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151

Rules Questions / Exact timing of "when you trash"

« on: May 06, 2015, 03:57:48 am »

Help!  I've come to the conclusion that I no longer seem to be able to make sense of the timing of "when you trash" for certain cards.  I must be missing some important point, but I can't see what it is.

My problems started when I read through various topics that discussed the exact timing of "when you gain" and its consequences.  I was prompted to do so because in the topic on exchanging Travellers (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=13166.msg489093#msg489093) Jeebus makes use of that to establish the exact timing of "when you discard" for exchanging Travellers.  Along the way I also encountered various examples that were given of the timing of "when you trash".  In case my problems stem from misunderstanding any of what I've read this morning, I'd better start by summarising what I think I've learnt:

• "When you gain" occurs when the gain completes.  One of the consequences is that Watchtower moves the card from the location to which it was originally gained as opposed to intercepting it en route and redirecting it.
• "When you discard" occurs when the discard completes.  One of the consequences is that BoM-Page is on the discard pile (and hence a BoM capable of being returned to its own pile rather than incapable of being returned to the Page pile) when the exchange takes place.
• "When you trash" occurs when the trash completes.  So technically a trashed Fortress goes to the trash pile before being returned to hand.

My problem is that I now don't understand how BoM-(card-with-on-trash-ability) and Estate-Inherit-(card-with-on-trash-ability) manage to make use of the on-trash ability.  Although in the above I've deliberately used the word "occurs" rather than "triggers", my current understanding is based on the assumption that "occurs" and "triggers" are identical, in which case I draw the conclusion that BoM-(card-with-on-trash-ability) and Estate-Inherit-(card-with-on-trash-ability) have already become BoM and Estate respectively by the time I check for on-trash ability so there no longer is one.  What am I missing?

At one stage I thought I'd managed to work out what I was getting wrong, but the explanation to myself didn't quite seem to hold water.  My attempted revised understanding was that on-trash abilities were checked for at the start of the trashing process, so BoM would still be in play and the Estate would still be mine and hence have an on-trash ability, but didn't trigger until the trash had completed.  The problem with that explanation was that although I had no trouble understanding how a 'when-gain' ability could trigger for Estate-Inherit-(card-with-on-gain-ability) - buy happens before gain, so clearly the Estate would be mine before checking for the 'on-gain' - it left me failing to understand how a 'when-buy' ability could trigger for Estate-Inherit-(card-with-on-buy-ability).

Writing this post has forced me to think things through much more carefully.  I can now say that if I've misunderstood the Inheritance mechanism and it is in fact the case that a 'when-buy' ability does not trigger for Estate-Inherit-(card-with-on-buy-ability), then I don't have a problem with the exact timing of "when you trash".

152

Rules Questions / Re: Doctor (overpay) + Overgrown Estate

« on: May 06, 2015, 01:50:14 am »

You could also use Watchtower. But yeah, barring reactions I don't think you would ever be able to use the card drawn in that situation.

How about when buying a Doctor with Black Market?

153

Rules Questions / Re: What does "exchange" mean?

« on: May 05, 2015, 05:45:09 pm »

I see now that Donald wrote that. But to my mind BoM is already reverted back when you're trying to exchange it. It's in your discard pile at that point. At the moment you discard it, it's a Page, yes. But when you resolve the when-discard ability, it's already in your discard pile. Compare to how "when-gain" works for Watchtower or Royal Seal. It triggers when you gain, but when you resolve it, the gained card is already in your discard pile.

So then I would say that if the criteria is just that you're able to return the card to its pile, whichever pile that might be, both BoM-Page and EstatePage should work.

I see. I was thinking that BoM would still be BoM and you would be trying to put it into the Page pile. However you already discarded it from play, you pick it up from the top of your discard pile (even though this is never what anyone does), and it's a BoM now.

So, you can upgrade BoM or Estates-Inheriting-Page. You return BoM to the BoM pile, Estate to the Estate pile.

Black Market still doesn't work (whether Page or BoM copying Page), there is no pile to return the card to.

I'm going to try pulling a 'feed the blue dog and take it for a walk' trick as per the Possession/Ironworks discussion.  I don't know if it will work.

The rules say "When a player discards a Traveller from play, he may exchange it for the card indicated"

What does 'it' mean?  Shouldn't it mean "the Traveller that was discarded from play"?  In which case shouldn't exchanging BoM fail because there isn't a Traveller on the discard pile to exchange, merely a BoM?  And even if one takes the less extreme view that 'it' merely means "the Traveller" shouldn't exchanging Estates-Inheriting-Page fail because the Estate is merely an Estate with added powers: it didn't inherit 'Page' as its name, so does it really count as a Traveller?  Actually maybe it does as the rules state "Adventures has Traveller cards. These cards have an arrow over the text box to remind players of their ability to upgrade into another card." so maybe the arrow over the text box is the definition of a Traveller card.  On the other hand although the rules tell us "Page is exchanged for Treasure Hunter", they are completely silent on what Estate or BoM are exchanged for, and neither Estate nor BoM are Page at the moment of exchange.

