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Author Topic: Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat  (Read 2159 times)

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LittleFish

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Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat
« on: December 29, 2020, 11:33:17 pm »
+1

There are many attacks that say to reveal a card from your hand. Cards that block attacks say that you will be "unaffected" by the attack. If you blocked everything on the attack card, wouldn't you therefore not be able to view the card revealed? It would only be important in a few edge cases (Such as Advisor, because maybe hand composition will influence a decision), but wouldn't it still be considered a benefit? You would be excluded from everything on the card upon revealing a Moat, so you couldn't draw an extra card from a Margrave without being effected by the attack part following it. Doesn't this (Possible) loophole ruin the trust safeguards put in place during game design?
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infangthief

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Re: Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat
« Reply #1 on: December 30, 2020, 04:23:19 am »
+2

I think I follow what you're asking, but let me try an example to make sure:

Player order A->B->C

Player A's turn:
A: Plays Bureaucrat
C: Reveals a Moat
A: Gains a Silver onto their deck
B: Reveals hand of cards with no Victory cards in it

Now the question is, does C get to see the hand of cards that B revealed, or not?
As you say, if B starts their next turn playing an Advisor, it makes a difference whether C saw the cards or not.
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infangthief

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Re: Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat
« Reply #2 on: December 30, 2020, 05:01:18 am »
+1

I'm fairly sure the answer should be yes, C does get to see those cards. I suppose it comes down to what exactly unaffected means. That might not be easy to define.

Here's a similar situation:

A: Plays Saboteur
C: Reveals a Moat from their hand
B: Reveals a Province from their deck, trashes it and gains an Ill-Gotten Gains
Does C gain a curse?
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Jeebus

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Re: Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat
« Reply #3 on: December 30, 2020, 05:24:01 am »
+2

The last scenario (with Saboteur and IGG) is a little different, since the Curse gaining is an effect of IGG, not of Saboteur. I asked a similar question some years ago: If you Moat a Cultist, and your opponent uses that Cultist to play another Cultist, do you have to reveal Moat again? The answer is yes: even though the second Cultist was played as an effect of the first, the effects (giving Ruins) of the second is not part of the effects of the first. So the answer in the Saboteur scenario is that C gains a Curse.

As I said, the Bureaucrat question is different. Here the revealing is also part of Bureaucrat's effects, just like the topdecking. The question is if your opponent seeing your revealed cards is considered to be part of the effect of revealing those cards and that this affects your opponent. Obviously the intention is that you get to see them, however we would formalize the rule.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2020, 05:30:01 am by Jeebus »
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infangthief

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Re: Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat
« Reply #4 on: December 30, 2020, 06:06:07 am »
+1

If the Moating player doesn't get to see revealed cards, then here is an accountability issue that could arise in a 2 player game:

A: Plays Ambassador
B: Reveals a Moat from their hand
A: Reveals a Patron from their hand and gets +1 Coffers (and chooses not to return the Patron to the supply)

If B doesn't get to see the revealed Patron card, then there is nothing to stop A from always conveniently finding that they have a Patron in their hand when their Ambassador is Moated.
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ben_king

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Re: Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat
« Reply #5 on: December 30, 2020, 11:02:23 am »
+3

The "unaffected" only goes so far.  Attack cards have a part that clearly affects other players and other parts that don't.  The clearest way to do this would have been to have a part of the card's text labeled as the attack, e.g. "Attack: each other player gains a Curse."

With the existing cards, it's easy to see which parts of the text are intended to be the attack.  Going any further, you get silly scenarios and rules contradictions.  If the Silver gained from a Bureaucrat that you Moated would empty a 3rd pile and cause you to lose the game, does the Silver get gained? etc.

There was actually an early version of Old Witch in Renaissance playtesting that died because of this ambiguity though.  This version had an Artifact and one of the options on Old Witch was to take the Artifact.  But another one of the options was to hand out Curses.  So it was unclear to people whether a Moat could Old Witch from taking the Artifact from a player who had Moated it.  Since there were other non-attack cards that also took other people's Artifacts, it didn't feel like part of the attack to some people, but other people felt that losing your Artifact definitely counted as being affected by an attack card.  It ended up changing to its current version for that reason.
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LittleFish

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Re: Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat
« Reply #6 on: December 30, 2020, 12:11:46 pm »
0

The "unaffected" only goes so far.  Attack cards have a part that clearly affects other players and other parts that don't.  The clearest way to do this would have been to have a part of the card's text labeled as the attack, e.g. "Attack: each other player gains a Curse."
Other than the revealed cards, do you have an example of a attack card with a non-attack player interaction?
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LittleFish

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Re: Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat
« Reply #7 on: December 30, 2020, 12:43:01 pm »
0

If the Moating player doesn't get to see revealed cards, then here is an accountability issue that could arise in a 2 player game:

A: Plays Ambassador
B: Reveals a Moat from their hand
A: Reveals a Patron from their hand and gets +1 Coffers (and chooses not to return the Patron to the supply)

If B doesn't get to see the revealed Patron card, then there is nothing to stop A from always conveniently finding that they have a Patron in their hand when their Ambassador is Moated.
I was aware of the accountability issue, meaning this would go against the intent of the rules, and I never play this way (I let revealed cards be revealed for blocked attacks), but I was wondering if there was actually anything that specifically said that revealing isn't considered an effect of an attack.


I suppose the answer could come through the fact that revealing is effecting the player  revealing it, even if it's not explicitly stated. The act of revealing could be beneficial to the opponent, but isn't made to be that way.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat
« Reply #8 on: December 30, 2020, 01:41:06 pm »
+2

I knew this question sounded familiar... an old rules thread about it:

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=17997.0
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Erick648

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Re: Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat
« Reply #9 on: December 30, 2020, 07:53:39 pm »
+5

The way I see it, revealing your cards is an effect on the person revealing the cards (Player B in the Bureaucrat example), not the other players.  To the extent it affects other players (by letting them see your cards), this is done indirectly through affecting the game state (your hand is briefly changed from secret to publicly visible).

By analogy, Moating an Urchin doesn't keep you from seeing the card another opponent discarded to the Urchin---the movement to the publicly visible top of the discard pile lets you see that card despite the Moat.  Likewise, Bureaucrat's movement of Player B's hand to "being revealed land" doesn't affect Player C, even if the hand now being in "being revealed land" lets the other players see the cards in it.
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Isis

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Re: Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat
« Reply #10 on: January 01, 2021, 05:08:16 am »
0

I knew this question sounded familiar... an old rules thread about it:

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=17997.0

Eh heh that's a good one.
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