Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Rules Questions => Topic started by: SirPeebles on January 25, 2013, 10:42:12 pm
-
So I've been thinking about the Lose Track Rule in response to onigame's post about implementing WhenGain effects.
Suppose I have Remake and Fortress in my hand. I play a Remake. I choose my Fortress to trash. Remake moves Fortress to the trash, then Fortress moves itself back into my hand. I gain a $5 card, say a Duchy.
Now, Remake is not done resolving yet. I am now supposed to choose a card from my hand. Can I choose Fortress again? It may seem that the answer is obviously yes, since it's in my hand. However, my Remake thinks Fortress is in the trash pile. That is, this Fortress is not where Remake expects it to be, so can it find Fortress in my hand?
-
So I've been thinking about the Lose Track Rule in response to onigame's post about implementing WhenGain effects.
Suppose I have Remake and Fortress in my hand. I play a Remake. I choose my Fortress to trash. Remake moves Fortress to the trash, then Fortress moves itself back into my hand. I gain a $5 card, say a Duchy.
Now, Remake is not done resolving yet. I am now supposed to choose a card from my hand. Can I choose Fortress again? It may seem that the answer is obviously yes, since it's in my hand. However, my Remake thinks Fortress is in the trash pile. That is, this Fortress is not where Remake expects it to be, so can it find Fortress in my hand?
You can trash the Fortress again. Remake just wants you to pick a card from your hand; Fortress is a card in your hand; Remake can pick it. Losing track has nothing to do with this.
-
This makes perfect sense to me since Fortress immediately returns to your hand and Remake states do this twice, thus implying that there is a window between when the first card is trashed and the second card.
-
yeah, remake never says anything about affects that happen between trashing. Like, Remaking into a Border Village. You don't immediately trash another card, Border Village gets resolved first.
-
Hmm, I feel that I still don't really understand the Lose Track Rule then, at least not well enough to code algorithmically. The early "don't quote me" explanation on BGG had to do with Card Y losing track of Card X. But now the official rule from Dark Ages refers to an effect losing track of Card X.
Thinking in terms of cards, it seems that my Remake has clearly lost track of the Fortress. I mean, he just put the Fortress in the trash, right? There's no way Remake expects Fortress to be in my hand. Is the point that Remake doesn't care whether the Fortress in my hand is the same one it just trashed or not? Sort of like if Remake trashed the only Rats in my hand, which triggered drawing another Rats. Remake would be like "Now let's look for another card. Huh, I don't remember there being another Rats. Oh well, trashy-trashy time."
So I guess I'm wondering, what is an effect in the sense of the Lose Track Rule? And again, I'm trying to think of this from the perspective of object oriented programming (at least through pseudocode).
-
You resolve on-trash effects when the card gets trashed...
Remake says "do this twice:" so you do it twice. Pick a card from your hand. Trash that card. Resolve on-trash effects. Gain a card costing exactly $1 more. Then you do it again.
Cards don't have a memory of what was in your hand; they only care about what is in your hand.
In my mind, the analogue of the lose-track rule is something that would cause a computer code to break. Like, calling a variable that doesn't exist. Except in this case, it just doesn't do anything.
-
I don't feel like you understand what I'm asking.
I'm looking at the literal text of the Lose Track Rule, from Dark Ages.
In rare circumstances an effect may try to move a card that is not where that effect expects the card to be... Things lose track of a card if something moves it, if it is the top card of a deck and gets covered up, or if it is the top card of a discard pile and gets covered up.
If I think of my play of Remake as one full effect, then the second trashing tries to move Fortress from my hand to the trash pile. However, it's not clear to me at all that Fortress is where Remake expects it to be. That is, earlier in this effect, Remake moved Fortress from my hand to the trash pile. So it seems reasonable to me that Remake expects Fortress to still be in the trash and would therefore be unable to move it from my hand in response to the second trashing.
On the other hand, if the two trashings are considered distinct "effects", then the second trashing never had a chance to lose track of the Fortress. But this raises the question of what precisely an effect is. So that, you know, you could code an online implementation over at Goko that will get things correct rather than needing individual edge case patches.
-
An effect is what is written on the card...?
Imagine if Remake said "Trash 2 cards from your hand..." Then you wouldn't be able to trash the same Fortress twice. This isn't a case of the lose-track rule, though, it's just that you have to trash 2 distinct cards from your hand at the same time.
-
I agree with the undefined reference example.