EDIT: I've subsequently realised that much of the last paragraph overlooks the fact that Traveller cards have 'Traveller' as a type, so Estate-Inheriting-Page and BoM-Page are definitely Travellers.  And as Donald points out in his reply, the card text clears up the final sentence.  Memo to self: always remember to look at the card text before posting.

154

Rules Questions / Re: +Card token and when-you-play

« on: May 05, 2015, 05:20:35 pm »

I hope you guys are getting somewhere

First the good news: we're getting somewhere.
Now the bad news: we're all going in different directions.

155

Rules Questions / Re: +Card token and when-you-play

« on: May 05, 2015, 03:38:00 am »

Always keeping TR out when it has played a duration would in the case of Tactician clash with the Seaside rule that TR stays out until it is no longer doing anything.

I (at least possibly) take that back.  It might well be that Donald's ruling that the "it" in "If you play or modify a Duration card with another card, that other card also stays in your play area until it is no longer doing anything" refers back to the TR rather than the duration card is the only thing that makes keeping TR out after TR+Tactician incompatible with the Seaside rules.  If that's the case then Donald also has the option of reversing that ruling, i.e. making the "it" refer back to the duration card instead, in which case TR would always stay out whenever it had played a duration, irrespective of the number of times it had played it or the number of effects that had been set up.  That would also resolve the point I raised about clean-up timing of TR+Outpost.  But having said all that, I think this option is the least attractive of the three because (a) the more natural reading of the sentence "If you play or modify a Duration card with another card, that other card also stays in your play area until it is no longer doing anything" is for the "it" to refer back to "another card", (b) if the "it" were to refer back to the duration card, the sentence would now cause a Golem that had played a duration card to stay out, and (c) this option would cause more instances of false tracking - having a TR+Duration still in play when there is just one effect or having just Duration when there is more than one effect - than either of the other two possibilities.

156

Rules Questions / Re: +Card token and when-you-play

« on: May 05, 2015, 02:22:31 am »

The rule in the rule book is that Throne Room stays in play "until it is no longer doing anything" if it played a Duration. If it didn't play a Duration, Throne Room is cleaned up on the turn on which it's played no matter what.

Ok, that makes sense.

Okay but look.

1. Did the Throne Room play a Duration? Yes it did.
2. Does the Throne Room have something to do on a future turn? Yes, it has to track that the Fishing Village is being played a second time.

See, I'm seeing the answer to (2) as "no."  Yeah, you and I know FV is getting played a second time partly thanks to TR, but as far as the TR's direct actions are concerned, it only played FV the one time, so it has no "second time" to track.

For me, in order to get the answer to (2) to be "yes," that means whenever TR plays a duration directly at any point, it also needs to go check to see whether it ever indirectly played that same duration through a BoM, even though it doesn't otherwise care about what it indirectly played. But maybe that's what happens.

At first I thought that AJD's solution might be the only one that enabled all the relevant rules (as opposed to rulings) to stand, but now I'm not so sure.

Always keeping TR out when it has played a duration would in the case of Tactician clash with the Seaside rule that TR stays out until it is no longer doing anything.

Initially I thought that not keeping TR out when it had played BoM-Duration would clash with the Dark Ages rules, but on reviewing them I see that although they explicitly state (a) that BoM stays out when played as a duration and (b) that BoM stays out when played as TR/KC/Procession that plays a duration - I note in passing that even with Adventures we can't yet manage to make use of BoM as KC - they don't make any statement about what happens with TR+BoM-Duration.  As such I think that Donald has scope to rule in one of two ways on TR+BoM-Duration: (a) TR does somehow become aware that it has something to track, so stays out, or (b) TR has only directly played the duration once, so it doesn't know that it has something to track and hence gets discarded from play even though the players know that there is something to track.

At this stage I'd like to raise a related issue, namely the clean-up timing of TR+Outpost.  This was discussed somewhere in a topic either here or on BGG, but even with the aid of Google I have been unable to find the relevant topic amidst the morass of topics that have discussed TR+Outpost.  The topic discussed the issue of what happens when someone plays Outpost and TR+Outpost.  The answer given (if I recall correctly) was that this set up three Outpost effects, so all three cards stayed in play.  Then the player chose one of those effects to take place and the Outpost turn was played.  Then if the player had chosen the effect from the non-TR'ed Outpost, that card was discarded from play but the TR+Outpost remained in play until the next player's clean-up phase.  If on the other hand the player had chosen one of the TR'ed Outpost effects, nothing was discarded from play until the next player's clean-up phase.  How come the TR doesn't get discarded?  It has finished doing something: there is only one of the two Outpost effects that it originally created left outstanding.  If TR can spot on the turn that it's played that there is only one Tactician effect set up and hence allow itself to be cleaned up, why on the following turn can it not spot that there is only one Outpost effect remaining and hence allow itself to be cleanup up?

