Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Personman]

Seems like a good idea to put some information that's not available in the FAQ in one place. A wiki would be much better for this sort of thing, but I'll try to emulate it by keeping the list in this post up to date.

• The action timer is 3 minutes. (Before your opponent can force you to resign) [Verified 6/23/11]
• Drag-and-drop reordering cards for any reason (Scout, Black Market, Rabble, Stash, Apothecary) does NOT reset the timer. This can actually become an issue with Stash, if you have a lot of them, need to think about where they go, and struggle with the interface... [6/23/11]
  
  
• There is a bug with Possession where the Possessor's game state will not be accurately reflected on screen until the end of the Possessed turn. This can be very frustrating when your opponent has cards like Minion that change the composition of your hand coupled with cards like Masquerade and attacks that make you care about the contents of your hand before you play them, as there is no way to find out what you drew to Minion/Council Room. [6/24/11]
  
  
• If Black Market is in the spread, the deck is 25 cards chosen at random from EVERY expansion except Alchemy. If Potion is in the spread, Alchemy will be included too. Filters have no effect whatsoever on the contents of the BM deck. There is also no way to force a card to be in the BM deck. [6/23/11]
• You can't put any constraints on the Bane card other than to specify it exactly. Even if you specify 10 cards including Young Witch and exclude all other cards, it will pick an excluded card for the Bane. (In fact, when you specify the Bane, it also lists it as being excluded) [6/23/11]
  
  
• When Grand Market is in the spread, the +$ button will not include Copper if you can afford a Grand Market, to prevent you from accidentally playing them and preventing you from buying it. However, this behavior is not implemented for the Black Market 'play all your money' button when Grand Market is in the Grand Market deck. Also note that Quarry's cost reduction comes *after* you play it, and thus a hand of Quarry, Quarry, Copper will result in a '+$3' button that plays your copper.[6/24/11]
  
  
• To start a solitaire game, click 'propose game with' without checking a user's checkbox. A game acceptance prompt reading 'Play this game solitaire?' will appear.
• Checking the 'identical starting hands' box will have no effect on auto-match games. (In general, as the FAQ attempts to explain, the controls below the lobby affect only proposed games, and the auto-match controls affect only auto-match games)
• Entering the lobby with drheld's Dominion Point Counter extension will cause certain options do acquire unchangeable defaults. 'use point tracker' will be checked and disabled, and the auto-match 'point tracker:' combo box will be set to 'require' and disabled. It is very likely that this can be avoided by modifying the extension by changing all the variable names, but I haven't checked. [6/25/11]

[guided]

KC/Wharf bug?

If you're referring to isotropic being very permissive about cleaning up KCs and TRs off duration chains, Donald more recently changed the ruling: the only copies of TR/KC that stay in the play area are those that directly modify a duration card.

[Personman]

Oh, wow, okay. I guess it was kinda arbitrary either way, though I think I liked it better before? I assume the reasoning was that it's just less complicated, which is a pretty fine reason.

[Death to Sea Hags]

MOAT:  yes, there's a bug.  You only need to click "Reveal Moat" once.  Really.

I see lots of new players click several times, uncertain of what to do when asked the second time about the moat.

[Thisisnotasmile]

MOAT:  yes, there's a bug.  You only need to click "Reveal Moat" once.  Really.

I see lots of new players click several times, uncertain of what to do when asked the second time about the moat.

That's not a bug though. That's new players not understanding why you might want to reveal multiple reaction cards.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Double post yay.

I had a game yesterday in which something happened that I thought wasn't quite right. Not sure if it was a bug or not though. Maybe this is one for discussion.

On my turn I played a Possession (and other stuff), finished my turn, got my new hand and then began possessing my opponent. During the Possession turn, I made my opponent play his Minion and discard for 4 new cards, obviously attacking myself in the process. However, I could not see MY new hand until the end of the possession turn. Now, normally this wouldn't really matter, but in this case, my opponent's new hand contained a Young Witch and some junk. I knew I had a couple of copies of the Bane card (Ambassador (Possession Ambassador game where you quite possibly need the Ambassador because it's the Bane card wooooo!!!)) in my deck, and I didn't have one in my previous hand (the one I could still see even though it had technically been discarded). I didn't make my opponent play the Young Witch because I didn't know what I was holding in my hand, and ended the Possession turn without really accomplishing much. Afterwards, however, I discovered that I was, in fact, holding an Ambassador, and would have been fine to play the Young Witch.

