Topics

[1. Errata]

I am changing some rules and errata-ing some cards. And this post is telling you all about it.

The reasons behind these changes are:
- It's possible for two copies of a card to have different abilities. This causes problems, the worst (extremely exotic) situation being, you play a card and don't actually know what it should do. The cards that do this are also confusing in general.
- There are cases where card interactions fail in an unintuitive way, due to it mattering if cards in a discard pile are covered up.
- Two minor rules clarify things a little and simplify texts a little, and are just coming along for the ride.

These changes will be implemented in the online program soon, and are effective now for play irl. Of course if you are playing irl you may not know about them, or may choose to do whatever you choose to do. These are changes for the better though, and I recommend using them.

1. Errata

Eight cards are getting errata. Four are "shapeshifters" - they can change what they are, or what something else is. These create lots of rules questions and a few problems, and are switching to be like Captain and Necromancer - they'll play a card instead of becoming the card. Three are one-shots that would behave differently with the shapeshifters; they're changing to be more like they previously were, though this will change how they work in some other situations (e.g. with Necromancer and Captain). And then Procession is getting rid of the tracking problem introduced when the Throne/Duration rule changed a few years ago.

Someday those expansions will get printed again, and will have the new wordings, with FAQs to go with them. You can play with them right now though, through the magic of knowing about them.

New card texts:

Band of Misfits: Action, $5
Play an Action card from the Supply that costs less than this, leaving it there.

Overlord: Action, 8D
Play an Action card from the Supply costing up to $5, leaving it there.

Inheritance: Event, $7
Once per game: Set aside a non-Victory Action card from the Supply costing up to $4. Move your Estate token to it. (During your turns, Estates are also Actions with "Play the card with your Estate token, leaving it there.")

Lantern: Artifact
Border Guards you play reveal 3 cards and discard 2. (It takes all 3 being Actions to take the Horn.)

Death Cart: Action - Looter, $4
You may trash this or an Action card from your hand, for +$5.
----------
When you gain this, gain 2 Ruins.

Pillage: Action - Attack, $5
Trash this. If you did, gain 2 Spoils, and each other player with 5 or more cards in hand reveals their hand and discards a card that you choose.

Embargo: Action, $2
+$2
Trash this. If you did, add an Embargo token to a Supply pile. (For the rest of the game, when a player buys a card from that pile, they gain a Curse.)

Procession: Action, $4
You may play a non-Duration Action card from your hand twice. Trash it. Gain an Action card costing exactly $1 more than it.

2. Tracking for the former shapeshifters

Some cards, like the new Band of Misfits, can play a card that isn't put into play. When you play Band of Misfits, leave it in play as long as you would have left the card it plays in play. Normally that will be the same turn's Clean-up. For a Band of Misfits playing a Duration card, it will be the Clean-up of the last turn the Duration card has any effects. For a Band of Misfits playing a Throne Room playing a Duration card, it will be the Clean-up of the turn the Duration card leaves play. For a Band of Misfits playing a card that can move itself from play, like Mining Village, the Mining Village can't move itself, so Band of Misfits doesn't leave play any earlier than normal. If a Band of Misfits plays multiple Duration cards (e.g., you used Throne Room on it), leave it out until the Clean-up of the last turn that one of them still had effects.

These rules apply to all of the cards that play cards without putting them into play: currently, Band of Misfits, Overlord, Inheritance, Necromancer, and Captain.

3. The new lose-track rule, now stop-moving, and getting things from your discard pile

Sometimes, the game wants you to not move a card further. I used to call this lose-track, because it existed due to situations where you'd really lose track of the card. But mostly you know right where the card is, so now I am calling it the stop-moving rule. And it's changing too, as follows.

The stop-moving rule: An effect can move a card if it specifies where the card is coming from, or if the effect put the card where it is now. If a card isn't where the effect would expect it to be, or has moved away from there and then back, it can't move the card. Played cards expect to be in play; they can't move themselves if they aren't. Gained cards are expected to be where they were gained to, even if this isn't the discard pile. Cards in discard piles can be moved even if covered up by other cards; cards on top of a deck can't be moved once covered up.

Additionally, when you are told to get a card from your discard pile, you can look through it to get the card. That's just implicit. You don't have to just look at the top couple of cards, you can look through the whole discard pile.

The main change here is that previously you'd lose track of something if it were covered up in your discard pile, and now you don't. So for example if you Replace an Estate into Skulk, previously you would lose track of the Skulk when you gained a Gold and covered it up, but now you won't, you will put the Skulk onto your deck.

4. You can gain non-Supply cards when called out.

When a card tells you to gain a non-Supply card by name, you can gain it from its pile, even though it's not in the Supply.

This is just letting me drop "from its pile" from those cards, which wasn't a great way to make it clear that you really get to gain them.

5. Costs don't go below $0.

The cost in $ of a card can't go below $0. The cost in [potion] of a card can't go below 0 [potion]; the cost in [debt] of a card can't go below 0 [debt].

This is something that cards like Bridge have said; now it's just a rule, and covers the potion and debt cases since people ask. What does Vineyard cost with a Highway in play? Same as without it - zero coins, one potion, and zero debt.

*** Update! ***

Did I say that was the errata? There is more errata.

As a result of posting the errata, people have talked about it in forums and things, and the ShuffleiT version has gotten worked on. And this has resulted in two more desired changes. Well I'm counting it as two. And well the cards still won't be printed for months at least, but the online version is changing soon, so here they are.

