch of Duration Questions

« on: November 20, 2014, 11:12:31 pm »

What if you Procession a Procession that is doubling a Duration?

Going by 2), the first Procession should be discarded.  But now you have a Duration effect coming up on your next turn that isn't being marked by either its doubler or the card itself.

Yes, Procession can result in an upcoming effect that isn't tracked by anything. I knew Procession was an issue with duration cards but decided to do the card anyway. Try not to forget any unresolved duration effects, that's my advice. You can also have multiple Possessions you have to remember with no tracking. And the names are similar - Procession, Possession. That can't be a coincidence.

4314

Rules Questions / Re: Bunch of Duration Questions

« on: November 20, 2014, 10:40:56 pm »

If you play Throne Room-Outpost in your normal turn, can you then choose which of them you clean up in your Outpost turn?
I would think yes, because when your normal turn is over, you can choose whether to resolve the normal Outpost or the Throne Room generated Outpost first.

Yes, you pick which Outpost to resolve first.

Maybe I am just confused here (which seems likely) but it doesn't seem like there is a difference between the "2" Outposts.  You play Throne Room, and it plays Outpost 2 times.  There isn't a "normal Outpost" and a "Throne Room generated Outpost" is there?  The Throne room played both Outposts.  It stays out to remind you that you played it twice, but you don't have a "normal" one.  I suppose the two "take an extra turn"s happen at the same time (after this one), so choosing which one to resolve first makes sense, but it shouldn't affect the outcome right?

Yes, Throne Room played both Outposts. Both plays of Outpost are that one Outpost card, facilitated by Throne Room. So you don't discard Outpost until a confusingly late point as previously discussed. That leaves the question of what your options are for discarding Throne Room.

The Seaside rulebook says (going from a text file, feel free to consult a printed rulebook): "If you play or modify a Duration card with another card, that other card also stays in front of you until it's no longer doing anything. For example if you play Throne Room on Merchant Ship, both cards stay in play until the Clean-up phase of your next turn. The Throne Room stays in play to remind you that you are getting the effect of Merchant Ship twice on that next turn."

[That "or modify" is there because once it seemed like I might conceivably make a card like "reveal this when you play a card, to add 1 to numbers in that card's text."]

So the question is, at what point is Throne Room "no longer doing anything." As always I just want the ruling to match the rulebook as well as it can.

Throne Room played Outpost twice. You could say that Throne Room is "doing anything" until the card has resolved twice; or that it's "doing anything" until the card has resolved once. I am tentatively going with, it's "doing anything" until the card has resolved twice.

4315

Rules Questions / Re: Bunch of Duration Questions

« on: November 20, 2014, 08:25:45 pm »

But Scheme is a "may", not a "must". You can always choose to scheme nothing. I can't imagine any scenario where scheming a first-turn duration is different from scheming nothing at all,

Advisor's Pal: Action - Duration, $5
Now and at the start of your next turn, +1 Card and +$1.
----------
When you choose this card, gain a Gold.

Strict Peddler: Action, $4
+1 Card
+1 Action
+$1
This turn, optional abilities are mandatory.

4316

Rules Questions / Re: Bunch of Duration Questions

« on: November 20, 2014, 05:43:33 pm »

If you play Throne Room-Outpost in your normal turn, can you then choose which of them you clean up in your Outpost turn?
I would think yes, because when your normal turn is over, you can choose whether to resolve the normal Outpost or the Throne Room generated Outpost first.

Yes, you pick which Outpost to resolve first.

4317

Rules Questions / Re: Bunch of Duration Questions

« on: November 19, 2014, 07:46:25 pm »

if you play 5 outposts on a turn does it take 5 turns for each outpost to try to resolve and then fail? or after the first outpost turn do they all fail right away and go back into the discard pile.

Man so many super edge cases that are never going to occur in my games but for some reason I just really want to know.

I am as always just trying to interpret the rulebook and card texts as best as I can, and man I'm not checking what the online version does, or complaining if it doesn't do this, leave them alone, they are busy.

If you play 5 Outposts (after some other player's turn), they all stay out and you take another turn (with a 3-card hand). That turn that one Outpost goes away; it's done. The other four sit there, confusing everybody, until the clean-up phase of the next turn (which normally won't be yours) and go away then. They don't "know" they aren't doing anything until after clean-up on the extra turn, so they can't be discarded that turn.

The rulebook says, "Leave the card in front of you until the Clean-up Phase of the last turn in which it does something (discard it before drawing for the following turn)." This is impossible; clean-up is already over before Outpost is done doing things (even when what it's doing is trying to and failing to produce an extra turn). My ruling is to discard it in the next clean-up phase; clean-up is when we discard stuff from play. It won't be your turn but I would discard it then anyway. The original intention was for cards to be discarded the last turn they did something, even when it wasn't your turn (and the precursor to Cutpurse was discarded during someone else's turn). The rules assume the card will go away on your turn but it's normal for the main body of the rules to focus on normal cases rather than exceptions. The basic rule has a parenthetical that assumes it's your turn and well, I had to make a ruling and there it is.

4318

Rules Questions / Re: Bunch of Duration Questions

« on: November 19, 2014, 07:36:22 pm »

I was under the impression that the intent of the rules was that any card—regardless of the Duration type—stays in play until Clean-up on the last turn it does something.

That was totally the intention; however via the rulebook rules, only Duration cards stay out.