Is this correct, or should I have been able to see my new hand during the Possession turn?

QuickEdit: It was a very interesting game in which I won by 1 point.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110623-104700-16c2e3d1.html
My opponent was surprised in turn 13 possession, where I Ambassadored his 2 potions when I could have taken a province. I believe that this won me the game as it kept him from buying his own possession for quite some time, securing my deck from Possession-Ambassador. I took his province(s) later in the game. It's games like this one that make Possession a fun card, to me.

QuickEdit2: Turn 27 possession was also very interesting. I was faced with Young Witch, Ambassador, Gold, Gold, Silver. I had a good think before returning 0 Golds to give myself 1 and buying a Province. I was very tempted by returning 2 Golds too, but that marginally lost out. What would you have done?

[Personman]

Yes, this is a bug, I've noticed it several times myself. Thanks for bringing it up. I would updated the OP, but there's still a timeout on editing posts :/

EDIT: Tested this in text mode, and unsurprisingly the bug exists there as well. No visible state on your half of the screen updates during a Possession turn, including your draw pile. Choice interfaces appear as normal and have the correct choices (if you play minion and then masquerade, you'll get to find out what's in your hand... but maybe too late.)

I haven't tried out what happens when you force a reshuffle on yourself when you have a Stash under Possession. Presumably it works...

[guided]

Now that you mention it I've seen that Possession/Minion bug before. It's an awfully rare situation, but when it happens (and it matters that you can't see your hand) it's really annoying.

[guided]

Oh, wow, okay. I guess it was kinda arbitrary either way, though I think I liked it better before? I assume the reasoning was that it's just less complicated, which is a pretty fine reason.

Yeah, that's exactly the reason. If you've followed Donald's posts on BGG, you definitely start to understand that in weird edge cases he cares way more about simplicity than power levels. The old ruling was quite difficult to adjudicate for complex duration chains.

[Death to Sea Hags]

MOAT:  yes, there's a bug.  You only need to click "Reveal Moat" once.  Really.

I see lots of new players click several times, uncertain of what to do when asked the second time about the moat.

That's not a bug though. That's new players not understanding why you might want to reveal multiple reaction cards.

This isn't when you have two Moats and reveal each one.  This is revealing the same Moat twice or more.

[mypetrock]

Black Market + Contraband
I've had a lot of trouble picking a relevant card to Contraband when Black Market is in play. I usually end up picking something irrelevant like Trusty Steeds.

[Thisisnotasmile]

MOAT:  yes, there's a bug.  You only need to click "Reveal Moat" once.  Really.

I see lots of new players click several times, uncertain of what to do when asked the second time about the moat.

That's not a bug though. That's new players not understanding why you might want to reveal multiple reaction cards.

This isn't when you have two Moats and reveal each one.  This is revealing the same Moat twice or more.

Well in the case of Moat, it makes no difference whether it is revealed once or more, but for some reaction cards it can matter.

Imagine you hold Secret Chamber, Filler x4. Your opponent plays an attack (say Mountebank). You reveal your Secret Chamber and draw Moat + Filler, putting 2xFiller back on your deck. You can now reveal your Moat, negating the attack of Mountebank. Now, if you wish, you can reveal your Secret Chamber again, drawing your 2xFiller that you just put on your deck. You can now put your Moat (Or even Secret Chamber) back on your deck for use next turn.

If you could only reveal each reaction card once, you would not be able to do this, thus you can reveal them multiple times.

[guided]

This isn't when you have two Moats and reveal each one.  This is revealing the same Moat twice or more.

Read the isotropic FAQ sometime; it mentions this specific point

In any case, it's not a bug. You can reveal a Moat (or Secret Chamber) as many times as you want. This is pointless if you just have a Moat in hand and no other Reaction cards. But it's not forbidden, and it might conceivably matter, so isotropic lets you do it rather than trying to decide that it couldn't possibly matter. And indeed, there is already a situation where you might want to reveal the same reaction card more than once:

• An opponent plays an Attack card.
• You reveal Secret Chamber.
• You draw 2 cards, including a Moat.
• You put 2 cards back on your deck, keeping the Moat and Secret Chamber in your hand.
• You reveal the Moat.
• You reveal the Secret Chamber again.
• You draw 2 cards.
• You put 2 cards back on your deck, including the Moat.

ed: beaten by TINAS!

