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Author Topic: Prince and Reserves  (Read 6749 times)

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AJD

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Prince and Reserves
« on: April 29, 2015, 04:06:40 pm »
+3

Ordinarily using Prince on a Reserve would strand the Prince, since the Reserve isn't discarded from play the turn it's played. But—if you Prince a Duplicate or a Royal Carriage, then…
…at the beginning of your turn you play the Reserve card, putting it on the Tavern mat;
…then once you gain or play another card, you could call the Reserve card to repeat it and put the Reserve back in play;
…and then discard the Reserve in the Cleanup phase of the same turn, triggering Prince to set it aside once more.

In other words, you can successfully Prince a Duplicate or Royal Carriage as long as you call the Reserve card back every turn, right?

Does the lose-track rule kick in because the Reserve has moved itself to the Tavern mat and back before being discarded? I don't think it does, since Prince isn't trying to keep track of it; it's just checking to see if it's discarded from play or not.
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Donald X.

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #1 on: April 29, 2015, 04:39:06 pm »
+4

Ordinarily using Prince on a Reserve would strand the Prince, since the Reserve isn't discarded from play the turn it's played. But—if you Prince a Duplicate or a Royal Carriage, then…
…at the beginning of your turn you play the Reserve card, putting it on the Tavern mat;
…then once you gain or play another card, you could call the Reserve card to repeat it and put the Reserve back in play;
…and then discard the Reserve in the Cleanup phase of the same turn, triggering Prince to set it aside once more.

In other words, you can successfully Prince a Duplicate or Royal Carriage as long as you call the Reserve card back every turn, right?

Does the lose-track rule kick in because the Reserve has moved itself to the Tavern mat and back before being discarded? I don't think it does, since Prince isn't trying to keep track of it; it's just checking to see if it's discarded from play or not.
Let's check the rules.
Quote
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.
Lose-track prevents a card from moving (but nothing else) if something else moves it ("else" not meaning other-than-the-card - "else" meaning, not the thing we're checking to see if it loses track of the card or not).

Prince is trying to move a card (specifically, to set it aside). The card was moved by something else (the card put itself on the Reserve mat). So Prince can't move it. So it fails to set it aside and then it wasn't set aside and that's that.

Lose-track exists because you could really lose track. It includes cases where you personally may not have lost track, because it has to be a simple rule that is guaranteed to catch anything important. In this case you personally have not lost track, and the card is where Prince expects it, but Prince has lost track of it. Man, who knows what happened on that Reserve mat.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #2 on: April 29, 2015, 04:41:41 pm »
+14

Man, who knows what happened on that Reserve mat.

What happens in Tavern stays in Tavern.
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enfynet

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #3 on: April 30, 2015, 11:39:31 am »
0

So, the Prince must maintain a tether on whichever card it played; once that tether is broken (left the play area) Prince cannot get it back, even if it ended up back in play. Correct?
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Jeebus

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #4 on: April 30, 2015, 01:20:05 pm »
+1

So, the Prince must maintain a tether on whichever card it played; once that tether is broken (left the play area) Prince cannot get it back, even if it ended up back in play. Correct?

I think the idea is just that putting a card on the Tavern mat is tantamount to shuffling it into your deck for instance. It's "lost" in a potentially big pile of cards in the Tavern mat. It has potentially been covered up by who knows how many other cards. So even if you are allowed to look through your Tavern mat, find a Reserve card of that name (maybe one of several) and call it into play, there is no mechanism in the game that will identify that it's the same card that Prince played.

GendoIkari

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #5 on: April 30, 2015, 01:37:04 pm »
+1

So, the Prince must maintain a tether on whichever card it played; once that tether is broken (left the play area) Prince cannot get it back, even if it ended up back in play. Correct?

I think the idea is just that putting a card on the Tavern mat is tantamount to shuffling it into your deck for instance. It's "lost" in a potentially big pile of cards in the Tavern mat. It has potentially been covered up by who knows how many other cards. So even if you are allowed to look through your Tavern mat, find a Reserve card of that name (maybe one of several) and call it into play, there is no mechanism in the game that will identify that it's the same card that Prince played.

This is a great way of putting it. If you have 2 Guides on your Tavern Mat; there's no actual order to those cards. They could be shuffled around, mixed up, etc, so that it's no longer possible to know which one is which. Thus Prince cannot find it.

However, because the Lose Track rule is sufficiently broad to try and cover everything, it still applies even without the ordering thing. If the Tavern Mat had a rule that says only 1 card at a time can ever be on the Tavern Mat; it would still be lost track of when it moves there.
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enfynet

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #6 on: April 30, 2015, 01:39:14 pm »
0

So we're all saying the same thing with different visual representations.
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Donald X.

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #7 on: April 30, 2015, 01:58:01 pm »
+3

There are rules and you follow them and this is what happens, is the way I like to look at it.

The lose track rule can't have edge cases. It has to be simple and followable and really catch every case of actually losing track. As a result it causes the cards to lose track in situations where you personally have not. You put the card on top of your deck, you haven't shuffled, you know it's still there, but lose track says forget it. It doesn't know anything about Tavern mats; it has to assume the worst.
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AJD

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #8 on: April 30, 2015, 02:26:21 pm »
+4

Part of the reason for the question is that the way the lose-track rule is stated is a little ambiguous:

Quote
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.... 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.

There are two ways to read this. One reading, which is the one Donald's ruling above is based on, is that the first sentences are the motivation for the lose-track rule, and the last sentence is the definition of when lose-track happens—for a card to be lost track of, it's sufficient for it to have been moved or covered up.

