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Rules Questions / Re: Black market bane
« on: August 12, 2012, 09:40:07 pm »Well, here's my attempt to clarify a lot of what's been said already into one post.
=My question here is if you can have a situation where the 10 normal cards are neither bm nor YW but YW is in the BM and BM is the bane, so each one justifies the other but the entire loop is unnecessary.
This cannot happen. If neither is in the Kingdom, there is no Black Market deck. The only reason for Black Market to be the Bane is if Young Witch is already chosen as one of the 10 Kingdom cards. If Black Market then is chosen as the Bane, Young Witch could not be in the Black Market deck since it's already in the supply.
Thanks for your reply which is similar to some of the earlier replies. I still don’t fully understand. I will explain myself in three ways
1. By logic, 2. By reference to the rules, 3. By analogy
1. By logic:
It would seem to me that there are 2 fundamental ways to conceive of dominion set-up rules:
A. The chronological set-up method which has 3 steps
i. Pick 10 Kingdom piles and the basic treasure/victories.
ii. Do any special set-up for the 10 chosen cards (YW, BM, tournament, looters etc)
iii. Begin play
B. The logical set-up method. This has no steps. Rather, any Kingdom at all can be chosen as long as it meets all of the the following four criteria:
i. it has the basic treasures/victory
ii. it has 10 normal Kingdom cards
iii. it meets the special set-up conditions of all of the cards
iv. it has no additional Kingdom cards
Under this understanding, we are not following a specific set process but are free to construct any Kingdom that meets all of these four boundary conditions (sort of like solving an ODE or PDE).
My question, then, was, which of these two understandings is correct? Most of the answers above, including yours, assume that understanding A (the “chronological” understanding) is correct and then explain why based on understanding A, the situation I described is impossible. Yes, this is quite obvious. But my question is which of these two understandings are correct and none of the answers seem to address this question; they simply assume that understanding A is correct
2. By reference to the rules:
There is nothing in the rules that I see which confirm the chronological understanding. In fact, if anything, I believe the logical understanding is supported by the rules. One line of the Cornucopia rules reads as follows “As with previous Dominion games, players must choose 10 sets of Kingdom cards for each game.” Another reads as follows “In games using YoungWitch, choose an additional Kingdom card costing 2 or 3 , put its pile into the Supply, and mark its pile with the Young Witch randomizer card (underneath it, sideways).” There is nothing in the rules to confirm that the chronological understanding is correct. If anything, it seems to support the logical understanding because the Kingdom I posed would in fact fulfill both of the two sentences which I quoted from the rule book.
3. By analogy:
The best analogy I can think for my question is the philosophical debate regarding the principle of sufficient reason. In case you are unfamiliar with this, the scenario posed by philosophers is this: suppose the universe is one large time-loop in which the “last” event in the universe causes the “first” event in the universe. Would such a scenario be an adequate explanation for the cause of the universe? Some philosophers believe yes since under that scenario every event in the Universe has a cause. Most events are caused by the event before them. The “first” event is caused by the last event so every event has a cause. Other philosophers, however, dispute this because while every specific event has a cause, there is no explanation for the existence of the entire casualty loop itself. Why should the loop exist rather than not exist? This view is known as the “principle of sufficient reason” as it argues that causality loops cannot exist unless there is sufficient reason for them to exist. I should think the analogy to my query is obvious.
Of course, the principal of sufficient reason is an open question in philosophy and even were it resolved, there is no reason that the Dominion rules need to conform to the principles of causality in the Universe. But perhaps that helps to clarify my question.
I hope you don’t mind me following-up on your answer. I tried to follow-up a bit with some of the earlier responders but they seemed agitated by my question so I decided it was best to just drop it. I hope you don’t have a similar lack of patience with my following-up.