The first is, when you are told to get a card from your discard pile, if it's not on top, or the card is chosen, you can look through your discard pile to get the card. You don't get to look through your discard pile to take the top card (again unless you're choosing a card from your discard pile). This change is because, well the idea to messing with when you could look in your discard pile was to fix some weird situations, not to add "look through your discard pile" to cards like Watchtower that never had it. In the rare situations where you gain a card and want to use Watchtower and the card is no longer on top, you get to look through your whole discard pile; when it's on top, just take the card like you used to.

The second is, further errata for four cards to prevent loops. You could do things like, play a Bridge and use Inheritance on Band of Misfits and then play Band of Misfits to play Estate to play Band of Misfits to play Estate and it's a loop. The fix here is a type on these cards, that they then don't work with. This affects very little other than getting rid of the loops; Courtier is better with these cards, and if you e.g. have an Adventures token on Band of Misfits and wanted to play Captain to play Band of Misfits (with a Bridge) to take advantage of that, well, now that doesn't work. This fix includes Overlord even though it wasn't part of the loops, just to be safe for the future and because it looks like the other cards and this seems less confusing. And hey it was already getting errata. To avoid "non-Victory non-Command" on Inheritance, I'm dropping non-Victory, which was just there for the old way Inheritance worked.

So:

Band of Misfits: Action - Command, $5
Play a non-Command Action card from the Supply that costs less than this, leaving it there.

Overlord: Action - Command, 8D
Play a non-Command Action card from the Supply costing up to $5, leaving it there.

Inheritance: Event, $7
Once per game: Set aside a non-Command Action card from the Supply costing up to $4. Move your Estate token to it. (During your turns, Estates are also Actions with "Play the card with your Estate token, leaving it there.")

Captain: Action - Duration - Command, $6
Now and at the start of your next turn: Play a non-Duration non-Command Action card from the Supply costing up to $4, leaving it there.

I decided to check up on the AI. See if I could be playing this game for fun sometimes.

There is something artificial but it has no intelligence.

Turn 1 - Lord Rattington
L plays 5 Coppers.
L buys and gains a Silver.
L draws 2 Coppers and 3 Estates.

There were many sensible options; there was no special attraction for Silver. It's simply that bad. Its next $5 was also a Silver; on turn 6 it finally went for a Hunting Party. I opened Spice Merchant / Black Market, like someone playing Dominion.

It's July 21st, 2017. This is a ridiculous failing.

Let me know when there's an AI! Until then, I would lock this subforum; there's absolutely no point to reporting AI bugs until there's an AI.

I was going to post in the old thread but it vanished. Here is a new thread focused on the important part. No complaining about specific games or players here please, just suggestions for how to make the world a better place, and discussions of suggestions.

* Time-out rule *

I think that an honest, reasonable player should never be in a situation where they have to play a Copper to extend how much time they have to think. I mean that's obviously bad. If there's a time-out at all, it shouldn't be based on when you last played a card. I think I would base it on how much total time the program has spent waiting for you compared to your opponent, with a threshold. For example, just an example, maybe you get to take twice as much time as your opponent, or 10 minutes, whichever is more. Probably with a warning before the first time it gives them the chance to eject you.

Obv. existing game logs could be looked at to see how often a candidate rule would kick in, and tweak it to be something that mostly would not happen except when slow-rolled or that phone call lasts a while. If existing game logs don't store enough time information to do that, they could be changed to store the extra information, and then data could accumulate. There are a lot of games per day, so, the next day you've got your data and can pick the best rule.

Both players get to stare at the board at once on turn one, but it's someone's turn. The rule should be generous enough that typically no-one worries about that. You could potentially try to special-case this - players click "ready" at the start, and have 3 minutes to do it (or are automatically "ready"), and this time doesn't count for anyone. But in the end some people will want to stare for a while and sometimes they will go first. It's nicer not to have to click "ready" at the start. I dunno.

* Matchmaking *

There is a separate but related issue of just not wanting slow opponents, even non-slow-rolling ones. I think that's reasonable. I would add speed as a matchmaking criteria (or, a thing reported to you when a match is made, that you have to okay to actually play the match). You could split it up into speed for the first and last two turns, and speed for other turns.

I think people who are not super slow will appreciate not being paired against super slow players. I think super slow players are not entitled to make opponents suffer through slow games or resign. Net happiness goes up if you can just avoid the match. If there are too many matchmaking settings, it may take longer to find matches; that seems moot here. If all you can get is pain, you can accept it or be happy not to experience it. If you are not getting matched you can lower your standards; if you see an offer and it looks bad you can decide to do it or not.

* Bots step in *

I don't think there's any way to stop someone from creating a new account, playing what appears to be a normal game, and then, if they're losing, waiting out the clock to give the finger to their opponent. Or, being a seemingly reasonable player for a while and then one day losing their mind and letting the clock run out on a late turn.

I do have a thing to try here though, or at least, a thought experiment. Once there are good bots, it could be that you could let a bot take over for you, and get the win (or loss), provided that it looks like you have the game locked up. Bots do not mind getting slow-rolled, they can sit there and wait patiently.

We can see if you're winning by having you click a button, "I think I've locked this one up," and the program simulates 100 games from this point on, with all bots (again, this requires that the bots be good). If you win all 100 then it lets you replace yourself with a bot and count the result for yourself (and if not the button is gone for this game, you just get one shot at it). However then you could just have bots finish all your locked-in wins for you and uh I dunno. Maybe it's okay - if they haven't resigned because they want to see what their deck does, well they can see that vs. a bot. I dunno what people would think of it though, and if they didn't like it, well it's impossible to test "is someone slow-rolling you" in order to confine it to that situation. So. A thing to think about.

The top of Lord Rattington's discard pile covers up the n at the end of the name, plus his VP. There does not appear to be any way to see these things. You must know this.

Seems good to fix! Some people will have long names. In the meantime though, just make him Lord Rat, and the most common instance of this problem will vanish.