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[Warfreak2]

Premise: when a Reaction card says "when ____", the reaction actually resolves before the ____ resolves. Therefore, isn't it technically within the rules to trash a Market Square from my hand, react to that trashing by discarding it and gaining a Gold, and then not being able to resolve the trashing because whatever card tried to trash it has Lost Track of it (it's now in my discard pile, rather than my hand)? This seems like it's definitely not the intention of the card, as it would be even better than Fortress' invulnerability (keep the card AND get a Gold), but I'm struggling to work out why it's not within the rules.

[Awaclus]

No, the reaction actually resolves after the ____ resolves. When you trash Market Square from your hand, it's not in your hand anymore and you can't discard it.

[Qvist]

Also, I guess, whenever a card references "a card" it's always implicit "a card other than this copy". Trader and Watchtower also don't trigger when you buy them on their own reaction.

[Davio]

Also, I guess, whenever a card references "a card" it's always implicit "a card other than this copy". Trader and Watchtower also don't trigger when you buy them on their own reaction.

Because you don't have them in hand when you buy them?

I don't think reactions trigger if the cards aren't in your hand.
I'm talking about the "blue" reactions here, not the on-card reactions.

[Qvist]

Also, I guess, whenever a card references "a card" it's always implicit "a card other than this copy". Trader and Watchtower also don't trigger when you buy them on their own reaction.

Because you don't have them in hand when you buy them?

I don't think reactions trigger if the cards aren't in your hand.
I'm talking about the "blue" reactions here, not the on-card reactions.

Right. I forgot that they say explicitly "in your hand", but Davio's explanation is much easier formulated what I tried to say. Reaction card have to be in your hand to trigger.

[RTT]

Also, I guess, whenever a card references "a card" it's always implicit "a card other than this copy". Trader and Watchtower also don't trigger when you buy them on their own reaction.

Because you don't have them in hand when you buy them?

I don't think reactions trigger if the cards aren't in your hand.
I'm talking about the "blue" reactions here, not the on-card reactions.

Right. I forgot that they say explicitly "in your hand", but Davio's explanation is much easier formulated what I tried to say. Reaction card have to be in your hand to trigger.

exept for tunnel which can be discarded from your draw pile and still react.

[Warfreak2]

Blue cards like Secret Chamber and Horse Traders definitely resolve before the attack resolves. Moat has no meaning if you resolve it after you already discarded two cards or got a Curse, and you can't reveal a Moat (or anything else) after you draw a new set of four cards from Minion, which is after the attack resolves. You play Minion, I reveal Horse Traders before you even decide whether to attack or take money, set it aside for next turn, and if you choose to attack, I'm not affected because my hand now has only four cards. Trash a Cultist, discard Market Square, gain a Gold, and then draw three cards, possibly drawing your new Gold. Cellar discarding a Tunnel, you reveal the Tunnel before it gets discarded, then gain a Gold before drawing your new card. Talisman doesn't get you a second copy of a card when you buy it; rather, it resolves before the buy resolves, gives you a first copy of the card, and then the buy gets resolved, gaining you the second copy (or possibly nothing!). Beggar topdecks a Silver before Sea Hag discards it and replaces it with a Curse.

Border Village and Haggler, at least in online implementations, gain you another card after you gain them, but that's the only exception I can think of. That would matter when you gain an Inn, because you could shuffle the Border Village into your deck too. But I'm not sure "that's the way Isotropic works" trumps what the rules actually say, and by my understanding it should work the other way round.

I'm not convinced by the idea that when a card refers to "a card", it implicitly doesn't include itself. When scoring Gardens and Silk Road, each includes themselves in the count of your deck, and Secret Chamber can put itself back on your deck as one of the "two cards" it refers to. I'm not sure there's a strong argument that "a card" is semantically different to "cards" in any other way than one is singular and the other is plural.

Trader and Watchtower have to be revealed from your hand, but they aren't there when you gain them, so no problem there. If you had some way to gain a Watchtower in your hand, I am pretty sure you wouldn't then be allowed to reveal and topdeck it - not because it can't refer to itself, but rather because the gain has already happened, and reactions have to resolve first. If you could gain a Trader in hand, you wouldn't be allowed to reveal it in response to gaining it because Trader reacts to would-gain, which happens strictly before when-gain, and may in fact prevent the gain that would have happened.

If Market Square is resolved before whatever trashed it, then it's still in your hand. I didn't see anything in the rulebook explaining whether, or why, when-trash happens after trashing but when-attacked happens before being attacked.

