Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[majiponi]

I've found an undefined behavior on dominion.games.
I played Throne Room to play a inherited Estate(Crown), to play Herald, to reveal and play University, gained Mandarin (topdecked that inherited Estate), played Herald (second time), drew the Estate, revealed and played Ambassador, returned the Estate, and played it (second time) AS THE CARD MY OPPONENT HAD INHERITED.

(This is the summary of this twitter post.)

I don't think I can play other player's card, but I am not sure.

And more, I've noticed another problem. If I have another Estate in my hand, we cannot tell which Estate I played (on dominion.games). Did I play the returned Estate? I mean, do I play Estate as Crown, or play Estate as "solid Estate" (so I fail to play it again)? (Maybe too complicated question...)

[dz]

Playing a "solid" Estate obv. makes no sense, you can't play Victory cards unless they're a Action or Treasure. 

If you lose track of a card (like that Mandarin/Ambassador craziness), all other effects still happen. So Estate SHOULD still have Crown's instructions.

[GendoIkari]

Well we know for sure you can play a returned card (and it plays, but fails to move to the in-play area); based on things like Throne-Room + Madman. The question here is if the returned Estate can still be played... and I'm not sure; but here's a much simpler version of what I think is still the same basic question:

You have Estate inheriting Feast. You play Throne Room, choosing an Estate. You play the Estate once, which trashes it (so it's no longer yours). Can you still play the Estate a second time, to get a second Feast effect?

The logic of online sounds like it must be wrong, yet it is logical.... the Estate that you played was owned by your opponent, and thus it had the types and abilities of your opponent's inheritance. I also really want to know if this is correct.

[dane-m]

You have Estate inheriting Feast. You play Throne Room, choosing an Estate. You play the Estate once, which trashes it (so it's no longer yours). Can you still play the Estate a second time, to get a second Feast effect?

Well, we know that if you Throne Room a Band of Misfits as Feast, then the second play is of Band of Misfits as itself.  So Throne Room obviously looks at the card a second time.  That implies that in the case of an Estate inheriting Feast, Throne Room will find a plain Estate the second time it looks at the card...

The logic of online sounds like it must be wrong, yet it is logical.... the Estate that you played was owned by your opponent, and thus it had the types and abilities of your opponent's inheritance. I also really want to know if this is correct.

...which implies that this weird behaviour is also correct, but it does require Throne Room to be doing something that might not always be possible, namely knowing the location of a particular card no matter where it goes.  I suspect it would be possible to come up with a more complicated example in which the TRed Estate could be returned to the deck, the deck shuffled, cards drawn from the deck, and then one or two Estates returned to the Estate pile (and from there to an opponent) before TR tries playing the Estate a second time.  How can TR know where the particular Estate now is?  Clearly it can't.

Edit: In fact even in the original example TR shouldn't know where the Estate is.  The player could have had other Estates in hand, so there's no way for TR to know where the Estate it played the first time now is when it comes to play it the second time.

[Donald X.]

I've found an undefined behavior on dominion.games.
I played Throne Room to play a inherited Estate(Crown), to play Herald, to reveal and play University, gained Mandarin (topdecked that inherited Estate), played Herald (second time), drew the Estate, revealed and played Ambassador, returned the Estate, and played it (second time) AS THE CARD MY OPPONENT HAD INHERITED.

(This is the summary of this twitter post.)

I don't think I can play other player's card, but I am not sure.

And more, I've noticed another problem. If I have another Estate in my hand, we cannot tell which Estate I played (on dominion.games). Did I play the returned Estate? I mean, do I play Estate as Crown, or play Estate as "solid Estate" (so I fail to play it again)? (Maybe too complicated question...)

The behavior is correct, and you are correct about the other problem.

There are two classes of solutions: changing the lose-track rules to lose track harder, and changing Inheritance.

The lose-track change would change Throne / Feast in the original main set; I'm not doing it. People don't know the lose track rule, and the main set rulebook said Throne / Feast worked. For new games this would be a thing to consider; Dominion does not want to mess with that.

The only possible (heavy errata) fix I see for Inheritance is the "during your turn" that Bridge etc. use - all copies everywhere change. Inheritance breaks an important rule, that all copies of a card should be identical, and this convoluted combo exploits that. Inheritance originally said "during your turn"; the problem is that you get super-weird stuff immediately, with trivial rather than convoluted combos. For example I inherit Caravan Guard and play an attack; you respond with Estate because it's Caravan Guard. But on your turn the Estate is in play and has no abilities, or is some other card that you inherited. The rules handle it, but it's super-confusing.

Feel free to simply not play with Inheritance. That actually solves the problem.

In my defense, Inheritance was a lot of fun. Today I would have you do the effect without Estate changing, e.g. you can discard Estate to play the set-aside card, leaving it there, and it's limited to non-durations (like Necromancer). That gives you "my Estates do this thing" but cuts out things like "they are Actions for Herald." And the Estates are always just Estates so so much for that. It's a poor fit for Adventures, since there are lots of Durations and also Reserve cards, which are useless here. It could have been in Empires though. Anyway we wouldn't use errata to effectively make Inheritance some other related thing.

[crj]

Just one voice, but for what it's worth I quite like the idea of Inheritance affecting all Estates everywhere during your turn. That feels simple and intuitive to me.

[Kirian]

The behavior is correct, and you are correct about the other problem.

Wait, which behavior is correct?  You can't actually play the other person's Inherited card, right?

[sudgy]

The behavior is correct, and you are correct about the other problem.

Wait, which behavior is correct?  You can't actually play the other person's Inherited card, right?

No, I think you do.  It's the only way to make it consistent with TR+BoM+Feast.  The one problem that isn't resolved is the tracking issues.

[chipperMDW]

The lose-track change would change Throne / Feast in the original main set; I'm not doing it. People don't know the lose track rule, and the main set rulebook said Throne / Feast worked. For new games this would be a thing to consider; Dominion does not want to mess with that.

I think you can lose track harder and still have Throning Feast work. One way would be to use last-known information for things you lost track of. Throne plays a card in your hand twice. That card's not in your hand anymore after the first play? (Actually true whatever it plays; Feast wouldn't even be a special case.) Ok, just play whatever that card was back when it was in your hand. Throne wants to play an Estate that used to be in your hand but has somehow maybe ended up around the world and in the supply or in your opponent's deck or maybe is still in your hand and nobody really knows for sure where it is? Just play whatever the Estate was when it was in your hand.

There would be complications with BoM, though. The way BoM works now, I guess a Throne would always end up playing it as BoM both times (because that's what it was in your hand) so you'd always get to choose an action to emulate for both plays. If you wanted to change that, maybe you could revert BoM to its old behavior and have it become Feast or whatever as you play it; then Throne would remember it as Feast and play it as Feast twice... which was how that originally worked anyway, I think. (To me, either one of those options seems like an improvement over the current situation where sometimes a Throned BoM is stuck as one card and sometimes it's not.)

Using last-known information would also, I guess, make things like Transmute and Procession work like Ritual and care what stuff looks like just before you trash it, not what it turns into afterwards.

