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[LastFootnote]

"If you can" is always implicit in everything in Dominion. "Gain a card costing up to $4 if you can." "Each other player gains a Curse if they can." Seems weird to add it here.

[GendoIkari]

"If you can" is always implicit in everything in Dominion. "Gain a card costing up to $4 if you can." "Each other player gains a Curse if they can." Seems weird to add it here.

Hmm... People have often talked about how a fan card can't really say "you can't play more than 1 card per turn" because then what happens if you play a Throne Room; suddenly you have 2 different cards; each requiring you to do contradictory things. You seem to be suggesting that things such as this fall under the general "do as much as you can" rule? So basically, Dominion does have a built in "when one effect says 'must' and another effect says 'can't'; that 'can't' always wins"?

[Asper]

"If you can" is always implicit in everything in Dominion. "Gain a card costing up to $4 if you can." "Each other player gains a Curse if they can." Seems weird to add it here.

Well, usually when you can't do something it's because it's physically impossible (like taking or moving something that isn't there), not because two rules just contradict each other. Moat does this to any attack, but that's all i can think of right now, and it's clear there Moat is supposed to take precedence. With Charlatan/Debt, we have something that you normally may, and now you must and mustn't at the same time.

I know some games that use the "prevent always wins" mechanic Gendo is describing, but there's nothing in the rulebook that says that for Dominion. There it just says "cards take precedence over rules", which doesn't cover cards vs cards. In a way, you can make an argument that Charlatan should ovverride the standard debt rule, as those are in the rulebook and Charlatan is a card.

[LastFootnote]

"If you can" is always implicit in everything in Dominion. "Gain a card costing up to $4 if you can." "Each other player gains a Curse if they can." Seems weird to add it here.

Hmm... People have often talked about how a fan card can't really say "you can't play more than 1 card per turn" because then what happens if you play a Throne Room; suddenly you have 2 different cards; each requiring you to do contradictory things. You seem to be suggesting that things such as this fall under the general "do as much as you can" rule? So basically, Dominion does have a built in "when one effect says 'must' and another effect says 'can't'; that 'can't' always wins"?

Not just Dominion, but almost all games.

[GendoIkari]

"If you can" is always implicit in everything in Dominion. "Gain a card costing up to $4 if you can." "Each other player gains a Curse if they can." Seems weird to add it here.

Hmm... People have often talked about how a fan card can't really say "you can't play more than 1 card per turn" because then what happens if you play a Throne Room; suddenly you have 2 different cards; each requiring you to do contradictory things. You seem to be suggesting that things such as this fall under the general "do as much as you can" rule? So basically, Dominion does have a built in "when one effect says 'must' and another effect says 'can't'; that 'can't' always wins"?

Not just Dominion, but almost all games.

But for example, MTG has an explicit rule in the rulebook. Dominion does not. (Unless the "do as much as you can" rule applies). But Asper has a very good point... "do as much as you can" generally refers to things that you literally can't do; as opposed to things you can't do because a card effect or rule says you can't.

[Asper]

Thinking of it, i'll rephrase my second point to clarify: In Dominion, cards override rules. Debt says you can't buy. Charlatan says you must. Debt is in the rules, Charlatan is a card. Charlatan wins. It's like how the rules say you can't buy cards during your action phase, and Black Market also simply says "Yes you can.", and wins out. This isn't necessarily me saying "I think you need to rule it that way", just stating it's not necessarily the only plausible conclusion debt should take precedence.

The point doesn't really help much for Contraband/Charlatan, though - the two-card-contradiction persists there.

[AdrianHealey]

I'd say: 'you must if you can', you can not, so you mustn't.

[LastFootnote]

Thinking of it, i'll rephrase my second point to clarify: In Dominion, cards override rules. Debt says you can't buy. Charlatan says you must. Debt is in the rules, Charlatan is a card. Charlatan wins. It's like how the rules say you can't buy cards during your action phase, and Black Market also simply says "Yes you can.", and wins out. This isn't necessarily me saying "I think you need to rule it that way", just stating it's not necessarily the only plausible conclusion debt should take precedence.