[Warfreak2]

Let me be clear - I don't think Market Square is supposed to behave this way, and I don't want to play it as if it does. I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with my understanding of the rules.

[SirPeebles]

Also, I guess, whenever a card references "a card" it's always implicit "a card other than this copy". Trader and Watchtower also don't trigger when you buy them on their own reaction.

Scheme is an example of one which references "a card" which may refer to itself.

[Warfreak2]

Nice one! Didn't think about that.

[Warfreak2]

And if I Throne Room an Urchin, I can't trash it because it reacts "when you play another Attack card".

[SirPeebles]

Moat, Horse Traders etc. react to an Attack card being played.  Roughly, it is the act of moving the Attack card from one's hand to one's in play area that Moat reacts to.  That's why you need to choose whether or not to react with Moat or Horse Traders immediately after Minion is put into play, before your opponent chooses the coin or the discard.

Fun fact, if Moat is Young Witch's bane, it's usually better not to reveal it as Moat when the Young Witch is put into play, but rather wait until after your opponent discard 2 cards, and then reveal Moat as the bane.  This way your opponent is less likely to discard her Attack cards.

[Warfreak2]

OK, that makes sense and is consistent; Market Square reacts when one of your cards has been moved to the trash, finishes resolving, and then the card which trashed it finishes resolving.

But does that mean that when I reveal a Tunnel, I'm actually revealing it from my discard pile, rather than revealing it before putting it into the discard pile? That has complications because per the rules, only the top card of your discard pile is visible. If I discard two Tunnels at once (atomically), do I have to reveal the top one from my discard pile, therefore making the one below it visible, in order to reveal the second one? Or does the first Tunnel finish resolving, go back on the discard pile, and then prevent me from revealing the second one which is no longer visible? It also seems odd that, were I to discard Tunnel and Estate, I would need to be careful to put the Tunnel on top.

[SirPeebles]

Haggler does not gain you a new card after you gain the first one (the card you bought).  You gain the freebies first, since that gain is reacting to buying a card.

For instance.  You have Haggler in play.  You buy a Border Village.  Haggler reacts to your buying (i.e. paying money; you don't have the Border Village yet), and you gain a Cache.  As soon as Cache lands in your discard pile, you gain two Coppers as part of Cache's on-gain.  But hey, you bought that Border Village, so now you gain the Border Village.  Once Border Village hits your discard pile, its on-gain effect triggers and you gain a Duchy.  Once the Duchy hits your discard pile you choose to gain a Duchess.

[SirPeebles]

Tunnel is weird.  I've never really accepted the explanations I've seen.

[Warfreak2]

So if I topdeck a gained card using Watchtower, it visits my discard pile on the way?

[GendoIkari]

So if I topdeck a gained card using Watchtower, it visits my discard pile on the way?

Yes. This is especially important for things like Inn. If you gain an Inn, and then reveal Watchtower, Inn IS in the discard pile for a moment, meaning you have the option to shuffle it into your draw pile (in which case Watchtower would lose track of it and do nothing).

[Davio]

Tunnel is weird.  I've never really accepted the explanations I've seen.

Tunnel is indeed weird.

I think it creates some sort of weird "mid-air" zone.

If you could pull Tunnel from any place in your discard, well, it's lose-track issues and what not.
If you can reveal Tunnel as you are discarding a single one, then Cellar's discarding is no longer an atomic operation.

[SirPeebles]

Those are all examples of plain old "gain".  If you do not specify where you gain from or to, then it is understood that you are gaining from the supply to your discard pile.  Nomad Camp is an example of a card which is always gained directly to the top of your deck.  Explorer and Mine gain treasure directly to your hand.  Beggar, between its action and its reaction is able to gain treasure to your discard, top of deck, or hand.

Where ever you gain a card to, you gain it to there first, and then Watchtower may have an opportunity to move it to the top of your deck. 

Warning though!  The lose track rule states that Watchtower will lose track of any card in your discard pile that gets covered up, even if it is only momentary.  This is actually where one of my favorite edge-casey wonky rules interactions comes in:

You have Watchtower in hand.  Your plan is to gain a Border Village.  The gain triggers the following two things, and you may choose the order in which you resolve them:  you may reveal your Watchtower to topdeck your new Border Village, and you may gain a Woodcutter.  You want to gain the Woodcutter first, topdecking it, and then topdeck your Border Village.  But that won't work.  While it is perfectly legit to reveal your Watchtower after dealing with Woodcutter in an attempt to put Border Village on top, you can't actually do it because Watchtower lost track of Border Village when Woodcutter momentarily sat on top of it.

