Wild Hunt, when gained via Black Market

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santamonica811

Game 16957864.  Turn 18

My strategy was, when I saw Wild Hunt in the BM supply, was, "Hey, there cannot be any other Wild Hunts in this game.  So, I can accumulate points by always selecting "cards" and then . . . cash in late in the game, since I am the only one who can possibly get those points."

But, when it came time for me to "cash in" and get those points, it did not work?!?!!!  I had a suspicion that this might happen, since--during that game--when I selected cards for my Wild Hunt options, there was no place on the visible kingdom for the accumulated points to be shown.

But nothing in the text of Wild Kingdom suggests that it will not work properly when it is gained via Black Market.  So, I'm thinking it's just a bug.

Can this be fixed easily?  Or, at least, if it's a difficult fix, can Wild Hunt be excluded from Black Market possible purchases?

Ingix

Wild Hunt card text:

Choose one: +3 Cards and add 1VP to the Wild Hunt Supply pile; or gain an Estate, and if you do, take the VP from the pile.

As you can see, the VP go onto the Wild Hunt supply pile (when the first option is chosen), which does not exist in this case. So, as you correctly noted, there is no place for them to accumulate, and thus no place to gain them from on the second option.

So this is not a bug, but the case of an instruction that can't be carried out, so it doesn't happen.

santamonica811

Ingrix,
Thanks.  The only objection I have is that it is not really clear in advance.  A game should not turn on someone taking a 50-50 guess and happening to be wrong (or correct).  I mean, I can see how it makes sense that the supply pile is on top of the visual depiction of the card.  No supply pile = no accumulation of points.  But it also makes just as much logical sense to think, "The supply pile is some abstract concept and not a physical place; and the top of the pile (eg, if Wild Hunt was a regular card in a kingdom) is merely a convenient place to put a counter--to remind all players of how many potential VP have been accumulated."

This is really an edge case, I guess.  I am not sure if there are any similar cards where this would be an issue.  But even if there are; it would be a potential problem only if the kingdom has Black Market.

Caveat emptor

jeebus

The key here is understanding the fact that the Black Market deck is not a supply pile and none of the cards in the Black Market deck belongs to a Supply pile. This means you can never return such a card to the supply with Ambassador, you can never make it give you a bonus with a +1 Action token or any other token, a set-aside Encampment will have nowhere to return to, a Port doesn't come with another Port, and Farmers' Market, Temple and Wild Hunt will have no supply pile for VP tokens.