Lose track means if some "pointer" in the card "code" gets an invalid reference, i.e., card 1 refers to a card 2 specifically and card 2 is not where it was "supposed" to be. Its not every card keeping track of every other card in the game, is just cards that are specifically named in the text more than once. Remake just makes you choose two cards, when you do that for the second time, it does not realize weither is the same card than the first, or not, or what happened in the middle, it just refers to two cards, it does not make any connection between them.
I guess, in your terms, this would be that Remake has two different effects (or in programming terms, two different scopes).
-
Let me try using Donald's scheme from this post (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=6646.msg183320#msg183320)
I play Remake. As a default, Fortress' "findable field" would be marked as 1. Fortress is moved to the trash. It's findable field is still 1; Remake knows where it is. Fortress now moves itself back into my hand. Relative to remake, Goko should now set the "findable field" to 0, since something else has interrupt the resolution of Remake and moved Fortress. Remake now continues resolving, but if I choose to trash Fortress again (and I totally agree with everyone that Fortress is in my hand again when I make this choice; I never doubted that), it's findable field is 0. I could at least see this leading to a bug.
-
I guess, in your terms, this would be that Remake has two different effects (or in programming terms, two different scopes).
"Effect" is not my term. It is a term used in the official statement of the lose track rule from the Dark Ages rules.
-
Let me try using Donald's scheme from this post (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=6646.msg183320#msg183320)
I play Remake. As a default, Fortress' "findable field" would be marked as 1. Fortress is moved to the trash. It's findable field is still 1; Remake knows where it is. Fortress now moves itself back into my hand. Relative to remake, Goko should now set the "findable field" to 0, since something else has interrupt the resolution of Remake and moved Fortress. Remake now continues resolving, but if I choose to trash Fortress again (and I totally agree with everyone that Fortress is in my hand again when I make this choice; I never doubted that), it's findable field is 0. I could at least see this leading to a bug.
Maybe it does lose track for a period of time, but then when you choose it again and it's in your hand it finds it. It's why if you play TR-TR-Smithy, you are allowed to choose an action you drew.
-
I don't understand how lose track could be relevant at all. We aren't even allowed to look for a card in the trash. We can only lose track of something if we look for it in a place where it isn't. Remake only looks in your hand though, which is where Fortress stays the whole time.
-
I don't understand how lose track could be relevant at all. We aren't even allowed to look for a card in the trash. We can only lose track of something if we look for it in a place where it isn't. Remake only looks in your hand though, which is where Fortress stays the whole time.
You are allowed to know that is in the trash, yes.
-
I would say that yes, remake loses track of the fortress and expects it to be in the trash. However, remake doesn't care.
This is remake:
Alright, lets trash a card. How about fortress. Okay.
Gain a card cost 1 more. Alright fortress costs four, um, lets get a duchy. That costs 5.
Oh, look, I'm supposed to do that twice!
Alright, lets trash a card. Oh look fortress, I thought that was in the trash! Lets trash it...
Remake thought that fortress was in the trash, but it didn't matter, since it also saw that fortress was in hand. Remake was confused, but since fortress was in the hand, remake could trash it again.
-
If I think of my play of Remake as one full effect...
I think playing Remake pretty clearly involves four effects:
1 Trash a card from your hand (remember its cost)
2 Gain a card costing exactly one more than the trashed card (doesn't matter if that card is not in the trash any more, Remake still 'remembers' how much it cost, it doesn't check the card's cost while it's in the trash or anything like that)
3 Trash a card from your hand
4 Gain card costing exactly one more than the trashed card
Remake doesn't look at your whole hand and try to track each of those cards individually; it just trashes a card from your hand, no questions asked about how it got there or why it wasn't there the first time you trashed a card.
After effects 1 and 3, Remake doesn't try to move a card anywhere, so the lose-track rule doesn't apply to Remake. Even if a card said "When you trash this, put it on top of your deck," Remake would still (try to) gain you a more expensive card, even though the trashed card didn't stay in the trash
Let me try using Donald's scheme from this post (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=6646.msg183320#msg183320)
I play Remake. As a default, Fortress' "findable field" would be marked as 1. Fortress is moved to the trash. It's findable field is still 1; Remake knows where it is. Fortress now moves itself back into my hand. Relative to remake, Goko should now set the "findable field" to 0, since something else has interrupt the resolution of Remake and moved Fortress. Remake now continues resolving, but if I choose to trash Fortress again (and I totally agree with everyone that Fortress is in my hand again when I make this choice; I never doubted that), it's findable field is 0. I could at least see this leading to a bug.