However, if you had gained Nomad Camp rather than Woodcutter, then Nomad Camp would have gone directly on top of your deck, never covering your Border Village, so you could then Watchtower your Border Village on top.

I like how, even with Watchtower in hand, Nomad Camp's built-in topdecking can have an advantage over Woodcutter.  It's the same reason that I like the subtle difference in Moat and bane's timing, since most people think that if Moat is the bane, then it's moat-ness makes the bane moot, but really the bane-ness still shines.

[SirPeebles]

Tunnel is weird.  I've never really accepted the explanations I've seen.

Tunnel is indeed weird.

I think it creates some sort of weird "mid-air" zone.

If you could pull Tunnel from any place in your discard, well, it's lose-track issues and what not.
If you can reveal Tunnel as you are discarding a single one, then Cellar's discarding is no longer an atomic operation.

I still think that given a collection X of cards, "discard the cards in X" should mean "discard the cards in X one at a time, in the order of your choice".  That would resolve this issue nicely.

Edit:  So in other words, I don't think that Tunnel is weird.  Rather, I think that discarding huge stacks of cards all at once is too clunky to properly support a card reacting to itself being discarded.  That said, it's abundantly clear what the intention of Tunnel is, so I doubt it causes trouble for anyone who isn't already looking for trouble.  Or programmers.

[Davio]

I proposed in another topic with Forge to just put all trashed cards aside for a second while you're resolving stuff, Rats, Cultists, who knows.

The same can be done with Tunnel.

This would be a problem with an example card like: If you discard this other than during clean-up: +1 Card.

[AJD]

But does that mean that when I reveal a Tunnel, I'm actually revealing it from my discard pile, rather than revealing it before putting it into the discard pile?

Yes.

...Alternatively, it might make more sense to interpret Tunnel's "when you discard this" as meaning "as you discard this", even though it says "when". (Similarly, Nomad Camp's "when you gain this" is definitely better interpreted as "as you gain this".)

That has complications because per the rules, only the top card of your discard pile is visible.

Yes.

If I discard two Tunnels at once (atomically), do I have to reveal the top one from my discard pile, therefore making the one below it visible, in order to reveal the second one? Or does the first Tunnel finish resolving, go back on the discard pile, and then prevent me from revealing the second one which is no longer visible? It also seems odd that, were I to discard Tunnel and Estate, I would need to be careful to put the Tunnel on top.

Neither of these. Oddly, there is nothing in the rules preventing you from digging into your discard pile in order to pull out a Tunnel you just discarded. So you can discard two Tunnels and and Estate, put the Estate on top, and then dig out the first Tunnel, reveal it, put it back where you got it from, gain a Gold, put that on top of your discard pile, and then dig back into your discard pile, pull out the other Tunnel, reveal it, put it back, and gain another Gold. There's nothing in the rules, not even the famous lose-track principle, preventing this from happening exactly as described. (You're just not allowed to look at any cards in your discard pile other than the Tunnels when you do this.)

...Alternatively, you can interpret the "when" on Tunnel as meaning "as".

[Warfreak2]

Regarding Watchtower and Border Village/Woodcutter, is that an official ruling? It seems to me I can do it in this order:
1) Buy Border Village
2) Gain Border Village
 [Border Village is now on my discard pile.]
3) Reveal Watchtower
 [Now we have two on-gain effects which are resolved in the order that I choose; I choose to resolve Border Village first:]
4) Gain a Woodcutter
 [Woodcutter is now on my discard pile.]
5) Reveal Watchtower
6) Topdeck Woodcutter
 [Now I have finished resolving Border Village, I'll finish resolving the first reveal of Watchtower:]
7) Check that Border Village is visible on top of my discard pile, where Watchtower expects it to be - it is indeed!
Topdeck Border Village.

There's a couple of ways I can think that this couldn't work - firstly, after the definition of the Lose Track rule (I'm going from my Dark Ages rulebook), there's some explanations or examples, the last sentence of which says that a card in the discard pile is lost track of if it "gets" covered up, rather than if it "is" covered up. Since Border Village "got" covered up, Watchtower lost track of it, even if it isn't covered up any more. Secondly, since Watchtower is already in the "reveal" zone (if there is such a thing) it might not be possible to reveal it - it's already there; in the same sense that you can't trash something that's already in the trash, because it can't be moved to somewhere it already is. Perhaps revealing a second Watchtower is necessary!