Again, in FV–Royal Carriage, the Royal Carriage produces only one direct play of a Duration (the first play of the Duration was the FV being played by itself the normal way), but that doesn't stop RC from staying in play with it.

RC is doing something fundamentally different from TR. RC is explicitly acting on a card that's already been played. RC always produces an "extra" play, so it always has something to track for durations. (Though I wonder whether even RC might be ruled not to stay out when, e.g., replaying Gear without setting any cards aside.)

Or indeed replaying Tactician!  Why anyone might choose to do such a thing is beyond me, but the rules need to cover what to do with idiotic plays.

157

Rules Questions / Re: +Card token and when-you-play

« on: May 04, 2015, 02:59:12 am »

When you play TR on a duration, TR is supposed to stay in play as long as it's still "doing something."  How does that work with these new rulings?

For example, if you play TR on BoM, choosing Fishing Village, then the second play will be of Fishing Village.  Does TR know that it indirectly "played" Fishing Village twice and needs to stay out?  Or does it just know it played a BoM and then played the same card that was somehow a Fishing Village the second time, and doesn't know it "doubled" a duration?

In the case TR and friends can somehow see through the BoM to see what ultimately gets played, what about this:  You KC a BoM, choosing Feast for the first play, so it'll be a BoM for the second and third plays.  Both those times, you choose it to be Fishing Village.  Does KC need to stay in play to mark that it "doubled" a Fishing Village?  Or is that just a coincidental doubling (you could have picked Fishing Village and Woodcutter, after all), so it gets discarded?

It would definitely stay in play in both cases. The KC case is weird, but multiple FVs are taking effect the next turn so you need to keep the KC out to track it.

But you need to remember that the KC is only tracking 2 FV next turn.

In a sense it's even worse than that: you would need to remember that the KC is only tracking 2 invisible FV (the BoM card is of course in the trash).

Let's try a mixture of your first and second examples:
Play TR
TR plays BoM
BoM plays itself as Feast and so gets trashed
TR plays BoM
BoM plays itself as FV

Now what's supposed to happen?

Does it help to consider TR+Tactician?  We know (assuming my memory is correct) that TR is able to notice that only the first play of Tactician triggered the requirement for Tactician to stay out and that consequently TR knows its job is done and can be discarded from play.  Does that mean that in the above example TR can notice that there has been only one play of FV and that consequently TR's job is done and it can be discarded from play?  But if that were the case, it would still leave me unclear as to what should happen in your KC+BoM-Feast/BoM-FV/(BoM-)FV example.  Given that KC would notice that it's job wasn't done, it presumably couldn't be discarded from play, but as you say, it would be necessary to remember that it was only marking two FV effects, not three (as well as remembering that the invisible card is FV).

158

Rules Questions / Re: Disciple (TR, KC, etc) Wine Merchant (other Reserve card)

« on: May 02, 2015, 12:52:53 pm »

I'm fairly sure that I've seen this question asked elsewhere (but don't ask me where)

I asked myself and successfully tracked it down.  The following is what Donald X said in a Boardgamegeek forum:

"Throne Room just repeats the above-the-line stuff. If you Throne Room Ratcatcher, for example, you would get +1 Card +1 Action, put Ratcatcher on the Tavern mat, get +1 Card +1 Action again, and fail to put it on the mat since it's already there. It would have no effect on calling the Ratcatcher later; that still just trashes one card. You can't Throne calling a card."

And not surprisingly Donald did indeed explain it much better than I did!

159

Rules Questions / Re: Disciple (TR, KC, etc) Wine Merchant (other Reserve card)

« on: May 02, 2015, 12:45:52 pm »

Played last night. Had someone Disciple a Wine Merchant. Does Disciple follow Wine Merchant to the Tavern Mat?

My guess is no, but I wasn't sure since those types of cards stay out with Duration cards.

I'm fairly sure that I've seen this question asked elsewhere (but don't ask me where) and the answer is indeed "no", the point being that the called effect can't get doubled so Disciple is finished with once the Reserve card has been resolved.  I'm also fairly sure that the answer elsewhere explained that much better than I have just done!