If Outpost's effect is the entire turn it creates, rather than just an instantaneous setup, then it stands to reason that Possession should also remain in play until the turn(s) it creates are over.

Outpost causes an extra turn to happen, but it has nothing left to track once that turn starts, and goes away during the extra turn.

4319

Rules Questions / Re: Bunch of Duration Questions

« on: November 19, 2014, 06:03:15 pm »

This isn't exactly what I asked. Or at least it wasn't what I meant to ask. I'll try asking it in some different ways:
If you play more than 1 in your normal turn, will all of them get cleaned up in your Outpost turn (which is your next turn)? Or will all except 1 of them think that they can still give you an extra turn after the Outpost turn?
If you play more than 1 Possession, then you get 1 extra turn for each of them. When does the Outposts know that this isn't the case for them? In the Outpost turn, will all except 1 of them think they they can still give you an extra turn, or does they know that you can't get more turns after the one you've already gotten? Do they all give you the extra turn at the same time, so they know you don't get more, and if this is the case, then why is it different from Possession?

Possession doesn't have a limit on how many turns it can give you, and Outpost does. This is just from the card texts; the limit on Outpost, the lack of it on Possession. I think that covers the difference from Possession for you?

When two things try to happen at the same time, you resolve them one at a time. You resolve one Outpost, then another. Resolving Outpost means taking an extra turn. The card is terse, we have to figure everything out from "Take an extra turn after this one." I am interpreting the timing as in-between turns, and the effect as taking another turn right then, rather than say setting up some counter of number of turns to take afterwards.

So, you resolve an Outpost. You take a turn or fail to. The other Outpost is just sitting there through all of this. After that Outpost fails, or after that Outpost succeeds and you take a turn and it's after clean-up and back to being in-between turns, you resolve another Outpost. Outpost stays out until resolved.

4320

Rules Questions / Re: Bunch of Duration Questions

« on: November 19, 2014, 04:59:32 pm »

If you played more than 1 Outpost in a turn, or Throne Roomed (or King's Courted or Processioned) an Outpost, will it be cleaned up in the Outpost turn, or will it stay out and only draw 3 cards in the clean up phase in the Outpost turn?

The card-drawing applies to the turn you play Outpost, just that turn. Any turn you play Outpost, you only draw 3 cards in that clean-up.

The point at which Outpost checks to see if it would give you an extra turn or not is after clean-up - after cards have been discarded already. So any played Outpost stays out until your next turn.

4321

Dominion General Discussion / Re: With my Dominion Time Machine...

« on: November 17, 2014, 11:41:29 pm »

The Soothsayer thing I don't really get, Soothsayer's one of the weaker cursers as is in my opinion, I think the added complexity is fine to keep it from being too weak.

As an experienced player, it's easy to see the benefit of a card being at a slightly better power level, and easy to see the benefit of a card being slightly more interesting. It's hard to see the benefit of a card being slightly simpler. Being simpler is just drastically more valuable to the game though. Dominion is played by normal people.

This case is particularly crazy and well I struggle not to discuss strategy. The extra text wasn't possibly worth it, that's how I see it.

4322

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part II

« on: November 17, 2014, 11:21:37 pm »

What is "Sarnath"?  I keep seeing people say it instead of "ninja'd".  Is it some ninja from pop culture that I am unaware of?

He was a MiseTings (an MTG site/forum) user who was known for often beating people to the punch.

Not so! Don't just go by what mtgsal's wiki says, they don't even cite a source.

Sarnath was a MiseTings poster who was known for often posting the same thing just ahead of Gisgo - Gisgo, specifically. "Sarnath'd" caught on; "Gisgo'd," not so much. "Annorax'd" caught on to mean "I don't get it" - nothing to do with ninja-ing people. I was there and the mtgsal wiki writers apparently were not.

4323

Dominion Articles / Re: Openings: Horse Traders

« on: November 17, 2014, 10:57:54 pm »

Yeah I was confused about that too.  But most of the spam accounts sign up with a nonsensical email address and this had a real-looking email address.  So...I dunno.  I'll keep watching it.

A really simple trick you can do is, for accounts with no posts, only allow posts in one subforum (then in the instructions for new accounts, say to put your first post in that forum). Then at 1 post let them post anywhere. Automated accounts will fail to post and so much for them.

4324

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Should this subforum be renamed?

« on: November 17, 2014, 05:16:48 pm »

Amateurs.  *busts out some wax cylinders*

Sure, go with the mass-produced thing. Tin foil is where it's at.

4325

Dominion General Discussion / Re: With my Dominion Time Machine...

« on: November 17, 2014, 05:11:02 pm »

I would have Masquerade pass cards only between players who have cards ("Each player sets aside a card. All players who did pass it to the next player to their left who did.").

The thing about that is that it's probably not worth mucking with the wording to where it's awkward and annoyingly opaque to anyone who's not an experienced/knowledgeable player, just to account for a rare edge case.

That being said, if we are determined to eliminate the pin, why not just add "If you have at least 1 card in hand" to the very beginning of the text? (edit: the non-bold text, that is, after the +2 Cards)

I have a card-passing thing in Temporum (where it frequently will be the case that someone has no cards); it says "Each player with any cards in hand passes one left to the next such player, at once."

For me the entire point of Masquerade is the card-passing. The rest of the card makes that part work. If I didn't like the card-passing, the whole card would die. Any combination of card-drawing and trashing that I did would not be trying to look like Masquerade without the passing.