Lose Track is far too confusing. The first example from Dark Ages has Procession on a Madman, and it says that Procession can't move the Madman back to the Madman pile because it lost track of the Madman - but the instruction to return the Madman to the pile is not on the Procession card, it's on the Madman card itself. Shouldn't the Madman be moving itself to the pile, then, and isn't it always the case that a card can't lose track of itself? Why does the Procession have to do the moving? By my interpretation, the Madman can't be returned to the pile the second time simply because that's where it already is.

Looks like the forum turned my number 8 into a face with sunglasses, though maybe that's actually more appropriate. My interpretation of Procession->Madman is apparently the same as what the rulebook says, I should read it more carefully.

[Warfreak2]

Oddly, there is nothing in the rules preventing you from digging into your discard pile in order to pull out a Tunnel you just discarded.

Oh! So the Tunnel is covered up, but still, you did discard it, and it said when you discard it you can reveal it, so you can.

[GendoIkari]

Tunnel is weird.  I've never really accepted the explanations I've seen.

Tunnel is indeed weird.

I think it creates some sort of weird "mid-air" zone.

If you could pull Tunnel from any place in your discard, well, it's lose-track issues and what not.
If you can reveal Tunnel as you are discarding a single one, then Cellar's discarding is no longer an atomic operation.

Actually I don't think this is any different than Fortress. Other than the fact that Tunnel needs to "reveal" because it's in a hidden zone, whereas trashing Fortress is public. But both of them trigger after they're already in their final destination. With Fortress, you might Trash 3 Fortresses and a Curse all at the same time... all 4 go into the trash pile, in whatever order you choose, then they all trigger. Nothing has "lost track" there. You can magically dig through the trash pile now, to find all the Fortresses that you trashed, and put them back in your hand. Same with Discarding 3 Tunnels and a Curse... it is true that in real life, for accountability, you need to show the cards before they hit your discard pile, so that you don't reveal Tunnels that were already in there. But that's just an accountability issue.

[Davio]

But here's a problem:

"Discard" – unless otherwise specified, discarded cards are from the player’s
hand. When a player discards a card, he places the discarded card face-up
onto his Discard pile. When discarding several cards at once, the player
need not show all cards he is discarding to his opponents, but player may
need to show how many cards he is discarding (for example, when
playing the Cellar). The top card of a player’s Discard pile is always visible.

A player is allowed to count how many cards are left in his Deck,
but not in his Discard pile. A player may not look through his Deck
or his Discard pile. A player may look through the Trash pile, and
players may count the number of cards left in any pile in the
Supply.

Trash and Discard are quite different.

The trash is just an unordered pile which every player can look at whenever they want. The rules also specify trashing as "moving a card into the trash pile", so the position doesn't matter much. This mimics our real life play in which cards are just flung into the direction of the trash and the person closest to it may feel free to make a pretty pile out of it. It's important that the trash information is open to every player, imagine the following scenario:

I play a Thief, you reveal a Silver and trash it, the Silver is physically moved to the trash.
You reveal Market Square to gain a Gold and reveal a Watchtower to trash that Gold.
If the trash were an ordered pile, the trashed Gold would now sit on top of the Silver, making Thief lose track of it.
I don't think this is the case however, but please correct me if I'm wrong. The Silver is still in the Trash, we all know it's there, so I could just gain it anyway. The way the game is played in real life, both cards could be next to each other or the Gold could be underneath the Silver.

The discard pile is an ordered pile, notice how the rules specify that you discard cards onto your discard pile. The second rule explicitly says that you can't count the cards in it nor look through it, I'm assuming this also means you can't reorder it. The rules also state that you don't have to show the discarded cards which is important for the Tunnel issue, now we have the following scenario:

I'm playing a Cellar and discarding 20 cards. I have to show that the number of discarded cards is 20, but I only have to show the top card after discarding. Let's say it's a Copper. Now how do I physically reveal 8 Tunnels while following the rules? I'm not allowed to look through my discard pile so I somehow have to remember that the 2nd through the 9th card are Tunnels and pull them out without looking at the other cards. It's not physically impossible to pull out a card while not looking at the one underneath it, but it seems pretty impractical.