The point doesn't really help much for Contraband/Charlatan, though - the two-card-contradiction persists there.

I don't see how adding "if you can" helps even the debt case. If you can't, then obviously you won't. Otherwise you must. Either Charlatan overrides debt or it doesn't. "If you can" shouldn't make a difference there.

[Destry]

In other games, where there's a contradiction between cards played, it's resolved in the order the cards are played.

I don't think it applies in this case of Contraband/Charlatan described. Contraband makes the available cards unavailable, so Charlatan fails to force you to buy a Copper or Curse, same as if the piles were empty.

[Donald X.]

Charlatan is probably the card of mine that cribs closest to another fan card idea I saw. And that card was basically what you suggest here, except with giving out Curses instead of Coppers. And well, I think I still prefer "mandatory buys" to "penalty for unused buys", mostly due to the fact that "penalty" stacks and "mandatory" doesn't. It seems kludgy to me that if you've been hit by 3 Charlatan attacks, you can either buy a Copper or you can not do that and gain 3 Coppers instead. So "mandatory" has sexy functionality in addition to sexy phrasing, except when it interacts with debt (and extreme edge cases with Contraband or empty Copper/Curse piles). I also mildly prefer debt cards being a defense against Charlatan rather than being especially vulnerable to it.

For me the big question for Charlatan is: does the attack matter enough. As I believe Donald has said, it's best when you buy Attack cards for the attack effect, rather than buying them for something else and then the Attack just incidentally happening. Charlatan's attack is mild enough to make incidental attacks less worrisome, but that in turn places more pressure on the rest of the card to be decent but not automatic. So Charlatan's non-attack bonus is trying to walk the line by being especially useful in certain situations, upping the proportion of games where it's attractive. It's nice with Draw-to-X and cards that want a high Action density (like Throne variants, Herald, etc.). I think there's a good chance that it's still not good enough too much of the time. It's heartening that it made a difference in LibraryAdventurer's game.

Oh man, you showed me someone else's fan card.

I see what you're saying about not stacking certain kinds of penalties, and the "buy Copper vs. gain 3" case; otoh my closest thing to this is Swamp Hag, which stacks and I like that fine (and which also works when there's no +Buy in a game). OTOH sexy wordings are worth something.

Charlatan's attack as it stands (or reworded) does not seem too promising. Maybe there's no +Buy; maybe I'm drawing my deck and can always use that extra +Buy I got; maybe there are Markets but I can just do something else; maybe other attacks are giving us awful hands and man who needs to make that even worse. It seems super-rare, and then when it actually hits, they get a Copper. Of course you know how negative I am.

There are directions to consider, but it's not like I want to try to design an attack here that then people would know about or that I would feel obligated not to use. Attacks are hard. Anyway I just came in to tackle the wording issue vs. debt.

[Donald X.]

Looking at that part of it now, for the first time... it looks extremely weak. Silver is pretty close to an action that says "+1 action, +". This is just that except half of your money is delayed until next turn; plus the other drawbacks of durations compared to non-durations. Draw-to-x is rare; like existing on 3 total cards rare. Sure Scrying Pool, Herald, and Throne variants prefer an action-silver to a treasure-silver. But terminal draw, which is way more common than those, prefers the treasure-silver.

Let me just say, I buy Lighthouse over Silver plenty.

[GendoIkari]

Looking at that part of it now, for the first time... it looks extremely weak. Silver is pretty close to an action that says "+1 action, +". This is just that except half of your money is delayed until next turn; plus the other drawbacks of durations compared to non-durations. Draw-to-x is rare; like existing on 3 total cards rare. Sure Scrying Pool, Herald, and Throne variants prefer an action-silver to a treasure-silver. But terminal draw, which is way more common than those, prefers the treasure-silver.

Let me just say, I buy Lighthouse over Silver plenty.

I assume you mean in games without attacks?

[Donald X.]

In other games, where there's a contradiction between cards played, it's resolved in the order the cards are played.

