The big reason why you should show your treasures instead of just flashing them is not that you might cheat. The reason is that you might have miscounted. It happens - to all of us.
Flashing the Treasures implies showing them. The contrast isn't "showing vs. telling", it's "showing vs. putting them on the table, and if you want to do it correctly, one at a time". If you actually are at the risk of miscounting, putting the cards so everyone can count with you is in order, i agree. I'll care a little more when people buy Platinums or Provinces, or even a Lab, but the less money somebody has to spend, the less i have to assume he miscounted, the quicker i'm able to count the cards if they are just shown to me, and the less it matters if he actually, in fact, miscounted. Also i usually play with more than one other player, meaning all three of us would have to be sure the showed cards are a number they are not.
I've pre-shuffled before, but yeah you have to be very careful with that. Many games you can't, and many games you'll have to re-pre-shuffle if you gain something you didn't expect to gain (opponent buys an Embassy or something that you didn't expect).
I don't see how it saves time. I almost always have action cards on the table that I need to pick up anyways, what's the difference if I add some treasures to it? I find it easier to count my treasures as I put them on the table anyways.
It's not that it's less stuff to clean up. It's that it's less stuff to play. By the rules, you would have to one at a time take a treasure from your hand and lay it on the table.
Oh, I'm Ok with slamming my treasures down all at once, I'm more concerned with not getting to see the treasures in my opponent's hand. I suppose the fact that I yell at them to let me look at their hand every time they try this makes it not save time this way
Well, i guess the problem is i only play with people i trust. If i play my treasures, then it's because order or what's in play matters, or because i actually need to count. If somebody wants to take a closer look at the cards, they can still tell me to play them. But in a three player game, where your militia'd hand is CCS since two turns ago, i have little intend to go through a more complex and slow motion for basically no benefit.
I just can't see what's complex about playing that CCS.
If your hand is Festival, Festival, Silver, Estate, Estate and you want to buy a Gold, do you play any card at all, or just take the Gold? I think most "flashers" play the Festivals at least. What reason is there not to play the Silver that isn't as good a reason for the Festivals in that situation?
I was talking about the movement. Showing my hand is quicker, and simpler than taking a card from it and putting it on the table. I don't even need both hands for just showing you my cards.
We were talking about Treasures where order and what's in play doesn't matter. 90% of the time those will be the base Treasures. They don't do anything at all and are very easy to recognize. Festival has a picture, like hundreds of cards, and does something like hundreds of them, and what it does is giving you a buy and increasing your action count. Silver is a giant 2 with nothing else, and gives those 2. Yes, those four big numbers i just showed you can be added up, and then you get another number, it's no magic. It's extremely common Treasures behave like this, and extremely uncommon actions will. Festival is not even an example where that's the case.