Author Topic: Strange side effect of Rule #8 (Read 3779 times)

happyjosiah · « **on:** August 06, 2009, 08:56:48 AM »

"There is a new Hand Limit. The limit is that at no time may the cards in your hand exceed 16. This rule will take precendence over any instruction on a card. If you play a card that instructs you to draw cards you must stop at 16. During Discard Phase you must still reduce your hand to 8 or less."

Sounds to me like if you have 4 enhancements in battle and 15 cards in your hand and you play a withdraw card, you can only pick up two of those cards from battle. Am I understanding that correctly?

ejberkenpas22 · « **Reply #1 on:** August 06, 2009, 09:04:14 AM »

Yes...there have been several situations asked about like if chains is played and your hero must be returned to your hand and the conclusion based on the way the rule is written that since AT NO TIME can your hand exceed 16 then there should be NO TIME under any circumstance that your hand should have more than 16 cards in it. The question is in a situation like chains or if you withdraw from battle what happens to those cards that would make your hand bigger. I would assume you have to make room in your hand for them even if that means having to discard cards.

CactusRob · « **Reply #2 on:** August 06, 2009, 09:12:52 AM »

Quote from: happyjosiah on August 06, 2009, 08:56:48 AM

"There is a new Hand Limit. The limit is that at no time may the cards in your hand exceed 16. This rule will take precendence over any instruction on a card. If you play a card that instructs you to draw cards you must stop at 16. During Discard Phase you must still reduce your hand to 8 or less."

Sounds to me like if you have 4 enhancements in battle and 15 cards in your hand and you play a withdraw card, you can only pick up two of those cards from battle. Am I understanding that correctly?

Yeah, that is interesting. Let's see, the returned cards are not allowed to go into my hand. So what happens?:

a) If it's a character, I think we allow it to go into owner's territory.
b) If it's an enhancement (s), it get's discarded?

ejberkenpas22 · « **Reply #3 on:** August 06, 2009, 09:13:45 AM »

Well I guess that is a pretty official answer

BubbleBoy · « **Reply #4 on:** August 06, 2009, 09:22:28 AM »

Well, Rob did put a question mark, so I don't know if that was really official. It's probably as close as we'll get, though, so I'll go with that for now.

happyjosiah · « **Reply #5 on:** August 06, 2009, 09:23:01 AM »

Sounds good to me. Thanks Rob. All of the withdrawl cards return heroes to territory, not hand anyway, so that shouldn't be a problem. And the only evil one I can think of, Political Savvy, just returns one Evil Character to hand, which would simply replace political saavy. So enhancements are the only thing to worry about here. Thanks for the quick response!

BubbleBoy · « **Reply #6 on:** August 06, 2009, 09:26:48 AM »

Cage
Chains
Paul's Girdle
I think there are even more, but that's not the point; the point is, now those characters would go to territory instead.

happyjosiah · « **Reply #7 on:** August 06, 2009, 09:32:32 AM »

Ah, good points.

The Schaef · « **Reply #8 on:** August 06, 2009, 09:35:06 AM »

I agree. Since returning to hand is a specific type of withdrawal card, cards that exceed the hand limit would just return to territory like a normal withdrawal, and since Enhancements typically can't sit in a territory, they get discarded.

TimMierz · « **Reply #9 on:** August 06, 2009, 09:37:29 AM »

Quote from: CactusRob on August 06, 2009, 09:12:52 AM

Yeah, that is interesting. Let's see, the returned cards are not allowed to go into my hand. So what happens?:

a) If it's a character, I think we allow it to go into owner's territory.
b) If it's an enhancement (s), it get's discarded?

If you still have a matching character in battle, can you choose to not withdraw some of the enhancements so they don't just get discarded?

happyjosiah · « **Reply #10 on:** August 06, 2009, 09:41:14 AM »

I believe those all say "may" so I don't see why not.

RTSmaniac · « **Reply #11 on:** August 06, 2009, 06:41:15 PM »

if a special ability is trying to put a hero into owners hand of 16 cards then i would assume the hero is protected from being placed into hand---NOT put in territory. consistency here gentlemen

happyjosiah · « **Reply #12 on:** August 07, 2009, 08:29:14 AM »

I'd agree logically, but that's not what Rob said.

metalpsalm · « **Reply #13 on:** August 07, 2009, 08:34:04 AM »

I'm glad this is an experiment!
I really feel for Rob having to speak Ex-Cathedra whenever he posts.

happyjosiah · « **Reply #14 on:** August 07, 2009, 08:37:47 AM »

I don't want to hold him to that or say it has to be written in stone, but it is what he said and he hasn't posted otherwise. If he makes another post here that says "oops, I didn't think about stuff like Chains and Cage," we'll gladly adjust how we play. But he hasn't done that yet.

metalpsalm · « **Reply #15 on:** August 07, 2009, 08:44:34 AM »

Quote from: happyjosiah on August 07, 2009, 08:37:47 AM

I don't want to hold him to that or say it has to be written in stone, but it is what he said and he hasn't posted otherwise. If he makes another post here that says "oops, I didn't think about stuff like Chains and Cage," we'll gladly adjust how we play. But he hasn't done that yet.