[trivialknot]

So, Throne Room currently works is like this:
1. Choose an action card from hand.
2. Create a pointer to the physical copy of the card.
3. Play the card being pointed to.
4. Play it again.

The intention is that the card can change its identity or abilities somewhere between steps 3 and 4.  So if you throne a BoM and it becomes a Lighthouse in step 3, then in step 4 you play the Lighthouse.  The problem is that with Inheritance, sometimes you don't even know whether the card has changed its ability.

I'm pretty sure you can recreate this problem even without Inheritance:
Play Throne Room, choose Overlord.
--Play Overlord as Crown, choose Herald.
----Play Herald, which plays University to gain Mandarin.
----Play Herald, which plays Throne Room, choosing an Overlord from your hand.
------Play the Overlord as Lighthouse twice.
--Play Overlord again, but is it a Lighthouse now?

Another way to treat Throne room is like this:
1. Choose an action card from hand.
2. Create a pointer to the physical copy of the card.
3. Store a virtual copy of the card (ie remember its instructions and name and types)
4. Play the card being pointed to.
5a. If the card has moved (even if it later returns to play), then play the virtual copy of it.
5b. If the card has not moved, then play it.

This would have the same behavior with TR-BoM-Feast, but wouldn't have the accountability/uncertainty problems.  It's a bit convoluted, but for what it's worth, this is probably how I'd play it if it ever came up IRL.  ETA: ...which it won't.

[Donald X.]

The behavior is correct, and you are correct about the other problem.

Wait, which behavior is correct?  You can't actually play the other person's Inherited card, right?

The following is the current game rules being executed correctly by the online program: "I played Throne Room to play a inherited Estate(Crown), to play Herald, to reveal and play University, gained Mandarin (topdecked that inherited Estate), played Herald (second time), drew the Estate, revealed and played Ambassador, returned the Estate, and played it (second time) AS THE CARD MY OPPONENT HAD INHERITED."

[Donald X.]

----Play Herald, which plays University to gain Mandarin.

Clearly, the problem is Mandarin.

That's not even just silly. Moving cards in play ahead of clean-up (e.g. with Procession) creates tracking problems.

[LibraryAdventurer]

I've found an undefined behavior on dominion.games.
I played Throne Room to play a inherited Estate(Crown), to play Herald, to reveal and play University, gained Mandarin (topdecked that inherited Estate), played Herald (second time), drew the Estate, revealed and played Ambassador, returned the Estate, and played it (second time) AS THE CARD MY OPPONENT HAD INHERITED.

(This is the summary of this twitter post.)

I don't think I can play other player's card, but I am not sure.

And more, I've noticed another problem. If I have another Estate in my hand, we cannot tell which Estate I played (on dominion.games). Did I play the returned Estate? I mean, do I play Estate as Crown, or play Estate as "solid Estate" (so I fail to play it again)? (Maybe too complicated question...)

Wow.

The behavior is correct, and you are correct about the other problem.

There are two classes of solutions: changing the lose-track rules to lose track harder, and changing Inheritance.

The lose-track change would change Throne / Feast in the original main set; I'm not doing it. People don't know the lose track rule, and the main set rulebook said Throne / Feast worked. For new games this would be a thing to consider; Dominion does not want to mess with that.

The only possible (heavy errata) fix I see for Inheritance is the "during your turn" that Bridge etc. use - all copies everywhere change. Inheritance breaks an important rule, that all copies of a card should be identical, and this convoluted combo exploits that. Inheritance originally said "during your turn"; the problem is that you get super-weird stuff immediately, with trivial rather than convoluted combos. For example I inherit Caravan Guard and play an attack; you respond with Estate because it's Caravan Guard. But on your turn the Estate is in play and has no abilities, or is some other card that you inherited. The rules handle it, but it's super-confusing.

Feel free to simply not play with Inheritance. That actually solves the problem.

In my defense, Inheritance was a lot of fun. Today I would have you do the effect without Estate changing, e.g. you can discard Estate to play the set-aside card, leaving it there, and it's limited to non-durations (like Necromancer). That gives you "my Estates do this thing" but cuts out things like "they are Actions for Herald." And the Estates are always just Estates so so much for that. It's a poor fit for Adventures, since there are lots of Durations and also Reserve cards, which are useless here. It could have been in Empires though. Anyway we wouldn't use errata to effectively make Inheritance some other related thing.

I'm happy Inheritance is the way it is. It's my favorite card-shaped thing ever. IMO, it (unlike Possession) is worth all the weird rule questions because of how fun it is.

[Donald X.]

The lose-track change would change Throne / Feast in the original main set; I'm not doing it. People don't know the lose track rule, and the main set rulebook said Throne / Feast worked. For new games this would be a thing to consider; Dominion does not want to mess with that.

I think you can lose track harder and still have Throning Feast work. One way would be to use last-known information for things you lost track of. Throne plays a card in your hand twice. That card's not in your hand anymore after the first play? (Actually true whatever it plays; Feast wouldn't even be a special case.) Ok, just play whatever that card was back when it was in your hand. Throne wants to play an Estate that used to be in your hand but has somehow maybe ended up around the world and in the supply or in your opponent's deck or maybe is still in your hand and nobody really knows for sure where it is? Just play whatever the Estate was when it was in your hand.

There would be complications with BoM, though. The way BoM works now, I guess a Throne would always end up playing it as BoM both times (because that's what it was in your hand) so you'd always get to choose an action to emulate for both plays. If you wanted to change that, maybe you could revert BoM to its old behavior and have it become Feast or whatever as you play it; then Throne would remember it as Feast and play it as Feast twice... which was how that originally worked anyway, I think. (To me, either one of those options seems like an improvement over the current situation where sometimes a Throned BoM is stuck as one card and sometimes it's not.)

Using last-known information would also, I guess, make things like Transmute and Procession work like Ritual and care what stuff looks like just before you trash it, not what it turns into afterwards.

It's something to think about. We aren't necessarily talking about a Throne Room; an effect could just play a card once, and somehow the card could vanish before being played (e.g. Summon if it didn't say "if you do"). So the rule can't be about what the card was the first time - there may have been no other time. However at some point we knew what card we were talking about, so we can refer to that. It would probably be a confusing rule, though to be fair it covers cases that are confusing any which way. It would be really simple to just not let you play a card without being able to put the physical card into play - like I said, a fine solution for some other game.

As I like to point out, the actual problem situation we are talking about is extremely obscure. So, the rules weight it adds wants to be correspondingly tiny.

[Kirian]

The behavior is correct, and you are correct about the other problem.

Wait, which behavior is correct?  You can't actually play the other person's Inherited card, right?

The following is the current game rules being executed correctly by the online program: "I played Throne Room to play a inherited Estate(Crown), to play Herald, to reveal and play University, gained Mandarin (topdecked that inherited Estate), played Herald (second time), drew the Estate, revealed and played Ambassador, returned the Estate, and played it (second time) AS THE CARD MY OPPONENT HAD INHERITED."