160

Rules Questions / Re: +Card token and when-you-play

« on: May 01, 2015, 03:03:41 am »

Here's another example, again from the original Dominion rules: "Throne Room - You pick another Action card in your hand, play it, and play it again.  The second use of the Action card doesn't use up any extra Actions you have."  In fact neither use of the Action card uses up any extra Actions you have: the only Action used up is by the Throne Room.

Not seeing a problem here.

It surprises me greatly that you don't see the problem - when I read the above sentence out to another Dominion player, he immediately replied "But neither does the first use of the Action card" so he could certainly see the problem - but the thread I started specifically on this subject on BoardGameGeek this morning (before reading your reply here) would be the more sensible place to discuss it further.

161

Rules Questions / Re: +Card token and when-you-play

« on: May 01, 2015, 02:34:40 am »

It's worth pointing out that there are other instances of rules that don't say what they really mean, so putting too much emphasis on making any rulings consistent with the above statement in the rulebook might not necessarily be the best approach, especially if it starts to produce results that are counterintuitive.

The card itself says "Play this as..." So you are playing it.

So... It only says "Play this as..." on the first play?

TR: Choose BoM
1. BoM(+A): Choose CardX(+B)
2. BoM(+A): Must Choose CardX(+B)

Vs. "This is..." on the second play...

TR: Choose BoM(+A): Choose CardX
1. CardX(+B)
2. CardX(+B)

Yeah it's either:

TR: Choose BoM(+A): Choose CardX
1. CardX(+B)
2. CardX(+B)

Or:

TR: Choose BoM(+A): Choose CardX
1. CardX(+B), trashes self
2.1. BoM(+A): Choose CardY
2.2. CardY(+C)

I have to confess that I had been having real trouble reconciling the way the rulings on this subject had gone with my mental picture of the way playing a card worked.  In particular I was having trouble with the idea that playing a Band of Misfits amounted to playing two Actions.  The problem was that I was thinking that the player made the choice of what card BoM was to be before actually playing BoM.  Overnight I've realised why that was wrong: one follows the instructions on a card as part of playing it.  Therefore the instruction "Play this as if it were an Action card in the Supply costing less than it that you choose" can only take effect as part of playing BoM, so there are indeed two Actions played, namely BoM and then the transformed card.

Having now corrected my mental image of playing BoM, I've been able to answer a hypothetical question I'd been pondering ever since this discussion started, namely "If there were a card, Band of Confusion say, that said '+1 Action. Now play this as if it were an Action card in the Supply costing less than it that you choose.  This is that card until it leaves play', how would it work?"  Exactly as BoM with the +1 Action token on its pile.

So, I'm now happy with the way the rulings have gone, something of absolutely no consequence to anyone else in the world but of great importance to me as it means I can once again understand BoM by applying logical rules.

162

Rules Questions / Re: +Card token and when-you-play

« on: April 30, 2015, 05:11:04 am »

4. Ruling: BoM is never played, rather the card you chose is played. This means you chose the card before-play. It means Conspirator counts one played Action.

4: I think most people would think you only played one card with BoM. It doesn't tell you to play another card like TR or Golem. And there's just one physical card that hit the table.

The rulebook refers to "playing" Band of Misfits. So you clearly played that.

It's worth pointing out that there are other instances of rules that don't say what they really mean, so putting too much emphasis on making any rulings consistent with the above statement in the rulebook might not necessarily be the best approach, especially if it starts to produce results that are counterintuitive.

I suppose I'd better give an example of a rulebook 'error'.  The original Dominion rules say "To play an Action, the player takes an Action card from his hand and lays it face-up in his play area."  Notice the 'from his hand' in that sentence.  If that rule were treated as absolutely correct, it would mean that Golem and Herald couldn't play the Action cards they find, but of course we all know that the original Dominion rulebook misspoke the rule.

Here's another example, again from the original Dominion rules: "Throne Room - You pick another Action card in your hand, play it, and play it again.  The second use of the Action card doesn't use up any extra Actions you have."  In fact neither use of the Action card uses up any extra Actions you have: the only Action used up is by the Throne Room.

So in the general case what I'm saying is that if there is any evidence that the rulebooks were in error and have thereby produced anomalies, Donald shouldn't get too hung up on making his rulings consistent with the rulebooks.  In the specific case I'm saying that "When you play this" in the BoM rulebook description should perhaps not be interpreted as meaning that a BoM is indeed played, especially as the card itself says "Play this as if it were", thereby suggesting that it's the something else that is played.

I realise of course that there is a preference for treating the rulebooks as more accurate that card texts (which sometimes have to be briefer than might have been desirable), but on the other hand the card descriptions in the rulebooks are often described as FAQs that supposedly do no more than spell out what the card texts mean.

I don't think I've seen such an entertaining debate since the one about Ironworks on a Possession turn.