Only one of Duplicated Villas goes into hand

[Hukuma]

The description of Villa says 'when you gain it, put it into hand'. With a Duplicate you can gain two Villas, but only one of them ends up in your hand.

Don't know if that's a bug or not, but the behavior does not match the card description.

Cheers,

Hukuma

[Ingix]

What happened was correct, but the reason why this happened is a bit esoteric. If you had made a certain choice another way, you could have gotten both Villas into your hand.

I recreated the scenario in game 5601639. On turn 3 I played the Duplicate (putting it on my Tavern Mat) and had the 4 coin to buy a Villa. When I did that, the game presented me with a choice (see picture "What First"): Would I want to do the Villa-to-hand effect first or the Duplicate effect first.

Let's try the Villa effect first. I get the Villa #1 into my hand, then get decide if I want to use the Duplicate effect. If I do, I gain Villa #2, and because now there is no other thing to do, that Villa #2 automatically ends up in my hand (where Villa #1 already is), and it is now my Action phase again, see picture "Villa First". This sequence of events leads to two Villas in the player's hands, ready to be played.

I guess you used the other order and choose to do the Duplicate effect first. The result can be seen in the picture "Duplicate First". The crucial line is

Villa loses track of Villa (it was covered up)

It refers to the fact that Villa #1 in your discard pile (just bought/gained) was covered up by Villa #2 (just gained via Duplicate) for a short amount of time, before Villa #2 moved to your hand due to the special Villa ability.

In the Dark Ages rulebook, the "Lost track" rule was introduced:

In rare circumstances an effect may try to move a card that is not where that effect expects the card
to be. In those cases the card does not move - the effect has "lost track" of the card.
...
Things lose track of a card if something moves it, if it is the top card of a deck and gets covered up, or if it is the top card of a discard pile and gets covered up.

So what happened here is that because the Duplicate effect was done first, the effect that will later try to move Villa #1 to your hand lost track of the card, because it was covered up by the Villa #2 that got into your discard pile due to the Duplicate effect.

[markus]

That's a (potential) issue of the lose-track rule: when you gain the first Villa, you have to click "Villa" first instead of "Call Duplicate" to put it in hand (yes, there should be a clearer text for that). Then, you can call Duplicate and have both Villas in hand. If you first call Duplicate, the second Villa will briefly cover up the first one in the discard pile, which prevents the movement to your hand afterwards because it was lost track of.

[AdamH]

So what needs to happen here is that the text "Villa" needs to be more descriptive. I hope nobody out there thinks that nothing should change.

I think it would be a good idea to go through all the code to find instances of non-descriptive text like this and make them more descriptive. It's probably simple enough to just look for text like this that the user clicks on which consists of just one word and adjust it.

[Ingix]

Yes, the "Villa" should be more descriptive. But no amount of text there would prepare a player for the lost-track rule. That is the main 'problem' here, not the fact that the selection description for the Villa effect is too short.

[AdamH]

Yes, the "Villa" should be more descriptive. But no amount of text there would prepare a player for the lost-track rule. That is the main 'problem' here, not the fact that the selection description for the Villa effect is too short.

But if the Villa text tells you what's happening, at least from a software perspective you can say you've done everything you can to make the situation clear, and the game rules have created this situation that's kind of weird.

As it stands now, I look at this and think the software isn't giving a user who understands the rules of the game (me) enough information to know what decision they're making. So the software is indeed falling short here.

[Hukuma]

Okay, thanks for the answers guys. I just didn't see that option then.

But another thing is that with those selections on the right you never know if they are exclusive or if after choosing the first you will be able to choose the other one as well. Even knowing the rules :)

[Ingix]

As it stands now, I look at this and think the software isn't giving a user who understands the rules of the game (me) enough information to know what decision they're making. So the software is indeed falling short here.

Of course if you are not familiar with what Villa does, the simple prompt "Villa" will not educate you on what happens when you select it. But this is not the problem here, Hukuma seems to be quite aware of how Villa works. If the prompt had said "Return Villa to hand and go to Action phase" this would be a better description, but would IMO still not have prevented what happened.

It is a non-trivial application of the lost-track rule (which is itself probably not well-known) that makes the order of effects (Villa first or Duplicate first) relevant in this case.