Ah, OK, I think I understand now.  The Estate/Crown that was initially played with the Throne Room belonged to the opponent by the time it was played again.

But this interaction literally required Crown, Mandarin, Ambassador, Inheritance, a gainer (Uni here but could be something else), a draw card (Herald here), and cost reduction all to be in the kingdom.  I guess you could combine Amb + draw using Masq, maybe?  I don't see how you get this below a six-card combo, with cards from at least four expansions.

While I'd be interested to see someone reduce this interaction to four cards, even with four cards I'm not sure it's worth a ruling for something that'll happen once in a few billion games.  The seven-card interaction here will happen exactly never in the future unless someone sets it up intentionally.

[Violet CLM]

I appreciate this new ability to play other people's cards, because it makes the "if it's still in play" wording on Royal Carriage meaningfully distinct from "if you still have it in play." All you have to do is play a card that a different player already has in play, and then you can call Royal Carriage in response to that. Huzzah!

(For example, suppose you do all the stuff from the original post, but instead of Throne Room, you use King's Court instead. Suppose the second player also inherited Crown; then you play another Herald twice, using it to play first Masquerade (so the second player passes the Estate to the third player), then an attack card. The third player, who inherited Caravan Guard, plays the Estate from their hand, and then finally for the third King's Court round, you play the Estate from the third player's play area. And then you call Royal Carriage to play it again.)

[majiponi]

Oh... what I posted makes us discuss a lot.

I like Inheritance. I've never imagined it needs a fix. As Donald points out, the problem is, MANDARIN, which moves cards from play. I also agree that we will never see this lunatic interaction again. The simplest way to overcome this problem is...

When you gain this in your buy phase, topdeck all Treasures  in play.

Mandarin errata like this. This changes the fewest.

[Donald X.]

When you gain this in your buy phase, topdeck all Treasures  in play.

Mandarin errata like this. This changes the fewest.

That wouldn't be enough for Mandarin - there are reasonable cards that would still break that. However the very similar "When you buy this..." would probably be enough, since it makes sure you aren't in the middle of resolving anything, unless it's something that lets you buy cards (which there aren't likely to be too many more of - Black Market is what does it now). And just having a new card that lets you buy a card isn't enough to be a problem, it would need to be a trigger, or specifically happen in the middle of doing two things with a card.

Though that just changes one word on Mandarin, it also gets rid of the Horn of Plenty trick.

Inheritance still hangs on a thread there, but I'm not seeing how to generate the problem with Bonfire or Procession.

[crj]

Another way to treat Throne room is like this:
1. Choose an action card from hand.
2. Create a pointer to the physical copy of the card.
3. Store a virtual copy of the card (ie remember its instructions and name and types)
4. Play the card being pointed to.
5a. If the card has moved (even if it later returns to play), then play the virtual copy of it.
5b. If the card has not moved, then play it.

I fear the body of rules you'd then need to create for how a "virtual copy" of a card behaved in every possible circumstance would then be second only to Possession in its baroque intricacy. Specimen question: is a virtual card in play for the purpose of pricing Peddler?

[trivialknot]

Another way to treat Throne room is like this:
1. Choose an action card from hand.
2. Create a pointer to the physical copy of the card.
3. Store a virtual copy of the card (ie remember its instructions and name and types)
4. Play the card being pointed to.
5a. If the card has moved (even if it later returns to play), then play the virtual copy of it.
5b. If the card has not moved, then play it.

I fear the body of rules you'd then need to create for how a "virtual copy" of a card behaved in every possible circumstance would then be second only to Possession in its baroque intricacy. Specimen question: is a virtual card in play for the purpose of pricing Peddler?

You can treat the "virtual" card as the original card, which you have lost track of.  So, you play it, but whenever there's an effect that moves its location, that effect fails. So, it fails to go in to play, and it doesn't affect Peddler.

I like Inheritance. I've never imagined it needs a fix. As Donald points out, the problem is, MANDARIN, which moves cards from play. I also agree that we will never see this lunatic interaction again.

You can create the interaction without Mandarin.

Play King's Court, choosing Band of Misfits
--Play Band of Misfits as Mining Village, trash it
--Play Band of Misfits as Throne Room, choosing Herald
----Play Herald, playing Lurker to gain Band of Misfits
----Play Herald, playing Throne Room, choosing Band of Misfits
------Play Band of Misfits as Lighthouse twice
--Play Band of Misfits again.  But is it a Lighthouse now?

So, do these interactions actually work on Dominion Online?  I'd love to see a video of that.

[trivialknot]

The lose-track change would change Throne / Feast in the original main set; I'm not doing it. People don't know the lose track rule, and the main set rulebook said Throne / Feast worked. For new games this would be a thing to consider; Dominion does not want to mess with that.

I think you can lose track harder and still have Throning Feast work. One way would be to use last-known information for things you lost track of. Throne plays a card in your hand twice. That card's not in your hand anymore after the first play? (Actually true whatever it plays; Feast wouldn't even be a special case.) Ok, just play whatever that card was back when it was in your hand. Throne wants to play an Estate that used to be in your hand but has somehow maybe ended up around the world and in the supply or in your opponent's deck or maybe is still in your hand and nobody really knows for sure where it is? Just play whatever the Estate was when it was in your hand.

There would be complications with BoM, though. The way BoM works now, I guess a Throne would always end up playing it as BoM both times (because that's what it was in your hand) so you'd always get to choose an action to emulate for both plays. If you wanted to change that, maybe you could revert BoM to its old behavior and have it become Feast or whatever as you play it; then Throne would remember it as Feast and play it as Feast twice... which was how that originally worked anyway, I think. (To me, either one of those options seems like an improvement over the current situation where sometimes a Throned BoM is stuck as one card and sometimes it's not.)

Using last-known information would also, I guess, make things like Transmute and Procession work like Ritual and care what stuff looks like just before you trash it, not what it turns into afterwards.

I like this way of dealing with the problem--not as a modification of Throne Room et al., but a modification of the lose track rule.  Whenever you need to do something to a card that you have lost track of, then not only do all "move" effects fail, you also treat the card as if its name/types/abilities have not changed since losing track.

Although, as noted, this changes the behavior of several interactions.  If you TR-BoM as Feast, then the second time you play the card, you're forced to play as Feast again, since that's what it was when you lost track of it.  If you Procession-BoM as Lighthouse, then you gain a $3-cost, since the card only cost $2 when you lost track of it.  Actually, I think the Procession interaction shouldn't work, since Procession itself put the card in the trash, and as long as it's still in the trash it shouldn't lose track.

[chipperMDW]

It's something to think about. We aren't necessarily talking about a Throne Room; an effect could just play a card once, and somehow the card could vanish before being played (e.g. Summon if it didn't say "if you do"). So the rule can't be about what the card was the first time - there may have been no other time. However at some point we knew what card we were talking about, so we can refer to that. It would probably be a confusing rule, though to be fair it covers cases that are confusing any which way. It would be really simple to just not let you play a card without being able to put the physical card into play - like I said, a fine solution for some other game.

(Bolding mine.)