Magic does this, but I think it's best avoided, and most games can (and do) avoid it.

As LF notes, in most games, "can't" beats "do." This is an issue of friendly wordings vs. precise ones. The precise wordings are much more confusing.

In Magic, day one, they had Stone Rain, "Destroy target land," and Consecrate Land, "enchanted land can't be destroyed." In an early Magic book, which included essays by Richard Garfield, Richard said, "isn't that a contradiction," then went on to say, it hurt his head to get into the frame of mind where you could see it that way.

It's a real contradiction though. The classic solution is to use a "replacement" (Magic lingo for "would" triggers). Here it would be "When enchanted land would be destroyed, instead, it isn't." Now there's no contradiction. [The actual solution in Magic today is "Enchanted land is indestructible," which is a defined term.]

Replacements tend to be ultra-confusing; Possession and Trader are two of the most confusing cards in Dominion. It's better not to use replacements. In most games that then means that if you want a "can't" rule, you have "can't" beat "do."

It tends to be very intuitive that "can't" beats "do," because otherwise the "can't" rule wouldn't do anything. Consecrate Land has to stop Stone Rain; otherwise it makes no sense.

[Donald X.]

Looking at that part of it now, for the first time... it looks extremely weak. Silver is pretty close to an action that says "+1 action, +". This is just that except half of your money is delayed until next turn; plus the other drawbacks of durations compared to non-durations. Draw-to-x is rare; like existing on 3 total cards rare. Sure Scrying Pool, Herald, and Throne variants prefer an action-silver to a treasure-silver. But terminal draw, which is way more common than those, prefers the treasure-silver.

Let me just say, I buy Lighthouse over Silver plenty.

I assume you mean in games without attacks?

I wasn't saying that (though of course I have bought it over Silver in games without attacks), but the proposed card isn't "+1 Action, +$1 this turn and next." It gets to do another thing too. That other thing does not have to be worth the $3, if you follow me; you've got these resources to go with it.

[GendoIkari]

In other games, where there's a contradiction between cards played, it's resolved in the order the cards are played.

Magic does this, but I think it's best avoided, and most games can (and do) avoid it.

As LF notes, in most games, "can't" beats "do." This is an issue of friendly wordings vs. precise ones. The precise wordings are much more confusing.

In Magic, day one, they had Stone Rain, "Destroy target land," and Consecrate Land, "enchanted land can't be destroyed." In an early Magic book, which included essays by Richard Garfield, Richard said, "isn't that a contradiction," then went on to say, it hurt his head to get into the frame of mind where you could see it that way.

It's a real contradiction though. The classic solution is to use a "replacement" (Magic lingo for "would" triggers). Here it would be "When enchanted land would be destroyed, instead, it isn't." Now there's no contradiction. [The actual solution in Magic today is "Enchanted land is indestructible," which is a defined term.]

Replacements tend to be ultra-confusing; Possession and Trader are two of the most confusing cards in Dominion. It's better not to use replacements. In most games that then means that if you want a "can't" rule, you have "can't" beat "do."

It tends to be very intuitive that "can't" beats "do," because otherwise the "can't" rule wouldn't do anything. Consecrate Land has to stop Stone Rain; otherwise it makes no sense.

Am I understanding correct, that what you are saying here is that the intuitive thing is that it is NOT a contradiction to have "your opponent can't play action cards next turn"; even if he has a Princed card; telling him that he must play an action card?

[Asper]

In other games, where there's a contradiction between cards played, it's resolved in the order the cards are played.

Magic does this, but I think it's best avoided, and most games can (and do) avoid it.

As LF notes, in most games, "can't" beats "do." This is an issue of friendly wordings vs. precise ones. The precise wordings are much more confusing.

In Magic, day one, they had Stone Rain, "Destroy target land," and Consecrate Land, "enchanted land can't be destroyed." In an early Magic book, which included essays by Richard Garfield, Richard said, "isn't that a contradiction," then went on to say, it hurt his head to get into the frame of mind where you could see it that way.

