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[Puddleglumm]

Was playing a gardens game on goko and with a quarry in play I tried to stonemason two mandarins. (Things you never thought you'd try right?) Stonemason cost 0 and Mandarin cost 3, so I overpaid by 3. Well I wasn't thinking about the fact once mandarin moves your quarry out of play, all the costs change, so for the second choice I had to pick something with a face value of 3. Nothing earth-shattering, just caught me by surprise and thought I'd share.

[Kirian]

That's actually a pretty cool unexpected interaction.

[florrat]

I'm confused. Should it work that way?

I think it shouldn't. Stonemason states When you buy this, you may overpay for it. If you do, gain 2 Actions each costing the amount you overpaid.. This sounds like me as:
(1) Choose the overpay amount
(2) If you overpayed more than 0 coins, choose two actions costing the amount you overpaid
(3) Gain one of those actions
(4) Gain the other

And NOT as
(1) Choose the overpay amount
(2) If you overpayed more than 0 coins, choose and gain one action costing the amount you overpaid
(3) If you overpayed more than 0 coins, choose and gain another action costing the amount you overpaid

This is similar to choosing before trashing, the questions about trashing with Chapel or Steward and on-trash effects. The instruction "Trash two cards from your hand" (as in Steward) is interpreted as (assuming you have 2 or more cards in your hand)
(1) Choose two cards from your hand
(2) Trash one of these cards
(3) Trash the other
(2) Trash both cards
(3) Resolve the on-trash effects of one card
(4) Resolve the on-trash effects of the other card

You're not allowed to choose which card you trash second after you've trashed the first card (if you first trash a Rats, the second card you trash cannot be the card you just drew from the on-trash effects of the Rats).

I assume that "trash 2 cards" and "gain 2 cards" would work in the same way in that sense, so that you should first choose which cards to gain, before actually gaining them. So I think you should be able to gain 2 Mandarins with Stonemason with Quarry in play when buying Stonemason.


Thinking further, this interpretation has a consequence I haven't thought of before:
Can you gain two Knights with Stonemason?
Assume Sir Martin is not one of the top two Knights (if it is, the answer is pretty clear that you cannot take the top two knights, because they would have a different cost (or both a cost of 0). I think under my interpretation, you couldn't gain the top two knights, because you can't gain choose to gain the second knight before it is the top knight, and it only becomes the top knight after you've gained the first knight, which happens after you choose.

I'd love to hear your interpretation or possibly the flaw in my argumentation!

[A Drowned Kernel]

I'm pretty sure the Mandarin interaction is correct. You don't choose the two actions before you gain either of them, you just gain an action costing the amount you overpaid, twice. "Gain 2 Actions" is just shorter than "Gain an action, then gain another action." Besides, your interpretation- "Choose two Actions, then gain one, then gain the other" would mean you could never gain two copies of the same card, since the card doesn't "see" that there are Action cards eligible for gaining below the top card of the pile.

Edit: As for the relation to trashing effects- you're not choosing all the cards to trash, then trashing them one at a time, you're trashing them all at the same time, then choosing the order their on-trash effects resolve. I realize that's a subtle distinction but the point is, you never gain more than one card at a time in Dominion, and if one card has multiple on-gain effects to resolve, you resolve them one at a time in the order you choose.

[LastFootnote]

florrat,

I understand your reasoning, but certain multi-card effects in Dominion are atomic, while others are not.

Discarding and trashing are atomic, meaning you discard or trash several cards all at once, not one at a time.
Drawing and gaining are sequential. So you draw or gain a card, resolve any effects from doing so, then draw or gain the next one, etc.

Choosing which card to gain is part of gaining a card, so it happens after you finished resolving any previous gains.

[DG]

From the guilds rulebook, stonemason :

The cards you gain are gained one at a time; this may matter with cards that do something when gained, such as Inn from Dominion: Hinterlands.

[florrat]

Okay, these are some pretty good points. I'm still not completely convinced.