Exactly. Since the rules specify the moment a set of instructions lose track of a card, you can just take the info known prior to that moment. In the Not-Summon situation, the card goes to your discard pile (or wherever it's overridden to go to) and Not-Summon knows where it is and what it looks like at that point. Then a thing happens (e.g. Watchtower or Border Village) and suddenly, from Not-Summon's perspective, the card is gone. Not-Summon still plays the thing it remembers the card looking like last time it saw it.

As I like to point out, the actual problem situation we are talking about is extremely obscure. So, the rules weight it adds wants to be correspondingly tiny.

I understand. I just feel like there's a way to structure the rules so that the "holes" are closed. I think using last-known information would cut off a whole class of weird interaction issues. If it's guaranteed that nothing ever needs to know anything about a card except for what's currently visible or what's remembered about it from the last time it was, then all of this BoM/Fortress/Inheritance/Quarry/Mandarin/Transmute/Procession stuff becomes moot because, no matter where a card gets bounced around during an interaction and no matter what it ends up looking like, the rules already have it covered so that players don't need information they might not have access to. That way, you can design cool, weird things like Inheritance and know that the weird situations they create are fine and already have answers.

I appreciate this new ability to play other people's cards, because it makes the "if it's still in play" wording on Royal Carriage meaningfully distinct from "if you still have it in play." All you have to do is play a card that a different player already has in play, and then you can call Royal Carriage in response to that. Huzzah!

I don't think the other player's card can ever end up in play through this mechanism. (Did it?) In the case described in the OP, the Throne Room says to play the Estate a second time. It has lost track of it, so it can't move it from wherever it is (opponent's discard pile, probably), but it can still produce its on-play effect (which happens to be different from the first time due to belonging to another player at the moment).

[trivialknot]

I don't think the other player's card can ever end up in play through this mechanism.

Oh, it surely can!  Suppose your opponent inherited Caravan Guard.  And somewhere in your action chain, after Ambassadoring the Estate, you play an Attack, and your opponent responds by playing several Estates, one of which may or may not have been the Estate you gave to them.

[chipperMDW]

I don't think the other player's card can ever end up in play through this mechanism.

Oh, it surely can!  Suppose your opponent inherited Caravan Guard.  And somewhere in your action chain, after Ambassadoring the Estate, you play an Attack, and your opponent responds by playing several Estates, one of which may or may not have been the Estate you gave to them.

Oh, I see. I misread that part in Violet CLM's post. Neat!

[Donald X.]

--Play Band of Misfits as Mining Village, trash it

I see I see. There are of course several cards that trash themselves, and they are a way to have a card leave play.

To get the category as small as possible, my next guess is that it's just these three ways to make a card not be itself: Band of Misfits, Overlord, Inheritance. Can you mess up without those?

Band of Misfits and Overlord should be like Necromancer - play the card leaving it there, non-Duration. Inheritance should be e.g. "discard an Estate to..." (it's trickier than that because there's no terse way to say "you can do this any time you are allowed to play an action," although again it's too big of a change for errata, and if the card weren't published yet I wouldn't be trying to simulate it exactly).

[dane-m]

There are two classes of solutions: changing the lose-track rules to lose track harder, and changing Inheritance.

The lose-track change would change Throne / Feast in the original main set; I'm not doing it. People don't know the lose track rule, and the main set rulebook said Throne / Feast worked. For new games this would be a thing to consider; Dominion does not want to mess with that.

How about losing track slighty harder as a solution?  If the current location of the card can't be determined without 'cheating', it retains the identity it had when last its location was known.

In the example referred to by the OP the online implementation did something that players IRL could not have done without cheating: it tracked where the particular Estate was.  IRL players would see the Estate go onto the deck, at which point it's still identifiable as the particular Estate, and get drawn, after which it is no longer identifiable as the particular Estate (in principle the drawing player knows which card it is, but the other players certainly don't).

The problem then is reduced to identifying under what circumstances the location of a card becomes indeterminate.

[crj]

Inheritance should be e.g. "discard an Estate to..." (it's trickier than that because there's no terse way to say "you can do this any time you are allowed to play an action," although again it's too big of a change for errata, and if the card weren't published yet I wouldn't be trying to simulate it exactly).

Might it be simpler to fix Inheritance along these lines?

Once per game: Set aside a non-Duration Action card from the Supply costing up to $4. Move your Estate token to it.
Throughout this game: Estates are also actions. When you play one: play your Estate-token Action card, leaving it there.

By my understanding, that fixes the problem by arranging that every Estate in the game is identical; having Estates be Action-Victory cards isn't the problem.

[Donald X.]

Might it be simpler to fix Inheritance along these lines?

Once per game: Set aside a non-Duration Action card from the Supply costing up to $4. Move your Estate token to it.
Throughout this game: Estates are also actions. When you play one: play your Estate-token Action card, leaving it there.

By my understanding, that fixes the problem by arranging that every Estate in the game is identical; having Estates be Action-Victory cards isn't the problem.

It sounds like that works, although you do also need to fit the text in the box. Probably I would say "During your turns" rather than "throughout this game"; for one thing it continues the thought, it's part of the ability.

[Donald X.]

How about losing track slighty harder as a solution?  If the current location of the card can't be determined without 'cheating', it retains the identity it had when last its location was known.

It is going to be hard for me to make the leap to "okay I am changing the rules; here is the rule almost no-one will know, that will never come up, but maybe, just maybe, will confuse someone reading the wiki or punchball's document."

If I could go back and do things better, the fix would be to not have this situation be possible, rather than to have more to the lose-track rule. Ideally lose-track itself would also not be possible; probably many of the abilities that move cards could have fairly similar forms without invoking that rule.

[dane-m]

If I could go back and do things better, the fix would be to not have this situation be possible

So ideally we would want a simple ruling that makes the situation impossible, but doesn't change the way anything else currently works.  I don't think such a thing exists.

Let's start by summarising how the situation arises.  It's a combination of four factors:

• TR-alikes play an Action card multiple times by looking at the instructions on the card each time it's played.
  
• The instructions on three Action cards, namely BoM, Overlord and inherited Estate, change dependent on the location of the card.
  
• Some Action cards trash themselves when played, plus during the Action phase Crown can be trashed by buying Mint with Black Market or top-decked by gaining Mandarin.
  
• Once such a card has been trashed or top-decked, a sequence of subsequent Actions can cause its location to become unknown.
  

For it to be imposiible for the situation to arise one of these factors must be eliminated.

The third and fourth factors cannot be eliminated.

The second factor can only be eliminated by modifying both the way Inheritance works and the way BoM and Overlord work.  Some suggestions have been made on each of these fronts, so maybe this is a possibility, but having to fix two types of functionality seems excessive.

To me the first factor seems the most promising one to eliminate as it only involves one type of functionality, though there are five cards (TR, KC, Crown, Disciple and Ghost) that use the functionality.  The suggestions made so far on this front had the merit of preserving the way everything else currently works, but the disadvantage, as Donald has pointed out, of being somewhat obscure and confusing.  Mine also had the disdadvantage that it would still have allowed a TR-alike to attempt to play a plain Estate.