The alternate reading, which is apparently not correct but is also compatible with the way the paragraph is written, is that the first sentences are the definition, and the last sentence is a listing of the situations in which the definition can apply. Under this reading, for a card to be lost track of, it's necessary for it to have been moved or covered up, but not sufficient; it also has to be "not where that effect expects the card to be".

Cases like the one Gendo alludes to, where you've got a Duplicate on your Tavern mat already, play another Duplicate with Prince, and then call one of them that turn and discard it from play, convinces me that the former interpretation is probably the preferable one, since how do you know whether the Duplicate you discarded from play is the same one the Prince played.
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Donald X.

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #9 on: April 30, 2015, 02:34:11 pm »
+12

Part of the reason for the question is that the way the lose-track rule is stated is a little ambiguous:

Quote
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.... 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.

There are two ways to read this. One reading, which is the one Donald's ruling above is based on, is that the first sentences are the motivation for the lose-track rule, and the last sentence is the definition of when lose-track happens—for a card to be lost track of, it's sufficient for it to have been moved or covered up.

The alternate reading, which is apparently not correct but is also compatible with the way the paragraph is written, is that the first sentences are the definition, and the last sentence is a listing of the situations in which the definition can apply. Under this reading, for a card to be lost track of, it's necessary for it to have been moved or covered up, but not sufficient; it also has to be "not where that effect expects the card to be".

Cases like the one Gendo alludes to, where you've got a Duplicate on your Tavern mat already, play another Duplicate with Prince, and then call one of them that turn and discard it from play, convinces me that the former interpretation is probably the preferable one, since how do you know whether the Duplicate you discarded from play is the same one the Prince played.
In fact not only would the rulebook be unreadable if nothing was ever said in a friendly way, if every bit of text in it was computer code, but in fact it can be argued that this is already the case.

Ideally there would be say two fonts, and it would say la la la here's something simple, wow there's not much to it is there, then switch fonts and say black market band of misfits trader death despair.
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swedenman

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #10 on: April 30, 2015, 04:12:24 pm »
+10

black market band of misfits trader death despair

I think I stumbled across a metal band by that name a while back.
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Burning Skull

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #11 on: May 13, 2015, 08:05:15 am »
+2

black market band of misfits trader death despair

I think I stumbled across a metal band by that name a while back.

One of my favourite! That's their logo:

Jimmmmm

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #12 on: May 13, 2015, 08:11:04 am »
+7

Now I'm imagining a Prince who wants to reward his friendly Guide. On the way to get the reward, the Guide pops into a Tavern. The Prince sticks his head in to find him, but there are Guides everywhere and he just can't tell them apart. No one gets the reward.
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Jeebus

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #13 on: May 26, 2015, 03:00:24 pm »
+1

This is actually an interesting example of the lose-track rule. Normally we think of an ability failing to move a card from a place because it has been moved from that place. In this case the Reserve card was moved from play. But Prince's when-discard ability never actually tries to move it from play. It tries to move it from the discard pile, and the Reserve was never moved from the discard pile. So why does it fail? The only way I can think of is that Prince's when-discard ability actually never triggers at all. It seems that if it triggered, it would have no problem setting aside the Reserve. (It would trigger on when-discard, and the card would be in discard with no funny business in between.)

So at the start of the turn Prince played the Reserve and then set up a future when-discard ability for that card. But when the card was moved from play, the when-discard ability lost track of it. But it's not the actual resolution of the ability (which involves moving it from discard to set-aside), but the trigger of the ability that fails. The trigger of course is that the card is moved (to discard). So it makes sense that when the ability loses track of the Reserve, it can't track that it moves anymore. But it's not moving the card that fails in this instance, it's tracking its movements.

Rubby

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #14 on: May 27, 2015, 04:42:30 pm »
0

So it's unfortunate that the wording of the Lose Track rule is so predominantly centered on the notion of expecting to find a card somewhere -- it turns out that whether it's where something expects to find it is not at all what matters.

What matters is whether the card has, at any point in the resolution of the card generating the moving effect, been moved by something else.
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Jeebus

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Re: Prince and Reserves
« Reply #15 on: May 27, 2015, 05:11:03 pm »
0

So it's unfortunate that the wording of the Lose Track rule is so predominantly centered on the notion of expecting to find a card somewhere -- it turns out that whether it's where something expects to find it is not at all what matters.

What matters is whether the card has, at any point in the resolution of the card generating the moving effect, been moved by something else.

Except that doesn't cut it either, because a Mining Village sitting in the trash doesn't move to play when you play it. Its own on-play ability expects it be in play, and when it's not it loses track of it.

What's happening here is that Prince is tracking the Reserve card. At the start of the turn Prince played it, meaning it expects it to be in play. (Compare with Throne Room playing a card.) We can say that it's Prince's start-of-turn ability that is tracking it. That ability played it and then set up another when-discard ability. But in order to trigger that when-discard on that very card (which it played), it needs to keep track of it. If something shuffled it in your deck, then moved it back into play, it's clear that Prince lost track of it. So in fact, according to the rule, Prince loses track of it if it moves at all.

So it's moving from the expected location that makes an ability lose track. But it includes not even being in the expected location in the first place. And it also includes moving from the expected location and then moving back there. I'm not sure how to phrase the rule succinctly. I don't think the Dark Ages rulebook does a good job of it.
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