[Personman]

While all of this is very true, it is quite provably the case that with the existing cards, when Moats are the only reaction cards in your hand, there is no reason to reveal a moat more than once (or to reveal more than one of them). Given how much more common this situation is than the secret chamber interaction, I think it would be reasonable for Isotropic to special case it until a card is printed that somehow makes it matter.

[guided]

I don't think the platform needs to get into the business of analyzing card interactions to prove which things that are allowed are not useful. And as an engineer, I can definitely respect the desire not to make maintenance work for yourself every time new cards come out....

[Personman]

I absolutely agree in general, but I think the common case here is unfriendly enough to new players that it's worth it.

[DsnowMan]

I think that isotropic recently started not automatically playing coppers when there is grand market in play. Quirky.

Any way to turn this off in game?

[guided]

I think that isotropic recently started not automatically playing coppers when there is grand market in play. Quirky.

Any way to turn this off in game?

Well, not quite. When you could buy a Grand Market without playing any Coppers, it doesn't automatically play Coppers. If you can't afford a Grand Market, it still automatically plays all your Coppers. I think this was an awesome change, as I've accidentally shut myself out of buying GMs by clicking the +$ button on numerous occasions in the past.

[Death to Sea Hags]

This isn't when you have two Moats and reveal each one.  This is revealing the same Moat twice or more.

Read the isotropic FAQ sometime; it mentions this specific point

In any case, it's not a bug. You can reveal a Moat (or Secret Chamber) as many times as you want. This is pointless if you just have a Moat in hand and no other Reaction cards. But it's not forbidden, and it might conceivably matter, so isotropic lets you do it rather than trying to decide that it couldn't possibly matter. And indeed, there is already a situation where you might want to reveal the same reaction card more than once:

Yes, you might want to play it more than once - but even as a corner case, it's easily distinguished: after the SC, now you've got TWO reactions in hand.  There is not yet any case where you want to reveal a single reaction more than once in succession in response to the same prompt, when that reaction is the only reaction in your hand.

The bigger problem is that there's no notice when the Moat is played that you've stopped the attack.  I assume most new players in this situation are concerned that, since the program is still asking if you want to reveal the Moat, that it somehow didn't register - either that you're missing something important, or that it's a bug.

Changing the prompt for the second time to "Do you want to reveal the (reaction) again?" would resolve the confusion, and would still work for all cases.

[guided]

Hey man, suggest it to Doug if you want.

Like I said, for anyone who's confused, it's in the FAQ already.

[Teproc]

I absolutely agree in general, but I think the common case here is unfriendly enough to new players that it's worth it.

How is it so unfriendly ? First, you have to read the FAQ. The, even if you didn't read the FAQ, the first time you see that you'll probably clik a few times and realize it serves no purpose... not sure how this is such a big annoyance. Yes, the Secret Chamber thing is a corner case, but why not following the rules when the problem is frankly non-existent ?

[rrenaud]

Software that requires you to read a manual tends to be pretty crappy software.  All other things the same, you'd prefer not to have to do it.

Of course, there is (often) a trade off between simplicity of the software and fluidity of the user experience.

I love isotropic and it's super lean interface, but I think the way it handles moat (and pawn, remember my last choice and preselect it next time, please!) is annoying.  If you have ever moated an attack, you don't need the option to moat again, regardless of funky interactions with secret chamber.  If you have no more meaningful options, unblock the game and progress.

[CMAR2P2]

Speaking of the FAQ - Maybe instructions could be added on Solitaire games? I've been around isotropic a while and I have no idea how to start them (obv never been a big issue for me or I would have just asked someone but still probably something that should be in the FAQ).

[Personman]

To start a solitaire game, click 'propose game with' without checking anybody's name.

Thanks for pointing this out, I didn't realize it wasn't it the FAQ! Added to the OP.

[Eagle]

I think that isotropic recently started not automatically playing coppers when there is grand market in play. Quirky.

Any way to turn this off in game?

Well, not quite. When you could buy a Grand Market without playing any Coppers, it doesn't automatically play Coppers. If you can't afford a Grand Market, it still automatically plays all your Coppers. I think this was an awesome change, as I've accidentally shut myself out of buying GMs by clicking the +$ button on numerous occasions in the past.

I probably couldn't count the number of times I had clicked the button only to realize that I played 2 golds and a copper and couldn't buy a grand market...  I cheered the day it quit doing that!