Okay, to try to make this less cluttered and easier to follow, i just deleted my previous post. Every point is here instead.
First of all, we absolutely need a new rule that has never been stated anywhere before:
Rule: All instructions on a card must be followed once it is played.Without this rule BoM-as-Feast would not gain a card, and BoM-as-Embargo would not place a token. When the card would be trashed, it would revert back to BoM (no matter how you interpret BoM) before we could get to the second instruction on Feast or Embargo.
Then there is the question of Throne Room + BoM, choosing Feast. The official interpretation is that the second time Throne Room plays BoM it would still play it as Feast, even though the Feast you trashed is now a BoM.
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First there is the question of whether the instructions on BoM are played as with every other action cards, or they are resolved - uniquely - before actually playing the card.
If BoM is played like any other action card, we need to do the instructions on the card after playing it. It enters the play area as a BoM. There are two instructions. The first is to play it as if it were another Action card. This would almost seem to mean that this card, just as Throne Room and Golem, makes us play another card, thereby racking up two played actions (for a Conspirator tally). It does say
"play this as if it were an Action card...", not
"play an Action card...", but even if the card played itself, that would still be the next thing that happened after we already played it. So the wording doesn't actually support playing it as a normal action card, without getting clearly unwanted and non-intuitive consequences.
The second instruction is, as I see it, setting up an ability to happen later. That ability happens when the card leaves play: It then reverts to being BoM. It doesn't matter whether we resolve this instruction before playing the card or after playing it, it still sets this up to happen at that time. But if the first instruction is done before playing the card, it would be very weird not to do both of them then.
To my mind it's not desirable that an Action card should be unique in having instructions that must be followed before playing it, rather than after. But it actually is the most intuitive way to resolve the card, given the way it's worded.
In any case, even if BoM's card text is a before-play ability, it won't trigger until BoM is actually played. Then, right before the card is played, the ability is triggered. Simply choosing the card (with Throne Room for instance) won't trigger a before-play ability.
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In my previous post I postulated that it was important whether or not Throne Room's
"play it twice" means
"play it, then play it again". Even though the Throne Room FAQ says so, we know that the exact wording in FAQs is not to be trusted, FAQs are just meant to explain the card in an immediate way.
I compared
"play it twice" with
"gain two coppers" (Cache), which I still think is a good comparison. I said
"gain two Coppers" means
"gain a Copper, then gain another Copper". The reason I thought so was that
"gain a Curse and Copper" (Mountebank) means
"gain a Curse, then gain a Copper". There are also other examples of
"A and B" meaning
"A, then B" (Followers for instance). But Donald has actually not stated this about
"gain two Coppers". Here are the relevant links.
About Mountebank:
http://boardgamegeek.com/article/6893644#6893644About Cache:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1701.msg27082#msg27082The two abilites are actually not the same.
"Gain a Curse and a Copper" means
"gain a Curse, then gain a Copper." Two consecutive effects. But
"gain two Coppers" means
"gain two Coppers simultaneously". Two simultaneous effects. If
"gain a Curse and a Copper" were two simultaneous effects, the player gaining them would get to choose the order in which they are resolved. He could gain the Copper first, or the Curse. According to Donald he can't; he gains the Curse first. But Donald does state that the Coppers from Cache are simultaneous, so the player gaining them decides the order (which doesn't matter).
So according to this rule for
"gain two X", it would follow that
"do X twice" behaves in the same way. Thus
"play it twice" actually triggers two effects simultaneously. Both are
"play it", i.e.
"play the chosen card". We then have to choose the order in which we will resolve them, but it doesn't matter since they're the same. In my previous post I said that
"gain two X" or
"do X twice" has to entail two consecutive instructions, but that was wrong. They can be
triggered simultaneously, they just need to be
resolved consecutively.
But I don't actually think that this matters for the current problem! In my previous post I said that if both effects are triggered before we resolve them, then that would mean Throne Room "loads" the chosen card's instructions first, to use both times. First of all, not just the instructions but of course all the stats (name, type, cost) would have to be "loaded". But I think this is false anyway. Instructions (not anything else) are "loaded" when a card is played (in order to fulfull the rule that
all instructions on a card must be followed once it is played). But the card isn't played when the effect to play it is
triggered; it's played when that effect is
resolved. The effects that are triggered are just "play the chosen card" and it doesn't even matter what the card is then, just that it's the card we chose. We order the effects, then resolve them consecutively. When we resolve the first effect, we play the card and it's a BoM. At that point BoM's before-play ability is triggered and it becomes Feast, and is then played normally as Feast. If we trash the Feast, it reverts to a BoM. When we resolve the second effect, we play the card and it's a BoM.
***
A note regarding "it": Throne Room says play
it twice. This is the card you chose from your hand. It doesn't matter what it is the second time (name/type/text/cost). it will be played as what it is - just as Procession's ability
"gain an Action card costing exactly $1 more than it" doesn't care whether
it actually has the same name/type/text/cost, it looks at what the cost is now.
***
So it must go like this:
1. You play Throne Room. (Being played, Throne Room's instructions are loaded.)
2. Resolving Throne Room's first instruction, you choose BoM in your hand.
3. Throne Room's second instruction triggers two effects: play the card and play the card.
4. Resolving the first of Throne Room's triggered effects, you play BoM.
5. Resolving BoM's instructions (
before you play it), you choose Feast, and also set up that it will revert to being BoM when leaving play.
6. Now you actually play Feast (being played, Feast's instructions are loaded.)
7. Resolving Feast's first instruction, you trash it.
8. When Feast is trashed, it reverts to being BoM.
9. Resolving Feast's second instruction, you gain a card costing up to $5.
10. Resolving the second of Throne Room's triggered effects, you play the card (you chose) again: the BoM which is now in trash.
11. Resolving BoM's instructions (
before you play it), you choose Smithy, and also set up that it will revert to being BoM when leaving play.
12. Now you actually play Smithy (being played, Smithy's instructions are loaded.)
...
If Throne Room somehow "loaded" the chosen card's text when the effects were
triggered (as opposed to
resolved), then we would have the opposite problem: BoM would be "loaded" every time, since it's not played yet and so has not turned into anything else yet. So even if we played a BoM-as-Smithy, and so after the first time the card would be in play and still be a Smithy, the second effect would still be to play the card as BoM, and we could choose what to play it as again.
***
Anyway, to sum up:
- We need this rule: All instructions on a card must be followed once it is played.
- The instructions on BoM are actually resolved
before playing the card.
- "Play it twice" are two simultaneous instructions to play the chosen card, which we resolve consecutively. Both times it's the chosen card, but what that card is (i.e. what name/type/text/cost it has), is checked when it's played, and not until it's played can the BoM become a Feast.