Capitalism/Black Market/Fortune interactions

[scottshauf]

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but it's not what I expected:

Playing in a game with Capitalism, and having bought it, I then had multiple Black Markets that I waited to play in the buy phase. I played one, and then a second as a treasure before selecting my purchase for the first BM. When I played the second, another BM selection of three cards pops up. I then played a third BM, and the same things happens. This is actually very cool, because I got to see all the BM cards for all the BM plays before choosing any to buy.

So far this seems reasonable. But then after I played my last BM (I think I had 5), I then played my Fortune, thinking, great, I can double my money before making my BM purchases. But when I played it, all the BM cards went away, as if I had selected not to buy anything from any of them. I was still in my buy phase, with my money doubled, but I couldn't make the BM purchases at that point.

Bug?

[Ingix]

Sounds like it. Do you by chance have the game number of that game?

ADDED: I tried this and got 3 Black Markets + Fortune lined up, and it worked as it should (that means I could buy one card from each triple of cards Black Market revealed).

I strongly suspect that you had Debt at that time! Having debt prevents a player from buying cards outright. I had this happen once myself during that testing game. All goes well, Black Market reveals cards and allows you to play Treasure (in this case other Black Markets), but the buying is simply prevented from happening.

[markus]

But the bug sounds to be that you should be able to repay your debt there in the buy phase?

[scottshauf]

I think you're right about the debt. I tried it in a new game without debt, and the Fortune play worked just fine. Then I tried it again in another game. I did it first without debt, and it worked fine. Then I tried it a second time with debt and it did what it did before--interestingly, though, I had two Fortunes, and the first Fortune worked just fine. But when I played the second Fortune, all the BMs disappeared as before. The game number of this one is 20294391 (sorry, I don't have the number of the first one; all these games were against Lord R).

[Ingix]

@markus: I think this has in the meantime been discussed in the discord, but regardless of the outcome, curently Black Market's interface simply doesn't allow that.

@scottshauf:
What you describe is exactly what should happen. The playing of Fortune *allways* works and has worked in your examples.

What you see when all the Black Market windows disappeared is that you no longer had any Treasure in hand, so the game could end the 'play Treasures' part of the last Black Market. Then it would normally allow you to select a card to buy from Black Market, but (just as if you did not have enough coin for any of the cards) it skips this, because you can't buy a card (debt).

Then the cycle continues: The last Black Market was played as a Treasure in the second-to-last Black Market, so this ends the 'play Treasures' part of the second-to-last Black Market...

This continues until all the Black Markets have completely resolved, each of them not allowing you to buy a card because you had debt.

[scottshauf]

Thanks, I see that you are correct. To verify, I tested it with the Fortune not being the last treasure played, and in fact the BMs go away whatever that last treasure played is, when there is debt.

I agree with Markus that it's odd not to allow you to repay debt in the buy phase just because the BMs have been played. But that's not too bad of a limitation.

[jeebus]

No, you can't pay off debt in the first part of your Buy phase (the playing-Treasures part). This is in the Empires rulebook. You have to wait until you've resolved all the Treasures you played (in this case including Black Markets), and then enter the second part of your Buy phase. Now you can pay off debt and buy things normally.

However, if you have Innovation and buy a Black Market normally (i.e. in the second part of your Buy phase), you can pay off debt first. But you have to pay off the debt before buying the BM, since you can only pay off debt before or after buying a card. Innovation would let you play the BM as an immediate trigger from buying it, so you can't pay off debt then, not until you're done resolving the Innovated BM.

[jeebus]

I interpreted the Empires rulebook too literally when it comes to when you can pay off debt in the second part of the Buy phase. According to Donald you can pay off debt at any time in the second part of your buy phase. So if you have Innovation and buy a Black Market normally, thereby playing the Black Market, you can pay off debt in the middle of resolving it.

[Ingix]

This is just a reminder that this has not been implemented in Dominion Online yet. It seems the rules interpretations about all this are converging to something stable, but it will take time to implement the consequences.