I'm pretty sure the Mandarin interaction is correct. You don't choose the two actions before you gain either of them, you just gain an action costing the amount you overpaid, twice. "Gain 2 Actions" is just shorter than "Gain an action, then gain another action."

Discarding and trashing are atomic, meaning you discard or trash several cards all at once, not one at a time.
Drawing and gaining are sequential. So you draw or gain a card, resolve any effects from doing so, then draw or gain the next one, etc.

Could any of you back this up? As far as I know there is no way to gain 2 cards at the same time pre-Guilds (even with Talisman or Border Village you gain the cards in different phases. For example with Talisman you gain the Talisman card on-buy which happens before you gain the card from buying it) [EDIT: Okay this is wrong, there are plenty examples, like Trader, two Talismans, Mountebank, Develop, ..., but see my next comment below]. So pre-Guilds it didn't matter whether gaining is atomic or not. So how do you know whether it is? Is it somewhere in the rulebook or has Donald posted it somewhere?

Besides, your interpretation- "Choose two Actions, then gain one, then gain the other" would mean you could never gain two copies of the same card, since the card doesn't "see" that there are Action cards eligible for gaining below the top card of the pile.

This is wrong, even if my interpretation is correct. In my interpretation you can choose - say - "Village, Village", then gain the first Village, and then gain the second Village. It doesn't matter that there's a different Village on top the second time. Otherwise Talisman wouldn't work: when you buy a village when Talisman is in play, you first gain the Village from Talisman, and then gain the Village you bought, which wasn't on top of the pile when you chose to buy village.

Edit: As for the relation to trashing effects- you're not choosing all the cards to trash, then trashing them one at a time, you're trashing them all at the same time, then choosing the order their on-trash effects resolve. I realize that's a subtle distinction but the point is, you never gain more than one card at a time in Dominion, and if one card has multiple on-gain effects to resolve, you resolve them one at a time in the order you choose.

This is a very good point; I made a mistake there. You indeed trash all cards at the same time. (although I think my version works the same for all official cards, it would be different if there was some card which has an on-trash ability like "When you trash this, discard your hand")

From the guilds rulebook, stonemason :

The cards you gain are gained one at a time; this may matter with cards that do something when gained, such as Inn from Dominion: Hinterlands.

This doesn't state explicitly whether you choose the second card before or after your first gain. Even in my interpretation above you gain the cards one by one. And by the way - this is in the description of the on-play part of Stonemason...


I'm starting to think that you guys are right, but if one of you could present a better indication/proof of your point to erase all my doubt (maybe Donald has commented on it somewhere or there is some rule), I'd be grateful. I still find it intuitively strange that gaining and trashing work differently, because somehow trashing is atomic and gaining is not (okay, in the rules it says explicitly that trashing is atomic, and it doesn't say the same about gaining. But that doesn't explicitly say that gaining is NOT atomic).

[Witherweaver]

I'm starting to think that you guys are right, but if one of you could present a better indication/proof of your point to erase all my doubt (maybe Donald has commented on it somewhere or there is some rule), I'd be grateful. I still find it intuitively strange that gaining and trashing work differently, because somehow trashing is atomic and gaining is not (okay, in the rules it says explicitly that trashing is atomic, and it doesn't say the same about gaining. But that doesn't explicitly say that gaining is NOT atomic).

Atomic is not quite the right word, right?  If you have a card that says "Trash 2 cards" (like Mercenary), and you only have one card, then you still must trash it.  So trashing must be broken up in this sense. Likewise if you have a card that says "Gain two copies of card X" and there is only one copy of card X in the supply, you would say you should gain that one copy and not fail the entire statement.

[SCSN]

As far as I know there is no way to gain 2 cards at the same time pre-Guilds (even with Talisman or Border Village you gain the cards in different phases. For example with Talisman you gain the Talisman card on-buy which happens before you gain the card from buying it).

You can have two Talisman in play.