Following the rules to the letter I would have to do this:
1. Pull out a secret Tunnel from underneath the Copper without looking at the card underneath Tunnel
2. Reveal it and gain a Gold on top of my discard pile, covering the Copper
3. Put the revealed Tunnel back where it came from (the rules for "reveal" specify this), again without looking, remembering there's still a Copper there so now it's the 3rd card
4. Pull out the 4th card, again a secret Tunnel, repeating the previous steps

You can understand just how tedious this is. It would be easier to just look through your discard pile, fish out the Tunnels and reveal them all at once and your opponent is just going to have to trust you didn't reveal any Tunnels you had discarded previously. But that's not following the rules.

In regular play, I don't see Tunnel ever causing a problem, but for the rules lawyers here, it can cause a headache. A very angry tournament player may force you to do the awkward steps I mentioned above, at which point you can just kick him out and find another game to troll.

[LastFootnote]

I think it's best to interpret Tunnel's "When you discard this" as "As you discard this", as AJD says. That's really the only ruling that makes sense.

[Davio]

My English isn't that great, what's the difference?

Does As mean after?

How about: "After you've discarded" instead?

[WanderingWinder]

My English isn't that great, what's the difference?

Does As mean after?

How about: "After you've discarded" instead?

No. "When" is a sort of vague time, i.e. "When the Indy 500 is run" could mean the day of, the instant at the beginning of the race, the duration of the race, the moment right when it ends, or any number of times around these, and probably some other things as well. "As" is more specific - it implies simultaneity. So "As the Indy 500 happens" implies the duration of the race specifically.

So going back to tunnel, "As you discard tunnel" means during the time where it is going from (wherever it started) to the discard. It also means that it will be separate for every tunnel - "as" I am discarding the first, I am not discarding the second.

"After" gives you all the problems of covering up that you have anyway.

[ftl]

Tunnel is one of those cases where the rules-lawyer way of looking at it diverges from the way that makes sense, but both still work.

The way anybody actually plays tunnel is, AS you move the tunnel from wherever it was into the discard pile, you reveal it and gain the gold. Makes perfect sense, nothing's lost track of anything, while you're moving the cards from wherever they are to the discard pile you can obviously show the other person the tunnel you're discarding.

The way the rules work is, technically, FIRST you discard the tunnel and everything you're discarding with it. THEN you are allowed to reveal the tunnel (I guess from the discard pile). But wait, haven't you lost track of it? Not according to the strictest reading rules, because the rules only specify that the lose-track rule applies to a card MOVING another card! So technically the lose-track rule doesn't matter here, and you can reveal the tunnel from your discard even if you can't look at all the other cards in the discard.

But that's obviously just rules-lawyering and being pedantic; if that didn't work for whatever reason, then the tunnel rules would have been amended to make tunnel work the way it's supposed to, because it's obvious how it's supposed to work.

[AJD]

"As you discard tunnel" means during the time where it is going from (wherever it started) to the discard. It also means that it will be separate for every tunnel - "as" I am discarding the first, I am not discarding the second.

That last bit isn't true—all the Tunnels are being discarded simultaneously, so "as" you're discarding the first, you're also discarding the second, and you can reveal them in any order.

[WanderingWinder]

"As you discard tunnel" means during the time where it is going from (wherever it started) to the discard. It also means that it will be separate for every tunnel - "as" I am discarding the first, I am not discarding the second.

That last bit isn't true—all the Tunnels are being discarded simultaneously, so "as" you're discarding the first, you're also discarding the second, and you can reveal them in any order.

The physicist in me wants to shout indistinguishability at you. What makes the first tunnel the first tunnel? That you reveal it first.

But more to the point, I was referring to the point of what "as" implies rather than what the rules for tunnel are.

[AJD]

"As you discard tunnel" means during the time where it is going from (wherever it started) to the discard. It also means that it will be separate for every tunnel - "as" I am discarding the first, I am not discarding the second.

That last bit isn't true—all the Tunnels are being discarded simultaneously, so "as" you're discarding the first, you're also discarding the second, and you can reveal them in any order.

The physicist in me wants to shout indistinguishability at you. What makes the first tunnel the first tunnel? That you reveal it first.

Quite so! But what I meant was just that, although you reveal them one at a time, you're discarding them simultaneously.

But more to the point, I was referring to the point of what "as" implies rather than what the rules for tunnel are.

I think that as you're discarding one of the Tunnels, you're also discarding the other Tunnel.