Rob and Co. have done a great job of balancing this game over more than a decade.
I just wouldn't want the pressure.

Professoralstad · « **Reply #16 on:** August 07, 2009, 11:56:07 AM »

Perhaps the rule should be: "No hand may exceed 16 cards due to a special ability used by that player." If we choose to say "return to hand" cards withdraw to the territory instead, the person with 16 cards has the added bonus of not getting their heroes reset. One of the nice things about return to hand cards is that you could choose to return a Gathered Hero so that the Hero would lose their extra ability. I'm not sure if we should reward players who are right near the limit by allowing their heroes to keep extra gained SA's intact.

I am okay with the ruling as is now, but I wonder if this would solve the problems of A) return to hand cards, and B) Limiting the draw phase. It still would prevent people from abusing cards like Stillness or Highway to exceed the limit, but it would allow someone who drew a lot during their block (not typically part of a speed strategy) to still draw three on their turn.

If this rule was enacted to combat the dominance of Speed, then I think this change will still slow that strategy while not affecting other aspects of the game.

happyjosiah · « **Reply #17 on:** August 07, 2009, 12:03:07 PM »

I like that solution.

egilkinc · « **Reply #18 on:** August 07, 2009, 02:18:25 PM »

Quote from: happyjosiah on August 07, 2009, 12:03:07 PM

I like that solution.

SirNobody · « **Reply #19 on:** August 07, 2009, 03:15:05 PM »

Hey,

I like Professoralstad's suggestion.

Rob, I think it would be better if an ability simply did nothing if it tried to return a card to a hand that was at maximum capacity. That's how most similar abilities in Redemption work. Also if a card returns multiple cards to a player's hand and that hand is close to the hand limit, the ability would return as many cards as possible to the hand (choice of the player that used the ability) to get the hand to the hand limit and then does nothing to any remaining targets.

Tschow,

Tim "Sir Nobody" Maly

TechnoEthicist · « **Reply #20 on:** August 07, 2009, 03:34:08 PM »

I disagree, I think. If you rescue against me after some form of set aside and I send you back to your hand, then either a) the abilities reset once back in territory, or b) you have to make room for the card by either playing into your territory, or discarding. I do not like the idea of you having 16 cards stopping the battle ender I played on you.

ejberkenpas22 · « **Reply #21 on:** August 07, 2009, 07:58:32 PM »

Quote from: Professoralstad on August 07, 2009, 11:56:07 AM

If this rule was enacted to combat the dominance of Speed, then I think this change will still slow that strategy while not affecting other aspects of the game.

We can guess with pretty good certainty that that is not the reason for the rule, to combat speed. If you saw in one of the other threads about this new rule, Gabe mentioned that he played Rob at nationals in one of the events (not significant which one) and Rob was using a speed deck. I don't think he is trying to kill speed decks because he likes them but who knows. We don't know why the new rule but that is a good idea you have for the rule wording.

metalpsalm · « **Reply #22 on:** August 07, 2009, 08:19:32 PM »

Quote from: ejberkenpas22 on August 07, 2009, 07:58:32 PM

Quote from: Professoralstad on August 07, 2009, 11:56:07 AM
If this rule was enacted to combat the dominance of Speed, then I think this change will still slow that strategy while not affecting other aspects of the game.
We can guess with pretty good certainty that that is not the reason for the rule, to combat speed. If you saw in one of the other threads about this new rule, Gabe mentioned that he played Rob at nationals in one of the events (not significant which one) and Rob was using a speed deck. I don't think he is trying to kill speed decks because he likes them but who knows. We don't know why the new rule but that is a good idea you have for the rule wording.

I'm quite sure he would only make rule changes in order to combat brokenness

Professoralstad · « **Reply #23 on:** August 09, 2009, 01:10:32 AM »

Quote from: ejberkenpas22 on August 07, 2009, 07:58:32 PM

Quote from: Professoralstad on August 07, 2009, 11:56:07 AM

If this rule was enacted to combat the dominance of Speed, then I think this change will still slow that strategy while not affecting other aspects of the game.

We can guess with pretty good certainty that that is not the reason for the rule, to combat speed. If you saw in one of the other threads about this new rule, Gabe mentioned that he played Rob at nationals in one of the events (not significant which one) and Rob was using a speed deck. I don't think he is trying to kill speed decks because he likes them but who knows. We don't know why the new rule but that is a good idea you have for the rule wording.

Whether the deck is Speed with a combo (Clift/Gabe's SitC deck) or just Speed in general, it seems pretty obvious that the hand limit came as a result of Speed. What other reason would there be? Few other strategies have the capability of often going above 16 cards, and no other ones that I know of abuse that capability. Whether Rob uses/likes a Speed deck or not is irrelevant; if he thinks it's a strategy that is too dominant/broken and wants to encourage a diversity of strategies (especially in T1 Multi) then the rule makes sense. Obviously Speed won't go away, but it may be slightly less overused if the main strategy is hindered.

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Author Topic: Strange side effect of Rule #8 (Read 3779 times)

The Schaef