I do think you always gain things one at a time because of Watchtower and Trader. You should be able to top-deck one of the cards and trash the other, and not be forced to choose the same action for both.

[florrat]

My problem is not with gaining 2 specific cards at the same time, but when you gain 2 cards of your choice (possibly with certain restrictions). So suppose a card says "Gain 2 cards from the supply", I can see two possible interpretations for it.

Interpretation 1:
(1) Choose a card from the supply. Gain it.
(2) Choose a card from the supply. Gain it.

Interpretation 2:
(1) Choose 2 cards from the supply.
(2) Gain the first.
(3) Gain the second.

Why is interpretation 1 preferred over interpretation 2? I see no good reason (on the other hand, I also don't have a reason to prefer interpretation 2 over interpretation 1, except that it is closer to trashing that way). I do not claim you gain the cards at the same time, only that I'm not sure when you have to choose the cards you are going to gain.

[Puddleglumm]

My problem is not with gaining 2 specific cards at the same time, but when you gain 2 cards of your choice (possibly with certain restrictions). So suppose a card says "Gain 2 cards from the supply", I can see two possible interpretations for it.

Interpretation 1:
(1) Choose a card from the supply. Gain it.
(2) Choose a card from the supply. Gain it.

Interpretation 2:
(1) Choose 2 cards from the supply.
(2) Gain the first.
(3) Gain the second.

Why is interpretation 1 preferred over interpretation 2? I see no good reason (on the other hand, I also don't have a reason to prefer interpretation 2 over interpretation 1, except that it is closer to trashing that way). I do not claim you gain the cards at the same time, only that I'm not sure when you have to choose the cards you are going to gain.

I think this is the key question, because on-gain effects can reveal information so it's important to know if both choices happen before gaining or not. For example, if you go stonemason->border village->IGG and you opponent reveals some kind of reaction, maybe you want a gold instead of the border village for your second gain. But is that the right way to play. I think making the choices in sequence makes the mandarin question easier to resolve because then there's no question that you can't gain a second mandarin. If the choices both happen before gaining you have this weird situation where you are gaining a card that costs more than your overpay, or does that gain just get lost, or what.

[Warfreak2]

Stonemason's overpay can't gain Gold, but Hunting Grounds works in the example.

[Puddleglumm]

Stonemason's overpay can't gain Gold, but Hunting Grounds works in the example.

Oops, thanks for the correction.

[Puddleglumm]

 
Not sure if we're going to get anywhere on the question about Stonemason, so I thought I'd briefly mention how this worked out as a Gardens enabler. As it happened, on that board there were no 3 cost actions, so it was a sucky play.
 
But obviously any time you buy Mandarin with treasure, it sets up a situation where you can buy Mandarin any number of turns in a row because your treasure gets topdecked. In most cases a deck full of Mandarins is not so hot so why would you do that, but here it looks like this can be a decent Gardens enabler if the right 3-cost action is on the board. Village and Warehouse came to mind so I tried it with village.
 
The idea is like this:
 
1. Open Silver/Quarry (Actually I got a 5/2 split so I opened Stonemason/Quarry)
2. On your first quarry hand, go Stonemason > Mandarin + Village (This needs only Quarry + 2 Copper)
3. Your treasure is top-decked and you can repeat this turn any number of times. I did it 4 or 5 times, the pile ran out because there are few things that Goko bots love more than piledriving Stonemasons.
4. On my last top-decked treasure turn I bought a Duchy thinking it would be an additional target for Stonemason.
5. On your remaing turns you're either going to be stonemasoning Mandarins into Gardens, or Villages into Estates, or buying Gardens with your Mandarins, or some combination thereof.
 
In the game I tried, the bot grabbed 2 denial gardens and Stonemasoned for some Estates (denial Estates!) so the game ended in 13 turns and I had 26 points. Not too shabby, but what if I have to drain all those piles myself? Sadly the bots are never going to lay off the Stonemasons to find out, maybe I will solo it with real cards sometime. Would be interesting but complicated to simulate. Seems like it could perform similarly to Ironworks-Gardens though.