[Jeebus]

Oddly, there is nothing in the rules preventing you from digging into your discard pile in order to pull out a Tunnel you just discarded. So you can discard two Tunnels and and Estate, put the Estate on top, and then dig out the first Tunnel, reveal it, put it back where you got it from, gain a Gold, put that on top of your discard pile, and then dig back into your discard pile, pull out the other Tunnel, reveal it, put it back, and gain another Gold. There's nothing in the rules, not even the famous lose-track principle, preventing this from happening exactly as described. (You're just not allowed to look at any cards in your discard pile other than the Tunnels when you do this.)

...Alternatively, you can interpret the "when" on Tunnel as meaning "as".

Yes, as long as it still means that you gain the Gold after all cards have been discarded. If not, Tunnel would be functionally different, because you could reveal a Watchtower and top-deck a Tunneled Gold when discarding your hand (from Minion or Tactician). And that's not allowed. But isotropic got this wrong.

What you say about lose-track is true. Revealing a card from your discard is not moving it.

Anyway, this thing with Tunnel has been beaten to death before: all you need to know about Tunnel, with posts from Donald!

Regarding Watchtower and Border Village/Woodcutter, is that an official ruling? It seems to me I can do it in this order:
1) Buy Border Village
2) Gain Border Village
 [Border Village is now on my discard pile.]
3) Reveal Watchtower
 [Now we have two on-gain effects which are resolved in the order that I choose; I choose to resolve Border Village first:]
4) Gain a Woodcutter
 [Woodcutter is now on my discard pile.]
5) Reveal Watchtower
6) Topdeck Woodcutter
 [Now I have finished resolving Border Village, I'll finish resolving the first reveal of Watchtower:]
7) Check that Border Village is visible on top of my discard pile, where Watchtower expects it to be - it is indeed!
Topdeck Border Village.

As you surmised, it doesn't work like this. I just want to add one thing: Revealing reactions is the first step of resolving them. It doesn't functionally change anything in your example, I just wanted to point it out. So what triggered Watchtower in (3) was that you gained BV. So you have two on-gain effects that have been triggered before (3): Watchtower's reaction and BV's effect. If you reveal Watchtower now, it means you chose to resolve that effect first. So you do the rest of what Watchtower says immediately. But still, you could instead reveal Watchtower after (6) as a reaction to gaining the Border Village. Of course it wouldn't be able to move the BV because of lose-track.
But you could do this:

1) Buy Border Village
2) Gain Border Village (to discard pile)
3) Border-Village's on-gain: Gain Nomad Camp (to deck)
4) Watchtower's reaction to Nomad Camp gain: Reveal Watchtower and trash Nomad Camp.
5) Watchtower's reaction to Border Village gain: Reveal Watchtower and move BV to deck.

[Warfreak2]

I guess it hinges on a technicality: "when you ___" triggers an effect which is pooled into a set of effects which should be simultaneous, so you choose the order they happen in; however, "if you do" apparently doesn't get pooled, its consequences are immediate.

There's still the question of that exact wording from the Lose Track rule, though; it says a card in your discard pile has been lost track of if it "got" covered up, but surely this should be "is" covered up - a card could "get" covered up, but then become visible again, and that shouldn't matter for any practical reason.

[Drab Emordnilap]

There's still the question of that exact wording from the Lose Track rule, though; it says a card in your discard pile has been lost track of if it "got" covered up, but surely this should be "is" covered up - a card could "get" covered up, but then become visible again, and that shouldn't matter for any practical reason.

But it does matter, by the rules -- If I gain a Border Village, and gain my $5 before revealing Watchtower, I can't topdeck my Border Village.

[Davio]

There's still the question of that exact wording from the Lose Track rule, though; it says a card in your discard pile has been lost track of if it "got" covered up, but surely this should be "is" covered up - a card could "get" covered up, but then become visible again, and that shouldn't matter for any practical reason.

But it does matter, by the rules -- If I gain a Border Village, and gain my $5 before revealing Watchtower, I can't topdeck my Border Village.

Okay, let's see which results we can end up with... We will buy a BV with WT in hand.

At this point BV is already on top of the discard pile, this is important to keep in mind.
Gained a BV -> Gain another card (in this case a 5) or React with WT, we can choose

1. We choose gain a 5 first, at this point the 5 is on top of BV in the discard pile (DP) and WT has already lost track
a. Choose not to react to 5, result: 5 on top of BV in DP
b. Choose to react to 5, put 5 on top of deck, result: 5 on top of deck (TD), BV in DP

2. We choose to react first, put BV on deck
a. Choose to react to 5, result: 5 on top of BV on TD
b. Choose not to react to 5, result: 5 in discard, BV on TD

The full set of possible results is (ordering matters):
1. BV DP, 5 DP
2. 5 DP, BV DP
3. BV DP, 5 TD
4. 5 DP, BV TD
5. BV TD, 5 TD
6. 5 TD, BV TD

Of these only 2, 3, 4 & 6 can be achieved.
So there is no way for BV to end up on top of the 5 on your discard pile and no way for BV to end up on top of the 5 on your deck.