I think it would make sense for Fortress's findable field to be set to 1 when it's trash effect happens. I can't think of anything that this would break. If there was a Thief-for-Actions (ie worded exactly like Thief, replacing "Treasure" with "Action"), that would try to gain Fortress out of the trash and fail, so that would matter, but no card like that exists, so it doesn't matter.
-
I don't understand how lose track could be relevant at all. We aren't even allowed to look for a card in the trash. We can only lose track of something if we look for it in a place where it isn't. Remake only looks in your hand though, which is where Fortress stays the whole time.
You are allowed to know that is in the trash, yes.
I mean Remake never looks in the trash under any circumstances. It can't lose track of something that moves out of the trash because it never looks there in the first place.
-
Let me try using Donald's scheme from this post (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=6646.msg183320#msg183320)
I play Remake. As a default, Fortress' "findable field" would be marked as 1. Fortress is moved to the trash. It's findable field is still 1; Remake knows where it is. Fortress now moves itself back into my hand. Relative to remake, Goko should now set the "findable field" to 0, since something else has interrupt the resolution of Remake and moved Fortress. Remake now continues resolving, but if I choose to trash Fortress again (and I totally agree with everyone that Fortress is in my hand again when I make this choice; I never doubted that), it's findable field is 0. I could at least see this leading to a bug.
It's 1 - cards sent to your hand become findable. It's right after the bit with dashes, since it doesn't apply to the when-gain business. "For handling other stuff (like Throne / Mining Village), drawn cards (and cards otherwise sent to your hand) and played cards (including via Throne etc.) would be marked 1."
"Lose track" deals with specific cards that are expected to be somewhere. If I play Procession, I put a card into play, then later trash it. Procession expects the card to be in play when it's time to trash it, and can't trash it if it isn't.
Remake isn't tracking Fortress - it doesn't care what happened to the first card it trashed. It's done with that, it's moving on. Time to pick a card from your hand. Here's this Fortress, that looks good.
-
It's 1 - cards sent to your hand become findable. It's right after the bit with dashes, since it doesn't apply to the when-gain business. "For handling other stuff (like Throne / Mining Village), drawn cards (and cards otherwise sent to your hand) and played cards (including via Throne etc.) would be marked 1."
Actually this doesn't work for Goko though, because it might mark a card 1 that should be 0. However the "findable" notion only needs to apply to cards being tracked, it isn't needed for "pick a card from your hand" and so that approach should still be doable.
-
"Oh well, trashy-trashy time."
Lol'd
-
If I think of my play of Remake as one full effect...
I think playing Remake pretty clearly involves four effects:
1 Trash a card from your hand (remember its cost)
2 Gain a card costing exactly one more than the trashed card (doesn't matter if that card is not in the trash any more, Remake still 'remembers' how much it cost, it doesn't check the card's cost while it's in the trash or anything like that)
3 Trash a card from your hand
4 Gain card costing exactly one more than the trashed card
Remake doesn't look at your whole hand and try to track each of those cards individually; it just trashes a card from your hand, no questions asked about how it got there or why it wasn't there the first time you trashed a card.
After effects 1 and 3, Remake doesn't try to move a card anywhere, so the lose-track rule doesn't apply to Remake. Even if a card said "When you trash this, put it on top of your deck," Remake would still (try to) gain you a more expensive card, even though the trashed card didn't stay in the trash
Let me try using Donald's scheme from this post (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=6646.msg183320#msg183320)
I play Remake. As a default, Fortress' "findable field" would be marked as 1. Fortress is moved to the trash. It's findable field is still 1; Remake knows where it is. Fortress now moves itself back into my hand. Relative to remake, Goko should now set the "findable field" to 0, since something else has interrupt the resolution of Remake and moved Fortress. Remake now continues resolving, but if I choose to trash Fortress again (and I totally agree with everyone that Fortress is in my hand again when I make this choice; I never doubted that), it's findable field is 0. I could at least see this leading to a bug.
I think it would make sense for Fortress's findable field to be set to 1 when it's trash effect happens. I can't think of anything that this would break. If there was a Thief-for-Actions (ie worded exactly like Thief, replacing "Treasure" with "Action"), that would try to gain Fortress out of the trash and fail, so that would matter, but no card like that exists, so it doesn't matter.
The only problems with regards to understanding Fortress and "lose-track" I had is with multi-trash actions like Forge (not Remake as it's a single trash twice).
Let's say I play Forge to trash a Fortress and 10 Curses. These 11 cards are all trashed at the same time. I can't go: trash Fortress, put it back, trash it again, put it back, gain a Province! So I put all cards into the trash simultaneously.
