Travelers + Innovation

[josh bornstein]

Game 18768333, Turn 13

The kingdom had Page (etc) and Innovation.  I said to myself, "Cool, I just thought of a brilliant strategy to zoom through the travelers and get to Champion in world-record time."

Innovation says, "First time you gain an action in each turn, can immediately put it aside and play it."  By and large; this works fine.  But as you can see in my game, it did not work with travelers.

As long as I make sure not to buy or otherwise gain any other action card in a turn, once I turn in my "old" Traveler and gain the next one, Innovation should kick in, right?  This should allow me to 'churn' through the Traveler sequence in consecutive turns.  The only explanation for the failure to do this that I can think of is if, with Traveler, you exchange the cards AFTER your turn, which would take it out of the effect influence of Innovation.  But I doubt this...the exchange is clearly done (from the wording of Traveler cards) during the discard phase, which is--obviously--during your turn.  Right?  At least; that is what the Wiki entry says under "Discard.": To discard a card is to move it into your discard pile. This is done every turn during your Clean-up phase . . . [emphasis added]

Bug, or some subtlety that I'm missing?

(Added wrinkle: I actually DID think it was working as I had expected during one or two of the earlier Traveler exchanges, but I'm not 100% sure of this.  It definitely did not work on Turn 13, where I was going from Hero to Champion...I was paying closer attention to this issue at that point.)

[Ingix]

It's again a subtlety you're missing:

Exchanging is not gaining. This is by design, look at the Nocturne rules, page 4:

Nocturne has three cards that tell a player to "exchange" a card for another card. The card being
exchanged is returned to its Supply pile, or non-Supply pile, and the card being exchanged for is taken
and put into the player's discard pile. This does not count as gaining a card.

Emphasis mine.

So Innovation can't help you in this case.

[josh bornstein]

Thanks Ingix. 
I'm actually glad about this.  The combo would be just too powerful otherwise.

By the way; are there other examples in Dominion, of where a player gets a new card but it does not count as 'gaining?'  I think it would be a good idea for me to memorize a list of these exceptions, since it's gonna be an important factor with the new kingdom.

[Ingix]

By the way; are there other examples in Dominion, of where a player gets a new card but it does not count as 'gaining?'  I think it would be a good idea for me to memorize a list of these exceptions, since it's gonna be an important factor with the new kingdom.

To my mind come cards passed with Masquerade, a trashed Fortress returning to a player's hand and trashed-and-set-asided cards from a Possession turn. The latter two I guess don't qualify as 'new' in most player's mind, but formally they were not yours and then become yours again. Other exchanges include the Changeling triggered ability and Bat <--> Vampire, besides the Traveller's of course.

I guess I may have missed one or two, but they are actually rather rare. Most 'gaining' happens via real gaining.

[markus]

Trashing a Fortress in supply with Lurker is something commonly done. That way you put it in your hand but haven't gained it.

[josh bornstein]

Trashing a Fortress in supply with Lurker is something commonly done. That way you put it in your hand but haven't gained it.

Thanks to you guys for the examples.  Most were not surprising to me, but Fortress-via-Lurker does surprise me.  I get it, intuitively, for Masquerade.  That's clearly some sort of exchange.  But not true for the via-Lurker example.  I guess you gain it but do not "gain" it. 

I guess it would be more accurately stated, "You get it, but do not gain it."  ...and this just has to be taken on faith.

By the way; given the above, it's weird that cards obtains via Mine are 'gained.'  You get rid of one card and get a different card (or even the same card, of course, if you want and it's available).  The text of Mine make it clear that it is "gained."   But the logic of getting rid of one card and getting another one seems *really* similar in real-life effect to Travelers...even if the text on the card is different.

But I can see why (1) No one wants 3 paragraphs of exquisitely-crafted detailed instructions--which would require a magnifying glass to read!--for kingdom cards. , and (2) how language on a card that was perfectly clear in a kingdom could, later, become ambiguous or opaque down-the-road, due to some new wrinkle in Dominion--like Events, or a Possession-type card, etc..  It's part of the fun for me with this game.  As a lawyer, I really enjoy exploring edge cases.  Not sure if that is a feature or a bug with my personality.