My point with this confusing reasoning? If we just allow for the possible results, it's not really important to get there step by step. All you need to take away from this is that BV can never end up on top of the 5 (if the 5 is a regular card).

Of course with Nomad Camp it's a whole different story.

[Warfreak2]

There's still the question of that exact wording from the Lose Track rule, though; it says a card in your discard pile has been lost track of if it "got" covered up, but surely this should be "is" covered up - a card could "get" covered up, but then become visible again, and that shouldn't matter for any practical reason.

But it does matter, by the rules -- If I gain a Border Village, and gain my $5 before revealing Watchtower, I can't topdeck my Border Village.

Clearly there's a difference between the two wordings, no argument, but I don't see any practical reason that a card which is visible on top of the discard pile, where it's expected to be, should be lost track of. Revealing Moat from your deck, instead of your hand, would be different gameplay but also totally impractical.

This is like if I go to a restaurant with a friend, the waiter takes our orders, goes to the kitchen, and I swap seats with my friend and then we swap seats back again, and then the waiter comes back and doesn't bring us any food because he can't work out where we're sitting any more, even though we are sitting exactly where he thought we were.

[SirPeebles]

Practically speaking, what's the point of the Lose Track rule?

My understanding is that it's intended as a sort of catch-all to prevent the game from breaking.  Donald wanted to be able to make cards that do cool and interesting things.  He did his best to make sure things don't get too out of control, but every now and then some combination of effects cause you to literally lose track of stuff (e.g.  shuffling your new Inn into your deck, and then trying to topdeck the Inn with Watchtower).  Rather than carefully add in rules to clear up each special case, Donald backed up and wrote a rather blunt Lose Track rule.  It's more invasive than necessary, but the idea seemed to be that it was better to make the rule too broad than to miss out on a game-breaking occurrence.

Now, personally I think that Tunnel's reaction is precisely one of those situations that ideally would have been prevented, so apparently even this overly broad rule didn't quite cover everything.  But oh well, I'd rather have fun and complex rules than for Donald to have stuck to safe cards.

[Warfreak2]

The practical reason that a card is lost track of if it's covered up in your discard pile is that otherwise you'd have to go hunting to find it, in order to resolve whatever was supposed to move it from there. By the rules, you aren't allowed to look through your discard pile unless you're told you can, and revealing Watchtower isn't one of those situations; it's clearly practical to say that if finding that card in order to topdeck it would require you to break the rules, then you can't do it. However, if it's on top, visible, but happens to have been covered and uncovered in between getting there and being looked for there, it isn't "lost track of" out of any practical necessity. I really think it ought to mean "is covered up", rather than the (a little ambiguous anyway) "got covered up". That sort of implication - especially when unmotivated - due to a single word which means almost the same thing anyway, the provenance of which isn't remarked upon in the rules text itself, just seems very strongly to me like a quirk of phrasing rather than the intent of the rule.

[AJD]

I bet there's some Border Village / Inn / Watchtower interaction that makes "get covered up" necessary.

[Warfreak2]

I guess when you're looking through your discard pile to choose Action cards to shuffle into your deck, due to Inn, then you might have to make sure you leave another gained card on top of your discard pile so that it isn't lost track, but that's OK because strictly speaking Inn didn't say you could re-order your discard pile, just choose some Action cards (potentially zero), remove them, and shuffle them into your deck. That gained card that you didn't choose to shuffle into your deck, therefore, must still be on top of your discard pile, where it was gained to, and where Watchtower should expect it to be.

I guess it's not so bad to have a rule saying you have to react to multiple when-gains in the order that you gain the cards, but why not make that the rule, instead of making it a really, really subtle consequence of Lost Track?

[AJD]

I was thinking of something like this:

There is a Border Village on top of your discard pile.
You gain another Border Village, putting it on top of your discard pile.
...You gain an Inn, putting it on top of your discard pile.
......You look through your discard pile and shuffle one Border Village into your deck.
......You reveal Watchtower.
.........You top-deck your Inn. The top card of your discard pile is now a Border Village.
...You reveal Watchtower.
......Can you top-deck that Border Village which is now on top of your discard pile?

