Prince and lose track

[jeebus]

I played a game where my opponent by mistake set aside a Duration (Amulet) with Prince.

First of all, how do you see the game number or something, so I can refer to the game here?

Anyway, he did that turn 13, and turn 14 Prince played Amulet and nothing more happened according to the log. Turn 15 Amulet had its next-turn effect, and in Clean-up that turn (before card draw) "Prince loses track of Amulet (it moved)" according to the log.

Now, as far as the actual outcome, everything seems to be correct. But the implementation of either lose-track or Prince or both is wrong, at least according to how it was reported in the log.

What is supposed to happen is that Prince never loses track of Amulet. The start-of-turn ability on Prince is cancelled at the moment Amulet is not discarded at the end of turn 14. Since Prince never plays it again after that turn, there is no when-discard ability either: The when-discard ability ("set it aside again") only happens on a turn when the Amulet is played. On turn 14 there is a when-discard ability in effect, but it never triggers since the Amulet is not discarded. On turn 15 there is no when-discard ability in effect.

It kind of looks like the implementation is that the when-discard ability is checked whenever the Amulet is discarded for the rest of the game (and then it fails because of lose-track). It's hard to say, because turn 15 is the last turn where that happens in this game. But if so, it would in any case be very wrong: Prince somehow checks its when-discard ability when the Amulet is discarded, finding that it doesn't trigger because the Amulet is lost track of, but then how can Prince even know that it's that very Amulet in the first place? (If there were several Amulets in the deck, the player could not know which of them it is and so neither could the Prince.)

The correct way would be: Since Prince never played the card on turn 15 (or any turns following) it's actually not tracking the Amulet anymore. Prince stops doing anything either at the end of turn 14 (because it fails to set aside the Amulet then) or alternatively at the start of turn 15 (because it hasn't set aside the Amulet).

I have no idea if this mistake could result in anything wrong happening in any card interactions. But at least the log is reporting it incorrectly according to the wording on Prince.

[Ingix]

Good analysis of the situation. Prince is a weird card in the sense that it has a sentence in parenthesis whose nature is unclear to me: If it is some necessary instruction, why is it in parenthesis? It seems to be necessary, as otherwise it clearly should work with Duration cards (which get discarded sometime, just later than other cards, so "loose track" should not apply to them).

[jeebus]

Good analysis of the situation. Prince is a weird card in the sense that it has a sentence in parenthesis whose nature is unclear to me: If it is some necessary instruction, why is it in parenthesis? It seems to be necessary, as otherwise it clearly should work with Duration cards (which get discarded sometime, just later than other cards, so "loose track" should not apply to them).

Yes, I also used to think that instructions in parenthesis are not necessary, but Donald has clarified that that's not necessarily the case. And on Prince it's a necessary instruction.

[santamonica811]

Good analysis of the situation. Prince is a weird card in the sense that it has a sentence in parenthesis whose nature is unclear to me: If it is some necessary instruction, why is it in parenthesis? It seems to be necessary, as otherwise it clearly should work with Duration cards (which get discarded sometime, just later than other cards, so "loose track" should not apply to them).

Yes, I also used to think that instructions in parenthesis are not necessary, but Donald has clarified that that's not necessarily the case. And on Prince it's a necessary instruction.

This might have been covered elsewhere, but . . .
I'd like to see an option added, where a warning box would pop up in situations like this.  ("You are about to Prince a duration card.  The result will be a discarded Prince and duration card that will have no future effect.  Do you wish to continue? Yes/Undo")

I have (obviously) read the forum posts, so I am now aware of this pitfall.  But the rule is pretty recherche and I think that a lot of beginning and mid-level casual players will be (a) mystified as to why their expensive Prince card is not having the expected results and (b) pretty cheesed off when they realize that they wasted a Huge investment--in two separate cards!!--with no warning about what would happen.

On the other hand; it's not the worst thing in the world to happen . . . at most, a one-time lesson in advanced Dominion gameplay.  So, it would not be the first fix/change I'd make, if I were a ShuffleIt programmer.

[jeebus]

I have (obviously) read the forum posts, so I am now aware of this pitfall.  But the rule is pretty recherche and I think that a lot of beginning and mid-level casual players will be (a) mystified as to why their expensive Prince card is not having the expected results and (b) pretty cheesed off when they realize that they wasted a Huge investment--in two separate cards!!--with no warning about what would happen.

On the other hand; it's not the worst thing in the world to happen . . . at most, a one-time lesson in advanced Dominion gameplay.  So, it would not be the first fix/change I'd make, if I were a ShuffleIt programmer.

I'm not opposed to your suggestion. But I just want to add that it's not forum posts that should be the basis for knowing how Prince works. It's the actual rulebook. How Prince works on Durations is explained there. (And it's also available online from Rio Grande. There are also rules documents on BGG and wiki.dominionstrategy.com.)