[ftl]

The problem seems that it gets gardens really, really late. Any strategy that can do denial can snap up those gardens before you get a chance to.

[Markov Chain]

Here's a reason it needs to work the way it does.

Suppose that you overpay by $5 for Stonemason.  You can gain Dame Molly, but you have to finish gaining her (in order to reveal another Knight) before gaining Sir Bailey as your second gain.

[serakfalcon]

on the subject of stonemason + quarry interactions
buying Stonemason with Quarry + 3 coppers (Or stonemason from Quarry, silver and a copper) is 2 grand markets
mostly fun because it lets you get around the copper restriction AND gets you two grand markets with cards you can buy on your first 2 turns.

[Kirian]

on the subject of stonemason + quarry interactions
buying Stonemason with Quarry + 3 coppers (Or stonemason from Quarry, silver and a copper) is 2 grand markets
mostly fun because it lets you get around the copper restriction AND gets you two grand markets with cards you can buy on your first 2 turns.

That's disgusting.  Thankfully, it's a 3-card combo, so it'll only show up every once in a while...

[GendoIkari]

on the subject of stonemason + quarry interactions
buying Stonemason with Quarry + 3 coppers (Or stonemason from Quarry, silver and a copper) is 2 grand markets
mostly fun because it lets you get around the copper restriction AND gets you two grand markets with cards you can buy on your first 2 turns.

Neat, because you use the benefit from a single quarry twice. First because you are overpaying more than normal, then because GM is cheaper than normal. So normally you would need to pay $8 for Stonemason to get GM, but quarry basically reduces it twice to $4.

[AJD]

To put it another way, the Quarry/Stonemason combo is like the Quarry/Talisman combo, except the latter requires you to have both in play on the same turn, whereas Stonemason just has to be in the supply.

[Kirian]

To put it another way, the Quarry/Stonemason combo is like the Quarry/Talisman combo, except the latter requires you to have both in play on the same turn, whereas Stonemason just has to be in the supply.

So, with two Quarries, Talisman, and Stonemason, I can get four GMs, right?

[jaybeez]

To put it another way, the Quarry/Stonemason combo is like the Quarry/Talisman combo, except the latter requires you to have both in play on the same turn, whereas Stonemason just has to be in the supply.

So, with two Quarries, Talisman, and Stonemason, I can get four GMs, right?

Talisman is on-buy, not on-gain.  You could get four GMs with two Quarries, Stonemason, and two buys.

[serakfalcon]

To put it another way, the Quarry/Stonemason combo is like the Quarry/Talisman combo, except the latter requires you to have both in play on the same turn, whereas Stonemason just has to be in the supply.

So, with two Quarries, Talisman, and Stonemason, I can get four GMs, right?

Are we being nerd sniped?

Talisman is on-buy, not on-gain.  You could get four GMs with two Quarries, Stonemason, and two buys.

Both Talisman and overpaying are on-buy, so uh, that shouldn't work.
Edit: it works if you have $2 credit more or another quarry but the point is talisman doesn't contribute any

[Awaclus]

Talisman is on-buy, not on-gain.  You could get four GMs with two Quarries, Stonemason, and two buys.

Both Talisman and overpaying are on-buy, so uh, that shouldn't work.
Edit: it works if you have $2 credit more or another quarry but the point is talisman doesn't contribute any

The main reason for Talisman's lack of contribution is probably the fact that jaybeez doesn't even have a Talisman in play when he's gaining four GMs with two Quarries, Stonemason and two buys.

[GeoLib]

To put it another way, the Quarry/Stonemason combo is like the Quarry/Talisman combo, except the latter requires you to have both in play on the same turn, whereas Stonemason just has to be in the supply.

So, with two Quarries, Talisman, and Stonemason, I can get four GMs, right?

Talisman is on-buy, not on-gain.  You could get four GMs with two Quarries, Stonemason, and two buys.