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[AJD]

I'm very proud of one particular tactical point in this very close game:

http://innovation.isotropic.org/gamelog/201311/11/game-20131111-170653-8067fb74.html

Talia had built up a huge lead in points, most of it via Lighting and therefore in 7s. When I lucked into drawing Mass Media, then, returning all her 7s was the obvious way to go. (Turn 20.)

When I was about to return Talia's 7s, I realized that I had Atomic Theory on my board, and the 7 pile was otherwise empty. That meant if I paid careful attention to the order in which I returned Talia's 7s—rather than just shoving them at the bottom of the pile the way I usually do—I could plan out exactly my next however-many melds with Atomic Theory. And so I made a point of putting the 7s in the order in which I thought I could use them.

And it worked out exactly! Well, Combustion may have been a bit of a wash. But if I hadn't melded Railroad and Publications when I did, I wouldn't have won; and if I hadn't known exactly what cards Atomic Theory was going to draw, I probably would have tried drawing 8s instead of 7s since there are so many duds in the 7 pile. So paying careful attention to the order in which I returned a whole pile of cards absolutely saved the day for me.

[ipofanes]

Thanks! I tend to overlook the implications of possible knowing the cards in the draw pile. What's worse, every time I shove Castle cards into the [1] pile with Pottery in order to score them with Metalworking, I forgot that Pottery draws the first of these cards.

[ksasaki]

that's a funny point you bring up.  When I was playing with a friend the base game many ages ago before we knew all the rules, we thought "return" cards meant returning cards to the "TOP" of the stack, not the bottom.  This led to some very funny pottery / sailing trolls.  In some ways it's actually funner with our *WRONG* return rule than the correct one.  I know all about that order thing but I usually don't bother, for things like alchemy and comb it could prove very useful indeed!