I can see two other ways in which the situation could be rendered impossible by changing the way Tr-alikes work, but both cause changes to the way TR-alikes interact with morphing cards: BoM and Overlord would get to morph into a different card on each play.

Solution 1: TR-alikes read the text of the card once and remember it rather than looking at the card each time it is to be played, but would this require a change to the wording on these cards or would a ruling to the effect that this is what is meant by playing a card twice/three times suffice?  Might this solution cause some uncertainty as to what the BoM/Overlord is after it has been played twice?  For example after TRing a BoM as two different non-self-trashing cards is the BoM the first card impersonated (on the grounds that the second play of the BoM couldn't find itself to become the second card impersonated)?  Or is it the second card impersonated (on the grounds that the second instruction to be a particular card until leaving play overrode the first instruction to be a different card until leaving play)?

Solution 2: TR-alikes are rephrased to be something along the lines "You may set aside an Action card from your hand.  If you do, play it, then move it into your Play Area and play it again."  This solution works by preventing the card from being moved until it is being played for the last time and has the advantage that it leaves no doubt about what the BoM/Overlord is after it has been played for the last time (on previous plays it wasn't in play, so reverted to itself immediately).  It does, however, have the major disadvantage of being very verbose.  While that's not a problem for TR or KC, it would be for Disciple and Crown.

Maybe neither of these solutions are acceptable, but I'll finish by reiterating that (a) any solution needs to eliminate one of the four factors that lead to the situation and (b) in practice that means either the first or the second factor.

Edit: added Ghost to the list of TR-alike cards.

[hypercube]

I'm just happy we have a solution to a puzzle no-one would have thought to ask: how can you play a card whose only type is Victory?

[GendoIkari]

I'm just happy we have a solution to a puzzle no-one would have thought to ask: how can you play a card whose only type is Victory?

Not sure if we do have that. In the situation in question, the estate is an action; just a different one than it was. Has it been said here what would happen if your opponent had not inherited anything? Would the estate play and do nothing? Or would it fail to play? And is there any actual difference?

[dane-m]

I'm just happy we have a solution to a puzzle no-one would have thought to ask: how can you play a card whose only type is Victory?

Not sure if we do have that. In the situation in question, the estate is an action; just a different one than it was. Has it been said here what would happen if your opponent had not inherited anything? Would the estate play and do nothing? Or would it fail to play? And is there any actual difference?

The Estate could also be a plain Estate by finishing up in the Trash, most simply in the scenario in which Feast or any other self-trashing card has been inherited, and a TR-alike is used to play the inherited Estate more than once.

There would indeed a difference between an Estate failing to play and an Estate playing and doing nothing, namely the number of cards that had been played so far.  As it happens that difference has no effect as the only card that cares about this number is Conspirator and it only cares whether the number is ≥3, which it will be no matter what.  It's not, however, particularly satisfactory having TR do something, namely play a Victory card, that isn't permitted by the rules.  While most players would presumably automatically accept that it means that effectively nothing happens, it might lead some people to believe erroneously that in this scenario the Estate can't possibly have reverted to being just an Estate.

[majiponi]

By the way, after trying to play Feast-inherited-Estate twice via Ghost, do I get +1 Action, +1 Card from Conspirator? I don't remember well.

[dane-m]

By the way, after trying to play Feast-inherited-Estate twice via Ghost, do I get +1 Action, +1 Card from Conspirator? I don't remember well.

No.  Only two Actions have been played: the Feast-inherited-Estate and Conspirator.

There would indeed a difference between an Estate failing to play and an Estate playing and doing nothing, namely the number of cards that had been played so far.  As it happens that difference has no effect as the only card that cares about this number is Conspirator and it only cares whether the number is ≥3, which it will be no matter what.

It didn't take long for me to be proved wrong!  I take most of that back.  In practice there is no difference between an Estate failing to play (which is in fact what I assume is the current situation) and an Estate playing and doing nothing, given that Conspirator specifically refers to the number of Actions played, so even if the Estate were somehow considered to have been played, it wouldn't matter for Conspirator.

I also note that I failed to include Ghost in the list of TR-alike cards that would be affected by tackling factor 1.

[GendoIkari]

There would indeed a difference between an Estate failing to play and an Estate playing and doing nothing, namely the number of cards that had been played so far.  As it happens that difference has no effect as the only card that cares about this number is Conspirator and it only cares whether the number is ≥3, which it will be no matter what. 

Actually, Conspirator only cares about action cards that have been played, so it wouldn't count a regular-Estate that has been played. Which is why I don't think anything exists that makes a difference whether the Estate is played or not.

*Edit* I see that you caught that yourself in your next post.

It's not, however, particularly satisfactory having TR do something, namely play a Victory card, that isn't permitted by the rules.  While most players would presumably automatically accept that it means that effectively nothing happens, it might lead some people to believe erroneously that in this scenario the Estate can't possibly have reverted to being just an Estate.

Well have have been told that "can't" outways "can", but in this case I'm not sure it applies; because 1) Card text overrides rules text, and 2) Not sure if the rules ever say you can't play a Victory card; they don't need to, because they list what you can play.

If there were a card that just said "You may play a victory card from your hand", then it seems almost clear that if you played that card, you would then successfully play a victory card. This leads me to believe that with TR+Estate-as-Feast, you would play the Estate twice (but only get the benefit of Feast the first time).

[dane-m]

Well have have been told that "can't" outways "can", but in this case I'm not sure it applies; because 1) Card text overrides rules text, and 2) Not sure if the rules ever say you can't play a Victory card; they don't need to, because they list what you can play.

Fair point.  I should have said "It's not, however, particularly satisfactory having TR do something, namely play a Victory card, the effect of which isn't defined by the rules."  The rules tell us what playing an Action card, a Treasure card or a Night card does.  They don't tell us what playing a Victory card does, leaving it to us to deduce that it does nothing.

[Donald X.]

If there were a card that just said "You may play a victory card from your hand", then it seems almost clear that if you played that card, you would then successfully play a victory card. This leads me to believe that with TR+Estate-as-Feast, you would play the Estate twice (but only get the benefit of Feast the first time).

This at least has an easy ruling. Yes, if somehow you are told to play a Victory card that doesn't do anything when played, you first put it into play unless you've lost track of it, and then do nothing.

[Donald X.]

Let's start by summarising how the situation arises.  It's a combination of four factors:

• TR-alikes play an Action card multiple times by looking at the instructions on the card each time it's played.
  
• The instructions on three Action cards, namely BoM, Overlord and inherited Estate, change dependent on the location of the card.
  
• Some Action cards trash themselves when played, plus during the Action phase Crown can be trashed by buying Mint with Black Market or top-decked by gaining Mandarin.
  
• Once such a card has been trashed or top-decked, a sequence of subsequent Actions can cause its location to become unknown.
  

The "TR-alikes" category is a trick; it's just a result of how the card mix fell out, and not some innately important category. Ditto the movement category.

