Young Witch - opponent doesn't seem to gain curses!

[blamelewis]

Hi - game #6424296

So my opponent has Diplomats and has always reacted with these when I play Young Witch.
The Bane is Oracle - I've never seen them reveal it but they've never gained a curse - is the Diplomat protecting them somehow? I don't think it should.

Or am I missing something. Feels like I'd be doing a lot better in this game if my curses were getting through.

Thanks.

[AdamH]

The game log displays nothing if a Bane card is revealed. It shows a line saying a Curse is gained if not.

Obviously this is unclear, especially given the lack of an animation or visual cue of any kind whenever a bane card is revealed. There should 100% be a line in the game log saying that a Bane card is revealed whenever that happens.

I think, though, that the right thing is happening with regard to Curses being gained when they "should" be, by the game rules. Unfortunately, that means that this goes lower in the priority for what the devs will work on (which is something that I disagree with, but it's the reality of the situation).

[Ingix]

When I tested this on the first instance (blamelewis' 3rd turn), it worked (rules wise) as it should: opponent got to do the Diplomat thing, then blamelewis drew 2 cards, discarded 2 cards, then opponent gained a Curse (with animation).

However, when loading the log at different decison points a strange effect happens: When I load at decision 15, the log shows the gained curse. When I load at decision 16, the log no longer shows the gained curse (see attached picture). The same is true when the game is loaded at the last available decision point.

@blamelewis: If your assumption that opponent never gained a Curse is based on the log from a reload of the game, than the reason for this (incorrect) assumption is clear: The reloaded log is wrong by not mentioning the gained curse. If you had another reason to assume that, please specify.

BTW, did you finish that game? The reason I ask is that

a) at reload the end of the game is at a time when 4 Provinces are still in the supply, the point difference is 11, no +buy is available in the Kingdom and the smallest piles are 2/3/3 cards, so it seems a bit early for any player do resign, and

b) in recent times it happened sometimes that a game I wanted to inverstigate for a possible rules problem was obviously way to short (like only 5 or 6 turns, long before the potential problem reported by a player).

If there is a general problem with the log being shorted sometimes, it would be nice to know.

[blamelewis]

Hi Ingix,

thanks for your time looking into this.

So is it the case that my opponent just (mostly) had the Bane card and the log just wasn't showing me this? In which case there's a bug in the logging of Bane reveals?

I don't think I did finish the game, I think I resigned, dispirited that it seemed to be buggy! I don't recall them gaining *any* curses - I was looking at the ten left in the supply. I may be misremembering.

Best

Tim

[drsteelhammer]

Hi,

Your Young Witch just got a bit unlucky. On the first play, your opponent reacted with Diplomat the find the bane, then their Oracle discarded the Young Witch twice and you drew it dead once. You only played the YW three times until turn 20, one of them giving your opponent a curse.

Also, the other curser on the board, Replace, dealt out some curses so there weren't 10 in the supply.

[Ingix]

ADDED: Please ignore the following ramblings about incorrect display of game state. What happened was that I loaded the game at a time (decision 15) when opponent had to make a decision. Since the opponent on the reload was a bot, it took a different decision than the actual player did. So when I then reloaded at the next decision (16) the game was different. Sorry for the confusion.
  Ingix

Now I'm totally confused. When you load the game at decision point 15, you

a) clearly see a Curse on top of blamelewis's opponent's discard pile, and
b) only 9 Curses being in the Curse pile, and
c) a log line saying that the opponent gained a curse.

When you load at decision 16, this is no longer true:

d) top of opponent's discard pile is a Copper,
e) Curse pile has 10 cards in it,
f) log says nothing about opponent gaining a curse.

f) is the only thing I noticed in my previous post, but I assumed it was only a log problem. Apprently (as drsteelhammer said) the opponent blocked the attack via Orcale (bane card). That would be consistent with there still being 10 Curses in the pile even on the next turn.

So I was fooled by the incorrect display of the game state at decision 15 and it looks like you indeed got unlucky (with Oracle both thwarting a played Young Witch as well as preventing you from drawing one).