The lose-track rule says no, because you can't determine (or at least can't prove) whether it's the Border Village you just gained or a different one—the Border Village you just gained has literally been lost track of, and could be either on top of your discard pile or shuffled into your deck. So that's why it makes sense that covering up a card in the discard pile and then uncovering it still counts as losing track.

(Another question, though, is should it really matter whether the Border Village now on top of your deck is actually the one you just gained. There's a case to be made that it shouldn't matter, by indistinguishability; but Donald X has decided that it does.)

[AJD]

(Also, the Inn FAQ in the rulebook says you can reorder your discard pile.)

[Jeebus]

Before the Dark Ages rulebook, Donald ruled tentatively that you could topdeck the BV even if it was covered up for a second by the other card you gained. But with the Dark Ages rulebook, he changed that ruling. My guess is that it's to be consistent and not having to make a special rule about something that was covered up and got un-covered up. Simply stating that when a card gets covered up things lose track of it, is easier and less confusing in general.

(Perhaps there could also be cases where it would actually be problematic to keep track of a card that was covered up temporarily, maybe with future cards. Not sure that AJD's example qualifies, but it was a valiant effort. Anyway, the possibility that there could be such cases, could also be a reason for the rule.)

[Warfreak2]

I was thinking of something like this:

There is a Border Village on top of your discard pile.
You gain another Border Village, putting it on top of your discard pile.
...You gain an Inn, putting it on top of your discard pile.
......You look through your discard pile and shuffle one Border Village into your deck.
......You reveal Watchtower.
.........You top-deck your Inn. The top card of your discard pile is now a Border Village.
...You reveal Watchtower.
......Can you top-deck that Border Village which is now on top of your discard pile?

The lose-track rule says no, because you can't determine (or at least can't prove) whether it's the Border Village you just gained or a different one—the Border Village you just gained has literally been lost track of, and could be either on top of your discard pile or shuffled into your deck. So that's why it makes sense that covering up a card in the discard pile and then uncovering it still counts as losing track.

(Another question, though, is should it really matter whether the Border Village now on top of your deck is actually the one you just gained. There's a case to be made that it shouldn't matter, by indistinguishability; but Donald X has decided that it does.)

OK, I didn't know that Inn allowed you to re-order your discard pile. Now I'm sort of persuaded that there's a practical reason for it. And that post you linked to at least makes it clear that that's the intention of the rule.

[ftl]

Inn lets you reorder your discard pile mostly because it sort of has to - when searching through for cards to shuffle in to your deck, you don't have to be careful about preserving the order of the discard pile.

[LastFootnote]

Inn lets you reorder your discard pile mostly because it sort of has to - when searching through for cards to shuffle in to your deck, you don't have to be careful about preserving the order of the discard pile.

Yeah, similar to how Navigator lets you reorder cards you put back on your deck. Usually it's not going to matter, but it keeps you from having to keep track of the order of the cards.

[GendoIkari]

Inn lets you reorder your discard pile mostly because it sort of has to - when searching through for cards to shuffle in to your deck, you don't have to be careful about preserving the order of the discard pile.

Yeah, similar to how Navigator lets you reorder cards you put back on your deck. Usually it's not going to matter, but it keeps you from having to keep track of the order of the cards.

Better example is probably Oracle. Navigator has a fair amount of edge cases where it matters. Oracle has absolutely none (unless Guilds introduces some sort of "when you draw" reaction).

[SirPeebles]

Inn lets you reorder your discard pile mostly because it sort of has to - when searching through for cards to shuffle in to your deck, you don't have to be careful about preserving the order of the discard pile.

Yeah, similar to how Navigator lets you reorder cards you put back on your deck. Usually it's not going to matter, but it keeps you from having to keep track of the order of the cards.

Better example is probably Oracle. Navigator has a fair amount of edge cases where it matters. Oracle has absolutely none (unless Guilds introduces some sort of "when you draw" reaction).

Sure, edge cases exist.  But this does not mean that Donald cared about the edge cases.  His statements suggest that the primary motivation -- and this was suggested by Valerie?  -- was to avoid requiring players to keep track of revealed cards.  Now, Donald probably spent some time wondering whether edge cases made this reorganizing too strong, but found that it didn't.

Seriously, accessibility and user-friendliness had a much bigger impact on card design than obscure edge cases.