Really, the broad problem is any way to interact with a card twice - for example Remodel trashes a card, then cares what it costs - plus a way to have a copy of a card change in some way without all copies of that card changing that way. You need to add whatever other effects to get the problem, based on what these two pieces look like, but these two pieces are the issue. With the right new cards (triggers on trashing / ways to feed off of them), Remodel would do this; we would have a card where we didn't know what it cost. We can get the cost part to fail for Procession now (also Procession is missing from your list): trivialknot's post, but we Procession instead of Throning, and everything goes down on the second play so that we don't have to first wonder what card gets played.

It looked like cards leaving play was part of it, but it isn't. Cards leaving play before clean-up is bad in that it creates tracking issues a variety of ways (e.g. Bonfire your Hireling), but it's only relevant here because Band of Misfits and Overlord specifically care about leaving play, and Inheritance cares about who has the card (and for a Throned card, it has to leave play to change that). It's part of the actual combos, but not relevant to the broad picture - the perspective of, what if there are 300 more Dominion cards, how do you make sure there aren't issues like this.

We want to be able to have cards like Remodel and Throne Room, and don't need to have shapeshifting cards that just change one copy or some copies, so they're the thing to fix.

Band of Misfits / Overlord could have changed all copies of themselves everywhere; again I think the move there is to not change any copies, just play the card from the Supply. And similarly with Inheritance, you could live with instant weirdness with changing all Estates on your turn, but I think it's better to just play the set-aside card as suggested.

Edit: I should add, yes there is also the category of fix that's, "here's a rule for if you want to know something about a card and it's moved from where you expect it to be." That handles future mistakes or fan cards, that part is nice. But I don't like how it's like lose-track, a confusing rule that no-one knows. I prefer changing three of the most confusing and ruling'd cards in the game.

And despite these posts there is no errata as of yet for those three cards; right now, there are extremely exotic situations that fail IRL (online, the program can track the shapeshifted card).

[crj]

Once per game: Set aside a non-Duration Action card from the Supply costing up to $4. Move your Estate token to it.
Throughout this game: Estates are also actions. When you play one: play your Estate-token Action card, leaving it there.

It sounds like that works, although you do also need to fit the text in the box. Probably I would say "During your turns" rather than "throughout this game"; for one thing it continues the thought, it's part of the ability.

If card count was no object, you could provide an alternate set of Estate cards (alas, they'd probably stil have to be called Estate, for the sake of the effects that refer to Estate by name) that were Action-Events saying "Play your Estate-token Action card, leaving it there.", and Inheritance could have a setup step saying to substitute them.

[faust]

Once per game: Set aside a non-Duration Action card from the Supply costing up to $4. Move your Estate token to it.
Throughout this game: Estates are also actions. When you play one: play your Estate-token Action card, leaving it there.

It sounds like that works, although you do also need to fit the text in the box. Probably I would say "During your turns" rather than "throughout this game"; for one thing it continues the thought, it's part of the ability.

If card count was no object, you could provide an alternate set of Estate cards (alas, they'd probably stil have to be called Estate, for the sake of the effects that refer to Estate by name) that were Action-Events saying "Play your Estate-token Action card, leaving it there.", and Inheritance could have a setup step saying to substitute them.

That would create an interesting tension when Bonfire and Inheritance are both in the game.

All the fixes take away a significant amount of the fun you can have with Inheritance in order to deal with an obscure edge-case that will never come up in 1000 years of playing Dominion. As much as I see the beauty in structural clarity, it's just not worth it.

[Donald X.]

All the fixes take away a significant amount of the fun you can have with Inheritance in order to deal with an obscure edge-case that will never come up in 1000 years of playing Dominion. As much as I see the beauty in structural clarity, it's just not worth it.

It's a classic problem. Which is more fun: the most fun version of a card, or the version that works the best with the rules? Either it's a tie, or the most fun version is more fun.

I think if Inheritance had never worked on Durations and Reserve cards - and had been in Empires - no-one would have said, this sucks, I need to be able to turn Estates into Durations.

[majiponi]

How about letting the turn player decide which behavior happens like what happens first when multiple things are triggers at the same time? For example...

King's Court
--Band of Misfits
----Mining Village(trash)
--Band of Misfits
----Throne Room
------Herald to reveal Graverobber
------Herald to reveal Throne Room
--------Throne Room
----------Band of Misfits

"I declare it not to be the first one." (revealing another from hand)

------------Mill (discard Band of Misfits and another card)

"I declare the discarded Band of Misfits to be the first one." (revealing it)

--Band of Misfits (failing to play from hand)
...

This is very annoying, but I believe everyone who can execute this combo can play like this.

[Witherweaver]

This thread makes me think that being God would be hard.

[Donald X.]

How about letting the turn player decide which behavior happens like what happens first when multiple things are triggers at the same time? For example...

This is no good.

[faust]

I think if Inheritance had never worked on Durations and Reserve cards - and had been in Empires - no-one would have said, this sucks, I need to be able to turn Estates into Durations.

I mean, true, but if you hadn't created Dominion, probably noone would have said, this sucks, I need a balanced, fun game that opens up a whole new genre of games. Still, in the end I imagine publishing Dominion has increased the overall fun.

[Donald X.]

I think if Inheritance had never worked on Durations and Reserve cards - and had been in Empires - no-one would have said, this sucks, I need to be able to turn Estates into Durations.

I mean, true, but if you hadn't created Dominion, probably noone would have said, this sucks, I need a balanced, fun game that opens up a whole new genre of games. Still, in the end I imagine publishing Dominion has increased the overall fun.

I contrasted Inheritance-that-doesn't-work-on-Durations with Inheritance. You contrast Dominion with nothing.

Man and look how easy it would have been to contrast Dominion with Dominion-without-Durations. That experiment has been played out. Dominion without Durations won nearly every award ever. The Durations part was not required.

[crj]

All the fixes take away a significant amount of the fun you can have with Inheritance in order to deal with an obscure edge-case that will never come up in 1000 years of playing Dominion.

The problem I see, from an engineering perspective, is that obscure edge-case problems have a nasty habit of biting harder later if not caught at the outset.

For example, exactly when you clean up a Duration, how they interact with throne rooms, and when you then clean up those thrones, probably looked like obscure edge-case problems when Seaside first came out...

[faust]

I think if Inheritance had never worked on Durations and Reserve cards - and had been in Empires - no-one would have said, this sucks, I need to be able to turn Estates into Durations.

I mean, true, but if you hadn't created Dominion, probably noone would have said, this sucks, I need a balanced, fun game that opens up a whole new genre of games. Still, in the end I imagine publishing Dominion has increased the overall fun.

I contrasted Inheritance-that-doesn't-work-on-Durations with Inheritance. You contrast Dominion with nothing.

What I put in for these placeholders doesn't really matter. The point is that the argument is not logically sound.

[Cave-o-sapien]

I think if Inheritance had never worked on Durations and Reserve cards - and had been in Empires - no-one would have said, this sucks, I need to be able to turn Estates into Durations.

I think you underestimate our ability to complain about things.