It's a real contradiction though. The classic solution is to use a "replacement" (Magic lingo for "would" triggers). Here it would be "When enchanted land would be destroyed, instead, it isn't." Now there's no contradiction. [The actual solution in Magic today is "Enchanted land is indestructible," which is a defined term.]

Replacements tend to be ultra-confusing; Possession and Trader are two of the most confusing cards in Dominion. It's better not to use replacements. In most games that then means that if you want a "can't" rule, you have "can't" beat "do."

It tends to be very intuitive that "can't" beats "do," because otherwise the "can't" rule wouldn't do anything. Consecrate Land has to stop Stone Rain; otherwise it makes no sense.

Am I understanding correct, that what you are saying here is that the intuitive thing is that it is NOT a contradiction to have "your opponent can't play action cards next turn"; even if he has a Princed card; telling him that he must play an action card?

I think he's saying that it's a contradition, but as a card that forbids something would be useless if it was overruled by cards that allow it, and players know they wouldn't exist if they were useless, they will conclude that the solution that makes the card useless can't be right. So, forbidding takes precedence. In a similar fashion, people get confused by the "immediate" on Chancellor, because why is it on no other cards? If all card effects were resolved immediately, the word would be useless on Chancellor, so that makes no sense. As far as i know, Donald has expressed he wouldn't put the word on the card anymore. Not because it's wrong, but because of players trying to figure out the ruling that makes everything meaningful.

[LastFootnote]

Oh man, you showed me someone else's fan card.

Wait, what? When did I "show" you this card?

I see what you're saying about not stacking certain kinds of penalties, and the "buy Copper vs. gain 3" case; otoh my closest thing to this is Swamp Hag, which stacks and I like that fine (and which also works when there's no +Buy in a game). OTOH sexy wordings are worth something.

Yeah, I think attacks stacking is great in general. But it seems silly and counter-intuitive that this stacks but doesn't really stack because you're nearly always buying Coppers (or just buying more, cheaper cards) to prevent the attack.

Charlatan's attack as it stands (or reworded) does not seem too promising. Maybe there's no +Buy; maybe I'm drawing my deck and can always use that extra +Buy I got; maybe there are Markets but I can just do something else; maybe other attacks are giving us awful hands and man who needs to make that even worse. It seems super-rare, and then when it actually hits, they get a Copper. Of course you know how negative I am.

Well as you can read above, I am also pretty negative about it. It seemed unique and interesting enough to be worth trying despite that. Sometimes you've just got to try these things, especially if you don't currently have anything more promising to try instead.

[GendoIkari]

In other games, where there's a contradiction between cards played, it's resolved in the order the cards are played.

Magic does this, but I think it's best avoided, and most games can (and do) avoid it.

As LF notes, in most games, "can't" beats "do." This is an issue of friendly wordings vs. precise ones. The precise wordings are much more confusing.

In Magic, day one, they had Stone Rain, "Destroy target land," and Consecrate Land, "enchanted land can't be destroyed." In an early Magic book, which included essays by Richard Garfield, Richard said, "isn't that a contradiction," then went on to say, it hurt his head to get into the frame of mind where you could see it that way.

It's a real contradiction though. The classic solution is to use a "replacement" (Magic lingo for "would" triggers). Here it would be "When enchanted land would be destroyed, instead, it isn't." Now there's no contradiction. [The actual solution in Magic today is "Enchanted land is indestructible," which is a defined term.]

Replacements tend to be ultra-confusing; Possession and Trader are two of the most confusing cards in Dominion. It's better not to use replacements. In most games that then means that if you want a "can't" rule, you have "can't" beat "do."

It tends to be very intuitive that "can't" beats "do," because otherwise the "can't" rule wouldn't do anything. Consecrate Land has to stop Stone Rain; otherwise it makes no sense.

Am I understanding correct, that what you are saying here is that the intuitive thing is that it is NOT a contradiction to have "your opponent can't play action cards next turn"; even if he has a Princed card; telling him that he must play an action card?

