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[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.