At this point I realized that the trash is not an (un)ordered pile of cards where we can only work with the top card. Graverobber and Rogue also helped in clearing this up for me. The trash is just a set of open cards and you can always find cards that are in the trash if you expect them to be there.
But it becomes more difficult for me with discarding multiple cards at once, like with Minion. As I recall the discard pile is an ordered pile, there is a reason you can only see the top card and aren't allowed to browse through it because you feel like it. So how exactly you're able to magically pull Tunnel from the discard pile after you've discarded multiple times is still beyond me.
-
You reveal Tunnel "when you discard this" -- which I took to be while it is in the process of moving between the hand and the discard pile, not after it landed there.
-
That being said, I do think SirPeebles original point is valid, not in the sense that the Remake shouldn't be able to trash the Fortress the second time (I think everyone agrees this is the only reasonable thing that can happen), but in the sense that we have to be very careful when we say
"Card B is not where Card A expects it to be."
-
You reveal Tunnel "when you discard this" -- which I took to be while it is in the process of moving between the hand and the discard pile, not after it landed there.
"When X" things always happen AFTER X is done happening. As someone is moving an attack card from their hand to the table; you reveal it when it lands on the table. Tunnel is technically in the discard pile when you reveal it, though of course in real-life games, in practice, you reveal it as you discard it like you say. But basically Tunnel does in fact "magically" pull itself out from the discard pile to be revealed; it's basically just one of those cases when the literal wording of things is trumped by the common sense of how to use it.
-
You reveal Tunnel "when you discard this" -- which I took to be while it is in the process of moving between the hand and the discard pile, not after it landed there.
"When X" things always happen AFTER X is done happening. As someone is moving an attack card from their hand to the table; you reveal it when it lands on the table. Tunnel is technically in the discard pile when you reveal it, though of course in real-life games, in practice, you reveal it as you discard it like you say. But basically Tunnel does in fact "magically" pull itself out from the discard pile to be revealed; it's basically just one of those cases when the literal wording of things is trumped by the common sense of how to use it.
I'm always a little confused about the timing aspects of the game (fortunately, it rarely matters in practice). If this is the case, then I agree that it's inconsistent with some of the lose-track stuff.
-
You reveal Tunnel "when you discard this" -- which I took to be while it is in the process of moving between the hand and the discard pile, not after it landed there.
"When X" things always happen AFTER X is done happening. As someone is moving an attack card from their hand to the table; you reveal it when it lands on the table. Tunnel is technically in the discard pile when you reveal it, though of course in real-life games, in practice, you reveal it as you discard it like you say. But basically Tunnel does in fact "magically" pull itself out from the discard pile to be revealed; it's basically just one of those cases when the literal wording of things is trumped by the common sense of how to use it.
I'm always a little confused about the timing aspects of the game (fortunately, it rarely matters in practice). If this is the case, then I agree that it's inconsistent with some of the lose-track stuff.
Technically the Lose Track rule wouldn't apply for Tunnel anyhow, since the Lose Track rule only prevents cards from being moved, not revealed. But in practice, you wouldn't be able to reveal the card since you've lost track of it.
-
I guess it's okay if a card only cares about itself.
Tunnel can always find itself, no matter where it is.
It just irks me that you have to deliberately mess with your discard pile to do so, which seems against the rules if you interpret them strictly. You can't count the number of cards in your discard pile, you can't look through it, but you can pull Tunnel out of it.
-
So, a guy resurrects a year old thread to say "Lol'd" and immediately f.ds starts over-explaining stuff that nobody asked an explanation of :P
-
I don't see anything out of the ordinary with that, Grujah!
Now, go over to the BSG thread and escape from prison or something!
-
I guess it's okay if a card only cares about itself.
Tunnel can always find itself, no matter where it is.
It just irks me that you have to deliberately mess with your discard pile to do so, which seems against the rules if you interpret them strictly. You can't count the number of cards in your discard pile, you can't look through it, but you can pull Tunnel out of it.
This thread analyzes the way Tunnel is resolved in as much details as anybody would probably care to: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/854026/playing-multiple-reaction-cards/page/1
-
So, a guy resurrects a year old thread to say "Lol'd" and immediately f.ds starts over-explaining stuff that nobody asked an explanation of :P
It's like when your crazy uncle starts telling a long-winded story that no one cares about and then falls asleep without warning (a big meal will do that to him). You give him a poke a while later and he starts right up again!
-
So, a guy resurrects a year old thread to say "Lol'd" and immediately f.ds starts over-explaining stuff that nobody asked an explanation of :P
le guy was me. heh