I think he's saying that it's a contradition, but as a card that forbids something would be useless if it was overruled by cards that allow it, and players know they wouldn't exist if they were useless, they will conclude that the solution that makes the card useless can't be right. So, forbidding takes precedence. In a similar fashion, people get confused by the "immediate" on Chancellor, because why is it on no other cards? If all card effects were resolved immediately, the word would be useless on Chancellor, so that makes no sense. As far as i know, Donald has expressed he wouldn't put the word on the card anymore. Not because it's wrong, but because of players trying to figure out the ruling that makes everything meaningful.

Yeah. And also the way Island and Native Village tell you to return the cards to your deck at the end of the game; causing everyone to ask if the same is true for other set-aside cards.

[Donald X.]

Oh man, you showed me someone else's fan card.

Wait, what? When did I "show" you this card?

I was being hilarious. Maybe I need to work on new material.

[Asper]

Thinking of it, i'll rephrase my second point to clarify: In Dominion, cards override rules. Debt says you can't buy. Charlatan says you must. Debt is in the rules, Charlatan is a card. Charlatan wins. It's like how the rules say you can't buy cards during your action phase, and Black Market also simply says "Yes you can.", and wins out. This isn't necessarily me saying "I think you need to rule it that way", just stating it's not necessarily the only plausible conclusion debt should take precedence.

The point doesn't really help much for Contraband/Charlatan, though - the two-card-contradiction persists there.

I don't see how adding "if you can" helps even the debt case. If you can't, then obviously you won't. Otherwise you must. Either Charlatan overrides debt or it doesn't. "If you can" shouldn't make a difference there.

About this, the idea was that the attribute "buy" starts out with a value of "can", and then becomes "must if can" (or "can't"), and finally, "must if can and can't". Without the restriction, the last step would be "must and can't", which causes the contradiction. Of course you are right, this isn't the only possible reading either. I mean, perhaps you can just put the issue into a hypothetical rulebook. Black Market also doesn't tell me i can play Treasure cards, yet i can, so maybe answering such stuff in an FAQ would be fine after all.

[Minotaur]

Auction: Treasure–Reaction, $2  ★★★☆☆
+1 Buy
When you play this, discard your hand. Worth $1 per card discarded.
When another player plays an Attack card, you may discard this and another Treasure, to gain a Gold.

Borderline attack reflection, which I somewhat agree with Donald about as being a Bad Thing.  Cursers are probably sort of viable, while Urchin (or any other weak attack) is just about dead in the water.  The Treasure is decent for decks that green early or draw a lot of dead actions, I guess.  The +Buy is nice, but if you need more than one of them, then they are a very bad collision hazard.

[tristan]

I am not a fan uf Auction bit I don't consider its Reaction to be brokenly strong. You do after all have to discard two cards to get that Gold and a difference of 1 or more Coins could seriously weaken your current turn.

[AdrianHealey]

Auction: Treasure–Reaction, $2  ★★★☆☆
+1 Buy
When you play this, discard your hand. Worth $1 per card discarded.
When another player plays an Attack card, you may discard this and another Treasure, to gain a Gold.

Borderline attack reflection, which I somewhat agree with Donald about as being a Bad Thing.  Cursers are probably sort of viable, while Urchin (or any other weak attack) is just about dead in the water.  The Treasure is decent for decks that green early or draw a lot of dead actions, I guess.  The +Buy is nice, but if you need more than one of them, then they are a very bad collision hazard.

I have played a game with Auction; it didn't feel like a strong reaction at all. Do you think horsetraders is a too strong a reacion to urchin? Ok, Militia/Mercenary also because irrelevant when you have auction and another treasure in your hand, but is that really that big of a deal? Curses still hit pretty hard. And gaining a gold in your discard pile is nice, but also not super-duper strong.

[Deadlock39]

There are games where it could be pretty strong I suppose, but it doesn't seem overpowered.  Compare with Tunnel.

[NoMoreFun]

What if Charlatan also prevented players from buying treasures?