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Rules Questions / Re: Market Square when-a-card-is-trashed timing
« on: April 16, 2013, 07:50:52 am »
Blue cards like Secret Chamber and Horse Traders definitely resolve before the attack resolves. Moat has no meaning if you resolve it after you already discarded two cards or got a Curse, and you can't reveal a Moat (or anything else) after you draw a new set of four cards from Minion, which is after the attack resolves. You play Minion, I reveal Horse Traders before you even decide whether to attack or take money, set it aside for next turn, and if you choose to attack, I'm not affected because my hand now has only four cards. Trash a Cultist, discard Market Square, gain a Gold, and then draw three cards, possibly drawing your new Gold. Cellar discarding a Tunnel, you reveal the Tunnel before it gets discarded, then gain a Gold before drawing your new card. Talisman doesn't get you a second copy of a card when you buy it; rather, it resolves before the buy resolves, gives you a first copy of the card, and then the buy gets resolved, gaining you the second copy (or possibly nothing!). Beggar topdecks a Silver before Sea Hag discards it and replaces it with a Curse.
Border Village and Haggler, at least in online implementations, gain you another card after you gain them, but that's the only exception I can think of. That would matter when you gain an Inn, because you could shuffle the Border Village into your deck too. But I'm not sure "that's the way Isotropic works" trumps what the rules actually say, and by my understanding it should work the other way round.
I'm not convinced by the idea that when a card refers to "a card", it implicitly doesn't include itself. When scoring Gardens and Silk Road, each includes themselves in the count of your deck, and Secret Chamber can put itself back on your deck as one of the "two cards" it refers to. I'm not sure there's a strong argument that "a card" is semantically different to "cards" in any other way than one is singular and the other is plural.
Trader and Watchtower have to be revealed from your hand, but they aren't there when you gain them, so no problem there. If you had some way to gain a Watchtower in your hand, I am pretty sure you wouldn't then be allowed to reveal and topdeck it - not because it can't refer to itself, but rather because the gain has already happened, and reactions have to resolve first. If you could gain a Trader in hand, you wouldn't be allowed to reveal it in response to gaining it because Trader reacts to would-gain, which happens strictly before when-gain, and may in fact prevent the gain that would have happened.
If Market Square is resolved before whatever trashed it, then it's still in your hand. I didn't see anything in the rulebook explaining whether, or why, when-trash happens after trashing but when-attacked happens before being attacked.
Border Village and Haggler, at least in online implementations, gain you another card after you gain them, but that's the only exception I can think of. That would matter when you gain an Inn, because you could shuffle the Border Village into your deck too. But I'm not sure "that's the way Isotropic works" trumps what the rules actually say, and by my understanding it should work the other way round.
I'm not convinced by the idea that when a card refers to "a card", it implicitly doesn't include itself. When scoring Gardens and Silk Road, each includes themselves in the count of your deck, and Secret Chamber can put itself back on your deck as one of the "two cards" it refers to. I'm not sure there's a strong argument that "a card" is semantically different to "cards" in any other way than one is singular and the other is plural.
Trader and Watchtower have to be revealed from your hand, but they aren't there when you gain them, so no problem there. If you had some way to gain a Watchtower in your hand, I am pretty sure you wouldn't then be allowed to reveal and topdeck it - not because it can't refer to itself, but rather because the gain has already happened, and reactions have to resolve first. If you could gain a Trader in hand, you wouldn't be allowed to reveal it in response to gaining it because Trader reacts to would-gain, which happens strictly before when-gain, and may in fact prevent the gain that would have happened.
If Market Square is resolved before whatever trashed it, then it's still in your hand. I didn't see anything in the rulebook explaining whether, or why, when-trash happens after trashing but when-attacked happens before being attacked.