[Donald X.]

I think if Inheritance had never worked on Durations and Reserve cards - and had been in Empires - no-one would have said, this sucks, I need to be able to turn Estates into Durations.

I mean, true, but if you hadn't created Dominion, probably noone would have said, this sucks, I need a balanced, fun game that opens up a whole new genre of games. Still, in the end I imagine publishing Dominion has increased the overall fun.

I contrasted Inheritance-that-doesn't-work-on-Durations with Inheritance. You contrast Dominion with nothing.

What I put in for these placeholders doesn't really matter. The point is that the argument is not logically sound.

What you are saying just seems like nonsense to me. Of course what you compare matters. Something awesome and something 99% awesome are almost the same. Something awesome and nothing at all are much different.

[Donald X.]

I think if Inheritance had never worked on Durations and Reserve cards - and had been in Empires - no-one would have said, this sucks, I need to be able to turn Estates into Durations.

I think you underestimate our ability to complain about things.

This experiment has also been played out. There are tons of things that didn't happen that you guys never complain about.

[Cave-o-sapien]

I think if Inheritance had never worked on Durations and Reserve cards - and had been in Empires - no-one would have said, this sucks, I need to be able to turn Estates into Durations.

I think you underestimate our ability to complain about things.

This experiment has also been played out. There are tons of things that didn't happen that you guys never complain about.

Time to re-read the secret histories.

[Robz888]

This was quite a thread.

[Jeebus]

I just want to clarify that there are actually 8 TR variants: Throne Room, King’s Court, Counterfeit, Procession, Disciple, Royal Carriage, Crown and Ghost. (Counterfeit can be played by Storyteller and play Crown, so is relevant.)

Of course Donald made the point that the TR variants are not really the problem.

Trivialknot actually deserves a lot of credit for this post, where he identified that the problem is with any card being moved after having been played. And this is also the first scenario presented which is impossible to resolve IRL, because the player him/herself can't know the answer to what the card actually is. (In the other examples it was possible to keep track of the Estates in your hand.)

It seems like the only workable changes would be:

1) Actually change the three offending cards (Inheritance, BoM, Overlord).

2) Always use last-known-info as suggested by ChipperMDW. (Although I don't like the idea of reverting BoM to choose-before-play, because that created a lot problems compared to how cleanly it works now.) The problem is that it changes the Procession+BoM-as-Fortress explanation in the original Dark Ages rulebook, and probably other "known" interactions, which could be unexpected for many players online whenever it would change there.

3) Introducing a rule like I think Majiponi suggested, that whenever there is doubt about which copy of a card you're playing, you get to choose which. But what if you only have one copy among your cards, so that from a computer perspective there is no choice, but from the players' perspective how many copies you have is not open information (and a player might or might not have kept track)? Maybe that's why Donald said it wouldn't work.

[sudgy]

2) Always use last-known-info as suggested by ChipperMDW. (Although I don't like the idea of reverting BoM to choose-before-play, because that created a lot problems compared to how cleanly it works now.) The problem is that it changes the Procession+BoM-as-Fortress explanation in the original Dark Ages rulebook, and probably other "known" interactions, which could be unexpected for many players online whenever it would change there.

What about (as someone suggested earlier) keeping it as the actual card for as long as possible, and only reverting to the originally-played card when it's impossible to track it?  This keeps all current interactions as-is, and the only time that this would pop up is when people try to engineer it.

[Jeebus]

What about (as someone suggested earlier) keeping it as the actual card for as long as possible, and only reverting to the originally-played card when it's impossible to track it?  This keeps all current interactions as-is, and the only time that this would pop up is when people try to engineer it.

I didn't catch that suggestion. ChipperMDW's idea was that you use the original card whenever the game loses track of it. But I guess you mean whenever the players can't actually know what the card's instructions are, which is different. Yes, I think that would solve this and keep everything else the same. Of course, as with the other solutions (2 and 3 above), it introduces a completely new and obscure rule, and Donald said that he would rather change Inheritance, BoM and Overlord.

I suspect that the right call is to change nothing. I appreciate Crj's point from an engineering perspective, and the programmer in me wants this to be fixed cleanly too, but it doesn't seem worth it. Online it works, and if it ever came up IRL, any decision would probably work. The players can assume that it was that card, or not. A judge in a tournament would just... explode, I guess. Hopefully and probably, Dominion won't introduce more cards in the future that make these scenarios more likely.

[MatthewCA]

Once per game: Set aside a non-Victory Action card from the Supply costing up to $4. Move your Estate token to it. (Your Estates gain the abilities and types of that card.)

Simple question, but I have not seen it asked yet, and I apologize if this does nothing to further the discussion, but once an Estate is no longer yours, it loses the abilities and types it had when you inherited it. For simplicity's sake, let's say you inherit Embargo, then Throne Room an Estate. The first time you play it, Throne Room looks at the Estate, the Estate trashes itself, and puts an Embargo token on a supply pile. The second time it gets played, Throne Room checks the estate (like it does for Band of Misfits or Overlord), the estate is no longer yours, therefore doesn't have the abilities and types it inherited (because it is no longer your Estate). Playing the Estate does nothing the second time does nothing because it's just a victory card at that point.

Am I talking crazy here or does this make sense?

[GendoIkari]

Once per game: Set aside a non-Victory Action card from the Supply costing up to $4. Move your Estate token to it. (Your Estates gain the abilities and types of that card.)

Simple question, but I have not seen it asked yet, and I apologize if this does nothing to further the discussion, but once an Estate is no longer yours, it loses the abilities and types it had when you inherited it. For simplicity's sake, let's say you inherit Embargo, then Throne Room an Estate. The first time you play it, Throne Room looks at the Estate, the Estate trashes itself, and puts an Embargo token on a supply pile. The second time it gets played, Throne Room checks the estate (like it does for Band of Misfits or Overlord), the estate is no longer yours, therefore doesn't have the abilities and types it inherited (because it is no longer your Estate). Playing the Estate does nothing the second time Throne Room plays it because it's just a victory card at that point.

Am I talking crazy here or does this make sense?

If I read things correctly, it was confirmed in this thread that that is all correct. The Estate will still be "played", though it stays in the Trash, and nothing in the game cares whether it was "played" or not.

[chipperMDW]

Smugglers may be worth mentioning here.

Your right hand opponent gains a BoM, then plays it BoM as Caravan; he gains nothing else on his turn. On your turn you play Smugglers. Do you gain BoM because that's what it was when your opponent gained it? Or do you track the specific BoM and gain a copy of what it is at the moment (Caravan)?

I ask because, in this thread, I asserted that you'd gain a BoM in that situation. I note that this wasn't actually confirmed, so, considering what's been said here, maybe I was wrong about that.

If I was wrong (i.e. you gain a Caravan), then Smugglers also needs to track all gained cards and know what they currently look like. That's useful as an example of something needing to know about a "lost" card for reasons other than playing it.

If I was correct (i.e. you gain a BoM), then Dominion is already using something like last-known information.

[Jeebus]

Smugglers may be worth mentioning here.

Your right hand opponent gains a BoM, then plays it BoM as Caravan; he gains nothing else on his turn. On your turn you play Smugglers. Do you gain BoM because that's what it was when your opponent gained it? Or do you track the specific BoM and gain a copy of what it is at the moment (Caravan)?

I ask because, in this thread, I asserted that you'd gain a BoM in that situation. I note that this wasn't actually confirmed, so, considering what's been said here, maybe I was wrong about that.

If I was wrong (i.e. you gain a Caravan), then Smugglers also needs to track all gained cards and know what they currently look like. That's useful as an example of something needing to know about a "lost" card for reasons other than playing it.

If I was correct (i.e. you gain a BoM), then Dominion is already using something like last-known information.

Hmm, interesting. I'm re-reading that thread. Assuming you were correct (you gain a BoM), isn't it the case that if we go by the interpretation that I wrote (and you agreed on), then it's not using last-known information?

Namely this: Gain a copy of [a card that the player to your right gained on their last turn] costing up to $6.

So the only past information is the names of the cards that your opponent gained (i.e. the names when s/he gained them). That's not something to track, because it's not information connected to a card. It's just something that is taken from the past game state. It's like you said, Treasure Map and Ritual do the same. They don't look at specific cards, but just information from the past game state.

[Donald X.]

Your right hand opponent gains a BoM, then plays it BoM as Caravan; he gains nothing else on his turn. On your turn you play Smugglers. Do you gain BoM because that's what it was when your opponent gained it? Or do you track the specific BoM and gain a copy of what it is at the moment (Caravan)?

You gain a Band of Misfits. Somehow.

[chipperMDW]

Hmm, interesting. I'm re-reading that thread. Assuming you were correct (you gain a BoM), isn't it the case that if we go by the interpretation that I wrote (and you agreed on), then it's not using last-known information?

Namely this: Gain a copy of [a card that the player to your right gained on their last turn] costing up to $6.

So the only past information is the names of the cards that your opponent gained (i.e. the names when s/he gained them). That's not something to track, because it's not information connected to a card. It's just something that is taken from the past game state. It's like you said, Treasure Map and Ritual do the same. They don't look at specific cards, but just information from the past game state.

Yeah, I think I see what you're saying. Although it's not so much about what information is remembered as it is about why something is trying to recall it. Smugglers (and Treasure Map and Ritual) are specifically looking for information about a past moment. The last-known information we were talking about earlier in this thread was not meant for things specifically looking for past info, but for things that were actually looking for present info but needed to settle for falling back on past info.

So I think that means Smugglers is not relevant to this thread after all. Never mind!

[markusin]

--Play Band of Misfits as Mining Village, trash it

I see I see. There are of course several cards that trash themselves, and they are a way to have a card leave play.

To get the category as small as possible, my next guess is that it's just these three ways to make a card not be itself: Band of Misfits, Overlord, Inheritance. Can you mess up without those?

Band of Misfits and Overlord should be like Necromancer - play the card leaving it there, non-Duration. Inheritance should be e.g. "discard an Estate to..." (it's trickier than that because there's no terse way to say "you can do this any time you are allowed to play an action," although again it's too big of a change for errata, and if the card weren't published yet I wouldn't be trying to simulate it exactly).

Just to try to make sense of this rules discussion, in the scenario described by trivialknot with BoM and Mining Village, does the BoM actually get played as Lighthouse when played the third time by the first King's Court?

[Donald X.]

Just to try to make sense of this rules discussion, in the scenario described by trivialknot with BoM and Mining Village, does the BoM actually get played as Lighthouse when played the third time by the first King's Court?

Yes. The Band of Misfits is a Lighthouse currently, and you're playing it.

[singletee]

Just to try to make sense of this rules discussion, in the scenario described by trivialknot with BoM and Mining Village, does the BoM actually get played as Lighthouse when played the third time by the first King's Court?

Yes. The Band of Misfits is a Lighthouse currently, and you're playing it.

Suppose there were another Band of Misfits in my discard. I drew and played one of them as Lighthouse twice via Herald into Throne as described, but now I don't know whether it's the same Band of Misfits as the one I originally played.

[GendoIkari]

Just to try to make sense of this rules discussion, in the scenario described by trivialknot with BoM and Mining Village, does the BoM actually get played as Lighthouse when played the third time by the first King's Court?

Yes. The Band of Misfits is a Lighthouse currently, and you're playing it.

Suppose there were another Band of Misfits in my discard. I drew and played one of them as Lighthouse twice via Herald into Throne as described, but now I don't know whether it's the same Band of Misfits as the one I originally played.

This was mentioned in the OP and responded to by Donald at the start of the thread.

[singletee]

Just to try to make sense of this rules discussion, in the scenario described by trivialknot with BoM and Mining Village, does the BoM actually get played as Lighthouse when played the third time by the first King's Court?

Yes. The Band of Misfits is a Lighthouse currently, and you're playing it.

Suppose there were another Band of Misfits in my discard. I drew and played one of them as Lighthouse twice via Herald into Throne as described, but now I don't know whether it's the same Band of Misfits as the one I originally played.

This was mentioned in the OP and responded to by Donald at the start of the thread.

So the "solution" is that it's not currently possible to resolve the situation in the physical game? How disappointing.

I was there; I upvoted that post back then. But it certainly doesn't constitute anything remotely resembling a ruling. I don't begrudge Donald X. the decision not to rule on such an unlikely case, but that post really doesn't serve as a solution at all.

I suppose we could mark the cards? That ought to solve it if Masquerade isn't involved.

There are only 3 solutions really:
1. Mark the cards (emulating the abilities of a computer program),
2. If we don't know what the card is currently, it does nothing,
3. If we don't know what the card is currently, use information from some prior time.

[Donald X.]

My current thinking is:

How about losing track slighty harder as a solution?  If the current location of the card can't be determined without 'cheating', it retains the identity it had when last its location was known.

It is going to be hard for me to make the leap to "okay I am changing the rules; here is the rule almost no-one will know, that will never come up, but maybe, just maybe, will confuse someone reading the wiki or punchball's document."

If I could go back and do things better, the fix would be to not have this situation be possible, rather than to have more to the lose-track rule. Ideally lose-track itself would also not be possible; probably many of the abilities that move cards could have fairly similar forms without invoking that rule.

If we hadn't done the second editions yet, possibly I would reword Band of Misfits, Overlord, and Inheritance.

You can easily avoid the problem irl by not playing with those cards, or some sort of house rule for this ubiquitous scenario.

[allanfieldhouse]

Easy solution -- don't change anything. If something like this ever comes up IRL, just play it however makes sense to the group. If it comes up online, just let it work however it works. It's basically never going to happen anyway.

[Jack Rudd]

Indeed. This is a scenario which involves, among other things, giving your opponent your Inherited Estates. Nobody actually does that in reality.

[crj]

Except for the edge case from Hell: all this madness is happening while the player is Possessed.

[dane-m]

For the benefit of anyone reading this topic in the future it should be pointed out that its content is now redundant because of http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=19893.